20240707 Bishop to Red's Meadow (mile 907)

I quit smoking in January 2024 and barring one or two exceptions I have stuck to it. However, if there is one thing which will drive me back to cigarettes, it is the mosquitoes in California's Sierra Nevada mountains.

One of the above-mentioned lapses was in the climbing town of Bishop. It seemed there that every person we had met on trail over the past two months had assembled to share stories, and to get shitfaced on macro lager in a salty bar called Rusty's. The next morning I awoke in a deserted hostel room with the familiar taste of tobacco in my mouth, and a half smoked pack of Marlboros in my pocket. The hangover added an immediate existential anxiety to all of our town errands that day, but the cigarettes would later come in handy, back on trail, as a tool for wafting away the disgusting blood-hungry creatures in times of need.

That smoke, however, was only ever a temporary respite. The billions of wretched itching things that had emerged from the stagnant pools left behind by recent snowmelt were unavoidable for long miles, often leaving no choice but to maintain a swift 3mph pace in an attempt to outrun them. This proved exhausting, and many a sullen evening was spent zipped up inside the net of our tent, watching the brutes crawl the fabric looking for an entrance. I have slapped them off my legs, hands, arms and neck, only to see the blood splatter and the little black form of the big smear in bits across my skin. I have wiped the sweat from my forehead only to realise I have smeared a dark smudge of bug insides across my face, and stared at the black beneath my fingernails with glum resignation.

But while the evenings were miserable (and the mornings not much better) the days at least were beautiful. From Mt Whitney onwards we were hiking along the John Muir Trail northbound, a popular 211 mile trail stretching south from Yosemite Valley.

Smoke had slowed us down on our first day out of Bishop (the lightning storm the day we had rescued Loki had set off fires nearby), on what was already an ambitious day. We ascended two mountain passes and dropped into an untouched valley as the sun set, and it felt pure and wild and a long way from civilisation. In the pitch black we waded through thigh deep rivers of crystal clear waters separating upper and middle Rae Lakes, watching the dark forms of fish flit in and out of sight.

We spent the following morning there sat by the pristine lakes, and having become separated from the rest of our group, decided to abandon hopes of catching them up in favour of lapping up the surroundings. I swam in the cold water and we did our best to justify what felt like a betrayal, unavoidable though it was.

Icy water and the warm glow of sunset on granite. Both provided us with distraction, if not total respite, from the mosquitoes. And once we made peace with having slowed down we were able to time our activities around the worst of the bugs.

Taking the mountains one pass at a time, we were making progress through the highest section of the PCT - even despite having reduced our pace. Even the easiest days were challenging though. It was a huge surprise to see Ally pop up behind us one afternoon, who we had met on day one, and not seen since Big Bear (over 500 miles ago).

With Ally and her gang, including other familiar faces we had also not seen in a long, long time, we decided to get off trail at Bishop Pass and head back to Bishop for another round. The original plan had been to continue along the trail and tackle a downed bridge on the San Joaquin river head on in numbers, either by fording it (highly discouraged by the PCTA due to high flows) or by taking Andrew Skurka's widely circulated 'Up and Over' scramble route (also highly discouraged). However, after meeting up with others the temptation to re-route with them was too great. In any case, it put our anxieties to bed regarding tackling either of the San Joaquin options with just the two of us.

In an unsurprising turn of events, the new route over Bishop's pass turned out to be stunning, and we had a fortunate hitch back into town with the retired fire chief of Bishop. When he shook my hand I felt the bones grind together and it felt as though I had released the clutch too soon when shifting gears in a large vehicle.

In bishop, Grace and I lay in a motel watching adverts for pharmaceutical products and strange apps connecting you to spiritual mediums.

Second impressions of Bishop were as favourable as the first, however the town was noticeably quieter. The hiker bubble we had been in the middle of had now passed through, and was, we estimated, now somewhere around Mammoth. We had a barbecue in the garden at the Eastside Guesthouse again, and Bristol Jasper rented a Chevy truck to drive us all to the trailhead first thing in the morning.

Back on the trail the mosquitoes were still bad. The first evening they were as bad as they had ever been. But soon after that they petered off, and it was even relaxed enough to swim in the lakes. Coming into Red's Meadow we received satellite updates from Grace's grandmother, our Euros 2024 correspondent, about the developing situation with England's penalty shootout, and I vowed to never again miss one of the knockout games due to being on trail.