After a good night’s sleep on real beds, we got up and started arranging our packs.

Apparently the generator that supplies electricity to the entire resort is shut down every night, so nothing got charged while we were sleeping.

We went over to the restaurant for breakfast (I had scrambled eggs and potatoes), paid our tabs and registered for the first boat out. It left 15 minutes to do all of our final arrangements. But we made it.

Helen joined us for the boat ride. She hikes the JMT southbound, and plans to finish it in 8 days. She also visited Israel, and knew how to say “ma kore”. I hope she has fun on the rest of her hike.

Back on the eastern side of the lake we finally had good cell reception again, so we reserved a room at the Motel 6 in Mammoth, and got up to date information about the bus from Reds Meadows down to the town (every 30 minutes until 7pm). That’s a relief.

We finally started hiking at around 9:00. 1.5+ miles back to the PCT, and then another 13 or so to our designated campsite. Seems like a short day, but we climbed over Silver Pass, which isn’t high enough to have significant snow, but it was still a 3000 feet climb, and then later in the day we had another 1500 feet climb. So a hard day in total.

We passed about 11 southbounders, and they were all women. I wonder what are the chances.

The views from the top of Silver Pass were nice, to the north. Some lakes below it. That second climb of the day was hard and slow, and from the top we had another mile to hike until our campsite. That was a long mile.

At the end, Harmonic-Wave and I found Signal near the campsite. He found a good spot near some trees. We are still near the lake, at about 10,500 feet. So it’s going to be cold here. But tomorrow it should be easy enough to finally reach Mammoth Lakes, a ski town near the trail.