Tuesday September 16, 20.7mi/33.3km

VVR (538.2/7660ft) to Fish Creek Valley (558.9/6880ft) (CA)

I was awake at 6 am, along with a few of the other hikers I could hear rummaging in their tents. I said goodbye to everyone and left VVR just after 6:30, it definitely vortexed me in yesterday.

After hiking through another confusing campground, I re-entered the Wilderness on a nice trail.

There was a mile of burned section, but not too bad, mostly just brushy. I climbed up into a little valley called Graveyard meadow, which actually felt pretty cheerful on this nice sunny morning.

Seems like something called The Devil’s Bathtub trail would have a hot springs, but I checked my maps and it didn’t.

It was a nice hike all morning, Upper Graveyard meadow was even more wide open.

As I climbed higher towards Goodale pass, the terrain became that classic High Sierra sparse forest.

The climb up to Goodale Pass gained about 2,000 ft but was pretty easy with all the switchbacks. Looking back into the valley with Graveyard Meadows:

Most passes are rocky on top, this one was flat and sandy, which was a nice surprise.

Looking ahead towards the mountains around Mammoth Lakes, the town where I will be finishing in a couple of days.

Since it was a warm sunny day, with perfect blue skies, I decided to take a little nap on top of the pass.

I even had a faint Verizon signal, so I checked the weather and my messages. The wildfire smoke that people kept complaining about never seemed to materialize, so unless I see smoke tomorrow I will have escaped it entirely on this hike. The descent down from the pass was pretty gradual and easy.

There were even a couple of alpine lakes that I hiked by, but didn’t trail near enough to actually go swimming. This was Lake of the Lone Indian.

After dropping down to 9000 ft elevation, the trail just stayed there for miles and miles, and I enjoyed hiking through classic High Sierra forest.

It definitely seemed like Autumn was coming, these little ground cover plants are usually green.

I’m not sure what they’re called, I’ve only seen them at higher elevations.

After like 5 miles of amazing trail, I dropped down steeply to Fish Creek Valley. For no apparent reason, this part of the trail was a complete mess, with dead trees down everywhere. They weren’t burned, they didn’t look like beetle-kill trees, it was just a strange mystery. Stepping over or around 100 downed trees is slow progress, but eventually I made it down to the bottom of the valley and the Ida Bell Hot Springs. It was a short side quest off the main trail, and I had to climb uphill a little bit, and search for them in a meadow. The first one was actually pretty nice.

I soaked in that first one for what felt like forever, and then I went to explore to find the other soaking pools. I managed to find a second one.

I even spotted a third one, but I didn’t feel like crossing a swampy meadow to go see it. There’s supposed to be a few more pools up here, but the first two were more than enough for me. I had planned on camping here and soaking again in the morning, but then I saw a bear sniffing around one of the hot springs. I guess bears need a good relaxing soak too? It was my second day in a row of both seeing a bear and soaking in hot springs. Life is odd. I don’t camp near bears, so I got back on the main trail and continued on a mile, and setup camp.

It’s my last night camping in the wilderness, tomorrow night I will be either in Red’s Meadow resort, or in the town of Mammoth Lakes.