Tuesday, 26 July 9.0 miles, 4:20
Chelsea on the Postpile
We enjoyed a quiet night at Rosalie Lake and got a somewhat early start this morning. We began with a brief and rather snowy climb past a couple more tiny “lakes”, then it was down, down, down eleven hundred feet to Devil’s Postpile National Monument. The JMT goes through the Monument property but does not actually go past the Postpile. I had been really looking forward to this feature so we took a side route which included a loop along the base and over the top of the pile. We went over the top first and stood upon the columns. Here the ground had been glacially polished into a surface of hexagonal basalt “tiles”. I’ve never seen anything like it. Each “tile” was about 40 cm across. From the base there was a rubble field of meters-long basalt crystals. Beyond stood the columns, tens of meters high. This was a worthwhile diversion.
This sign makes me giggle
We took additional side trails to Red’s Meadow Resort, where the phones and showers were not working and we aborted a trip to Mammoth Lakes because it would take an hour and a half and three shuttles one way to get to town. I hit a low point that was eased as some friendly folks we had been bumping into along the way arrived: Dave (our neighbor for the past two nights), Vicki and Roberta (the two women who took the alternate route), and Mark (a fellow we had met on the trail a couple of times). After supper Mark came to the backpacker site to say that he had rented a cabin and would we like to use his shower. YES! The cabin was dumpy but the water was hot and I am going to bed feeling clean and dust-free for the first time in a week.
