Wednesday September 17, 21.5mi/34.6km

Fish Creek Valley (558.9/6880ft) to Mammoth Lakes (582.4/8020ft) (CA) -2.0mi reroute

I left my cozy little camp spot under the pines, headed out after 7am. As difficult as it was to find a campsite last night, today the trail went through a mature unburned forest with plenty of flat areas.

After a couple miles, I came to a bridged crossing of Fish Creek.

I was a little uncertain where the creek crossing would be, because my 2 maps showed it in two different locations. Turns out, it’s in the location that’s further downstream (West). From there, it was a nicely switchbacked climb out of the creek valley, climbing an easy 700 ft. Pretty soon, I was traversing these granite ledges above the Middle Fork San Joaquin River.

The weather was perfect and the scenery amazing, and I took my time soaking it all in. After awhile I started following a tributary of the San Joaquin, hiking in a riparian area again.

A couple miles later, I exited the Ansel Adams wilderness, and entered Devil’s postpile monument.

I had always wanted to investigate this area when I hiked through on the PCT in 2015, but it was a little too far off the trail. But now I had my opportunity, and I hiked a short side trail for a couple minutes to check out Rainbow falls.

I had planned on having an early lunch at the waterfalls, but I was almost out of food, so I decided to keep hiking to Red’s Meadow Resort, an easy 2 miles away.

As I hiked up the gradual hill towards Red’s Meadow, it seemed strange that I wasn’t seeing any other hikers. I know the waterfalls are very popular, as is the resort area, but I saw zero other humans. Weird. When I arrived at the resort, the mystery was solved, they had closed early for the season because the access road was closed for repairs.

This also meant the restaurant was closed, and they weren’t selling any food. But since I had literally zero food left, I was counting on them for a few calories to get me the 9 more miles to the town of Mammoth Lakes. One of the friendly staff dragged out the PCT hiker box, which I ravenously raided for an hour while sitting at the picnic table.

From there I walked a half mile over to the campground, since that’s where the last hot spring was located, and I took a nice soak there for almost an hour.

Eventually I packed up and left the hot spring, and I had a 1000ft climb to get out of this valley, over a small pass, and then down into Mammoth Lakes. Which apparently meant re-entering the Ansel Adams wilderness, ha!

It was a nice gradual uphill hike, I even passed a couple PCT southbound hikers who were heading into town for the night. And the view to the north was absolutely incredible, I think that’s Mount Banner and Ritter in the distance.

Once I got to the top of the pass, I could tell I was pretty close to the trailhead as the trail turned into a tourist-grade hiking highway.

Once I got to Horseshoe Lake trailhead, I was back in civilization.

I had a couple hours of following pavement to get to town, fortunately most of that was on a separated bike path.

The local biking community certainly has a sense of humor.

It was a gradual downhill for a couple hours all the way down into the town of Mammoth lakes, which I could see in the distance.

The bike path even had mile markers that counted down every quarter mile, so I knew how close I was.

And finally, I finished at the Mammoth Brewery, where I had hiked out of back on May 28th, and thereby connected my steps.

Despite gorging myself on snacks in the Red’s Meadow hiker box, I was ravenous and this meal didn’t stand a chance.

After dinner, I walked another mile into the center of Mammoth lakes, visiting an ice cream shop.

Who knew ice cream came in flights? Amazing.

By now I was thoroughly full of food and getting sleepy, so I walked across the main road to the Shady Rest campground. It was dark, but I managed to find the same camping spot I stayed at back in May. There were only a couple other people in the entire campground, which seemed strange. I talked to one of them at the campground bathroom, apparently it closed for the season last weekend. They said they were friends with the campground host and he was off duty, so I could just stay for free. Nice!
So that completes the Hot Springs Trail, which was a journey full of surprises through landscapes I had never visited before. I’ll have more thoughts in my usual end-of-hike journal post. Early tomorrow morning, I catch the ESTA bus out of Mammoth, and begin my long journey down to Campo, where my van has been stored for the last 5 months.