We woke sort of early with the intent to leave VVR by 9:00. We all paid our tabs, used the flush toilets one last time and headed out. VVR was offering rides to the Bear Creek Trailhead for $10 per person. That would be a total of $40 for the 4 of us. We all thought that was outrageous and we walked the short and easy 2 miles down the road to the trailhead.
We chose to start at Bear Creek Trail so we could avoid the 2000+ foot climb up Bear Ridge. If we wanted to catch Bear Ridge, we would have had to hike back to the JMT via the 7 mile trail we did the previous day. We were not interested in doing that! Bear Creek was a gain of 1200 feet which was enough for us.
We went up, up, up in the hot sun in the morning, then down, down, down to Bear Creek. The rest of the day was mostly up. We followed the creek all day, which was beautiful! Lots of little waterfalls and cascades. One of those perfect looking rivers! The flies and skeeters were horrible at a few points along the trail! I ran out of bug spray just as we came out of the worst of it. Skeeter swamp! Thank goodness for the headnet, I wore it all day until I got into the tent at night! We talked to some north bound hikers who went through this area a couple weeks before us and said they had the worst day ever during this section because the bugs were so thick! Although the bugs were still bad when we came through, it was obvious that they had subsided quite a bit because they were only bad in patches, not the entire 10 mile stretch!
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| Bear Creek |
We watched the eerie smoke from the wildfire roll up the valley towards us around 2:00 and we breathed campfire for the rest of the day with no visibility beyond about 100 feet up. No views of anything once the smoke rolled in :(
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| Clear on the left, smoke on the right |
Even after a rest day yesterday, I felt tired today. My ankle was hurting the last couple miles, my feet still hurt no matter what and my knees hurt for the downhill. After 2 weeks on trail, I've come to the conclusion that this is just the norm for my body. I feel strong, which is good, but my parts and pieces just constantly hurt. Oh well.
Daveed and I had a moment during our first break of the day. We were sitting by a beautiful bend in the creek with a perfect rock shelf to sit on and dangle your feet in the water. He had been in a funk all morning, was the last one ready to leave camp, was grumpy and overall just not psyched. After we chatted for awhile, he was mostly back to normal and ready to carry on. The trail does funny things. Nothing about what we're doing is easy- the trail exploits any and all weakness/emotion/insecurities, and being tired and worn down only magnifies them. It would be so much easier to just stay put and rest for a couple days. To really, fully re-charge our batteries. But here we are, after one rest day, back on the trail. Trail life is wonderful, don't get me wrong, but it's not easy. I'm glad we have each other to help pick up and carry on. Daveed always has a smile or a tail wag to encourage me to keep going when he knows my feet and ankle are killing me. I'm glad that I can also encourage him to keep going when it feels like staying put would be easier.
We set up camp about a mile past the junction where Bear Creek Trail meets back with the JMT. We're camped by a gorgeous spot by the creek, the sound of the rushing water lulling me to sleep. The rock shelf/creek bed is a dream- gray granite striped with black, flat and shallow with water sliding down it like a water slide. The beauty I've seen out here is really something to behold. A simple creek bed stopped me dead in my tracks! I'm so lucky to be here.
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| Camp near Lake Italy trail junction, elevation 9338 ft |
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