Not Eaten By Bears

So I got back from Inyo National Forest yesterday, where I went backpacking with DaveM last weekend. Had a pretty good time, with the usual types of adventures that I have on trips.

Day 0: Got to the Mosquito Flats trailhead late, late Friday night and crashed in the truck. Dave had the luxury of sleeping in the campground with Taita (his black lab). I didn't really sleep the night before, so I crashed hard. Fortunately it was far too cold for mosquitos to be a problem. The altitude is around 10,000 feet.

Day 1 - The Long Hike: So our plan was to make it to the Lower Pioneer Basin Lake to camp that night. I had a huge ass pack and as it turns out, am in not the greatest physical condition. Not that altitude helps much. The trail is about nine miles from the trail head and we had to go through Mono Pass at 12,000 feet or so. The outbound journey is mostly uphill. Going uphill I had to make frequent stops because my heart rate went way up (160+ bpm) trying to futilely to pump oxygen. We didn't get started until noon because we had to drive back to Mammoth Lakes to get a wilderness permit. The first part of the hike was decent, with a relatively gentle grade. We stopped for lunch at Ruby Lake, which was icy cold (there were traces of snow all through the area, more so at higher elevations). The next leg of the journey brought us over Mono Pass, which was tough for me, with probably the steepest climbing of the trip. However the day wasn't over by a long stretch. We travelled through the fairly barren summit area past Summit Lake over the next valley, where we could see our eventual goal. We had hoped that we could make it to Lower Pioneer Basin Lake by five or six, but as it was, we didn't get there until 7:30, well after dark. Along the way my body appeared to have completely run out of glucose. I couldn't think clearly, and really had to concentrate on where I was putting my feet down. In the gathering gloom I also started to see weird things out of the corner of my eyes. The shapes of things looked like other things to me, e.g. I thought I saw a shed in the middle of the woods. I ate all my trail mix, but it really didn't help. Dave got ahead of me as we were ascending the final rise to the camping area and I got to a part of the path where they'd dropped a couple of logs to divert water runoff and I couldn't tell if the trail just stopped or what. So I took the opportunity to change into warmer clothes (the sun was down at this point and it was quite chilly) and get my lamp out. Dave made it back to me in a short while and led me back to the field where we ended up camping. I felt like the guy in "To Build A Fire" who freezes to death in the Yukon when he can't build a fire. I just wanted to sit on a log and not move at all. Eventually we got our tents up and made some dinner. With some food in me I felt 1000% better. I got a nice exposure shot of the moon that illuminated the field we stayed in that night. I had the moon shining down on my tent that night when I went to sleep, which was really nice. It was extremely peaceful there, there weren't really any noises. Just what I was looking for when I left the Valley.

Day Two: Got up the next morning and finally got a look at the basin. Nice and remote. After a little breakfast, Dave and I hit the trail back. We decided to camp back at Ruby Lake, so we wouldn't be super tired after another long hike like the previous day. It was pretty funny, I didn't recognize a lot of the trail we'd covered the previous day when I was so spent. We made decent time, given that there was a lot of uphill climbing to do and I was pretty sore from the previous day. We stopped at Summit Lake, where Dave decided a high altitude swim (11,800 feet or so) was in order. We made it down to Ruby Lake before sundown this time and I didn't run out of energy until we had stopped hiking. I just lay in my tent for a while, not bending anything. Again, food helped. The only sounds that night were the gurgling brook and the jets that periodically overflew our site. It was colder this night (although there was frost on the tents both nights) and I couldn't get more than an hour of sleep or so. I don't think I ever got past REM sleep, because I had a ton of crazy dreams.

Day Three: Got up and had a chilly breakfast, because the valley we were in didn't get direct sunlight for nearly an hour after we got up. Dave sliced up what was left of the salami and we had "birthday sausages", which I joked didn't need any candles because they had enough tallow in them already. :-) Hit the spot, anyway. We hit the trail and the trip back to the trailhead was a piece of cake, all downhill or level hiking. We stopped in Lee Vining on the way back to check out Mono Lake, but didn't really have time to look at the Tufa. Oh well, maybe next time.

Got some photos here. There's also a map of our route here. The red line is the trail route. The numbers are:

1. Mono Pass, the high point of the journey.
2. Summit Lake, where Dave went swimming.
3. Where I saw The Wall.
4. Where I hit the wall.