Day 4, September 9, 2017 - Trinity Lakes to Crater Creek via Red's Meadow

Today's goal was to get out of camp, get down to Red's Meadow to pick up food, and start climbing out of the area to continue our adventure.  We got up at 6:15 and out of camp around 8:40.  The trail took us through the many acres that had experienced the big "tree blowdown" of 2011.    

Part of the 2011 blow down area near Devil's Postpile

On the way to Red's we came to a stream crossing.  It that we would have to remove our shoes or get them wet to get across, as there were no visible rocks or logs which would provide a dry crossing.  Mark had brought shoes for this purpose and elected to try them out  I did not have any extra shoes, so I decided to walk around a bit to try and find a way to cross with dry feet.  It did not take too long to find an area with a log and some rocks that allowed me to make the crossing and get back to the trail fairly quickly.  We both learned from this lesson and only needed to remove shoes once for the rest of the trip, when crossing Evolution Creek.  

Our route to Red's Meadow also took us past the Devil's Postpile, a park we had both visited previously.  

View of Devil's Postpile

We got to Red's Meadow just before noon. Laundry, showers, lunch, and sorting food pickup took nearly four hours. One happy hour of that was lunch.  Sitting on chairs at a table, having someone bring you food they cooked was quite a treat.  


We were fortunate to be served by Wendy.  We both ordered milk shakes with lunch, and Wendy made it clear to us she would not serve those milk shakes until she could provide her undivided attention to making them with love.  We waited 45 minutes for those milk shakes, but they were DEFINITELY the best ones we had ever had.  You could taste the love for sure.  


We finally pried ourselves out of Red's Meadow mid afternoon



 and began the climb up out of the area toward the Red Cones. We camped at Crater Meadow stream crossing, Mark in his tent and Matt under the stars. 

At this point we were a full day ahead of schedule.  Reason being, Matt goofed on the schedule as far as mailing food went.  We would have run out of food a day before our next food pickup at Muir Trail Ranch if we did not accelerate our schedule during the first half of the trip.  Fortunately, there was a couple short days planned early in the trip, so getting a day ahead was not difficult.  This day would prove very valuable later in the trip, see day 16 for details.

Our inreach location for the day is here

Page 5 is here

Daily Statistics
Miles hiked:  9.3
Elevation gain:   1000'
Elevation lost:  1600'
Precipitation:  none
Morning low temperature:  not recorded, likely low 30s / high 40s