Memories from June 14
After a pleasant sleep-in, breakfast, and conversation Brandon and Matt departed around 10am. Brandon had been cold again in his hammock and so had wound up sleeping on the ground. I finished letting my permits dry. Something had poked through both of the Zip Lock freezer bags and trapped a bunch of moisture inside. The color didn’t run much so expect they’re still valid.
Leaving the Muir Ranch area, there’s supposed to be a shortcut back to the PCT. I’m really confused about what happened other than that the shortcut is definitely not where I thought it was. After hiking over a mile towards Florence and having to backtrack, I gave up on map reading and just followed trail signs for Selden Pass even though I thought I’d come from that direction on my way in. I must have seriously mis-remembered something because when I checked my GPS app expecting to almost be back to the PCT, I was about two miles down it. Apparently I took the Sallie Keys Cutoff unintentionally after having given up on finding it.
The trail climbed towards Selden Pass and overlooked one of the wider valleys I remember seeing in the Sierras.
However, due to some misunderstanding and conservative planning on my part, my next resupply is in Vermilion Valley Resort (VVR) about 20 miles away but on June 18th. So the question becomes, how slow can you go? This is actually fine since it’ll give me some time to focus on the introspection oriented goals for this trip and do so in one of the more desirable sections of trail. All of this is to say that instead of going over Selden Pass which would have been a trivial matter given the entire afternoon, I set up camp at Sallie Keys Lake before 2pm, finished listening to the Divine Conspiracy, and started a todo list for VVR to clean out my head.
Given how little I had to do today, it’s funny I didn’t take more pictures but here’s one from shortly before the lake. There weren’t a lot of open, well composed views.
Isaac Takes A Hike 