Day 4
Ruby Lake to Red's Meadow/Crater Creek
17.3 miles

The wind turned out not to be a factor and I broke camp at 7:30am to a beautiful morning and the first cloudless day of the trip. I was at Garnet Lake by 9am and stopped for a break. Garnet Lake is an amazing place, with Ritter and Banner peaks towering over a seemingly perfect layout of rock, water and islands. As thrilling and challenging as it is to press on through such a long hike, there are several seemingly magical spots where it is hard to continue on, and Garnet Lake was one of them.

On the dusty descent to Shadow Lake, I met a fellow solo hiker who was fishing along the trail. This seemed to be a popular food source as I met several others doing the same thing and saw some fishing poles protruding out of packs.

I continued on past freshly wind-fallen pine cones to Gladys Lake for lunch. The dragonflies were neat buy annoying and the mosquitos were pretty bad.

Back on the trail I stopped to talk to two older guys hiking from Mammoth to Tuolumne who mentioned there was a solo hiker about an hour ahead of me who was also doing the whole JMT. I was to catch up with him later in the day. His name was Lou and he was taking 4 weeks to hike the trail. Later I met a woman on a 7-day solo hike through the Sierra's. She seemed to really be enjoying the solitude, commenting that she preferred to see no one at all during her hike. I think this was the only female solo hiker I met, although I met several women hiking with a female friend.

Once past Gladys Lake there is a climb and a long, hard, dusty descent to Devils Postpile and Red's Meadow. The view of the post pile is only a moderate one from the trail. I approached Red's Meadow sore and exhausted. I found the trail here hard to follow and I got a bit lost and probably hiked an extra mile or so—a lot at this point late in the day.

As I was trudging up the trail toward the store at Red's Meadow, I came upon a group of what seemed to be high school-aged girls taking a rest from a short hike around the property. They looked at me and my dusty, sweaty, weathered condition, and started shooting off questions about where I had come from and where I was going. They were aghast to find that I had walked here from Yosemite, and that I was on my way to Mt. Whitney. More questions came rapid fire about how I ate, how I slept, was I really doing this by myself? Wasn't I scared!? One girl commented that she planned to hike Mt. Whitney someday soon and the others were amazed. It was a wonderful exchange. It gave me some perspective after a few days on the trail (just how crazy is this?) and, I like to think, perhaps inspired a few to try something similar. It gave me strength.

I continued on to the store at Red's Meadow, and although I had been at the visitors center in Tuolumne just two days ago, it was very disconcerting and disorienting to be back among people, cars and Cokes. I had clearly undergone a transformation somewhere in between.

At Red's Meadow there is a store, a cafe, a campground, showers, cottages for rent, a shuttle that goes to the community of Mammoth Lakes, and a pay phone. I got some pain reliever and some cash from the store and relaxed before starting dinner about 6pm. I planned to get back on the trail and hike a bit to find a good camp spot—staying here among the people and pavement just wasn't going to work—but I wanted to make a phone call so I waited. Once back on the trail, it was late, and hiking through the charred black tree trunks (from a 1992 fire) in the dusk was a bit spooky. I had to hike a few long miles to find a good flat spot and it was dark by the time I set up my tent near a stream not far from Red Cones. The mosquitos were terrible, but I didn't have much of a choice for camping spots this night. This ended up being the only night I had to set up in the dark.