From Gladys Lake to Red’s Meadow is what Muir would call a saunter — a long lovely walk, brisk but as it happens mostly downhill, through a sunny and mostly dry forest. Not especially taxing and pleasant in a cozy sort of way, such as this little trailside pond, which officially is one of the small Trinity chain of lakes scattered along the eastern side of the trail here, a little north of Red’s Meadow.
Well, we sauntered right into Reds Meadow, at which point I apparently completely forgot that my phone also has a camera in it useful for documenting people especially, but also places and even things, so I’ll have to briefly recount what happened in our enjoyable afternoon and evening at Red’s Meadow Resort, near Mammoth, and available by bus line.
Perhaps I was shy, as sometimes happens when I first hit the trail, but Chris likes town stops, and of his own volition booked a hiker’s cabin at Red’s Meadow, so we had a chance to shower, launder some clothes, and have a couple of generous old-fashioned diner sort of meals — tuna melt, that sort of dish. Teenagers at both the take-out window and the store across the way were stepping up to man the register and the griddle, and seemed eager to please. Enjoyable to see that kids can still be kids, at least some places. Here’s the hiker cabin Chris rented from Red’s Meadow Resort the morning of our arrival on September 6th.
Among the ‘packers at the tables, scarfing down food and waving away the persistent and abundant and carnivorous bees (actually wasps no doubt), were the voluble Beans, a balding middle-aged man with a silver goatee, and two chatty and friendly gay men, who we in time met and hung up with, named Snappy and Ryan, and two 30’s or so women, who in time I came to know as Jamie and Marie.
The universal subject of conversation was smoke from the Garnet Fire, started by lightning, which had been burning for nearly two weeks in remote heavily wooded forest land well to the south, a few miles from Cedar Grove, in Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park to the southwest. Though a considerable distance from Red’s Meadow, hiker reports and some modeling available online showed a lot of smoke in the midsection of the Range of Light, well south of Yosemite but north of the much bigger and taller mountains to the south, and including famously beautiful waterfall trails such as one passing through Evolution Valley.
When we woke in the morning and headed out, fairly early, with packs weighty with food for the four days before our last big trail resupply, at Muir Trail Ranch, the smoke hung ominously in the tall pines. A long ways to Whitney, as the sign said.
Kit Stolz 