Wooly Mammoth

The following morning we were surprised our legs didn't feel too stiff, and as we were out cold as soon as we hit the hay we woke early and headed back into the valley. We spent a nice relaxing morning exploring the valley floor, and were incredibly lucky to see an elusive bobcat padding his way across the road. On the way out of the park we stopped to get a good look at El Cap(itain), who's sheer walls rise vertically from the valley floor. The longer we looked the more climbers we could see, and our binocs made sure it definitely wasn't easier than it looks. We got chatting to a climbing ranger, who told us the group we were looking at were going to be up there for 2 weeks on a difficult route, and his super-dooper telescope let us see all the huge amount of gear they had hanging off them. I doubt I could walk around with all that kit, let alone climb.

As there was no route east for hundreds of miles south, we headed back the way we came and up over the 10,000 ft pass. We got down to Mammoth Lakes, with a scenic detour to admire the golden fall aspens, and were super impressed with the NF campground bang in the middle of town. We hit the local bar for happy hour, and were well fed and watered before we chillaxed watching the remake of The Magnificent Seven in the local cinema, which made a nice change to our usual routine.

The next day we drove up to the Devil's Postpile National Monument - a load of basalt hexagon columns, we had a nice easy hike along part of the PCT & finished the day with a quick pint at Mammoth brewery & back to our 'local' for happy hour $4 burgers & fries!

Worryingly we caught the end of a local weather forecast that was talking about snow showers, which seemed bizarre to us as it as 25C+, but as we are now counting down time down in weeks (6!) we figured we needed to keep heading inland to the warmer climes.Read more