(Click any photo to enlarge) The photo above is what I woke up to this morning. Today we pick up our halfway point food drop at Muir Trail Ranch. We have used the Ranch for the past three years and love the place. I was surprised to hear a couple of Southbound hikers say that they had heard bad things about MTR. I'm here to tell you that they rock. Pat (the lady that runs the place) is a super lady that has been in the Sierra a long time and runs a great business. We always have fun chatting with her while we're devouring Pringles or black licorice or whatever treat we've packed for ourselves. The other bonus of picking our food drop from MTR is Blaney Meadows Hotsprings. From MTR if you head straight toward the San Joaquin River, ford it, and follow the use trails you'll be in for a backcountry treat.
Just behind the hotspring is Warm Lake. It has some geothermal activity but it is a bigger body of water so the temperature is not hot but its also not ice cold mountain water. Very Nice!
So we picked up our buckets (you have to ship your food in a 5 gallon pickle bucket so the rodents don't get into it) and stuffed our faces with treats that we had packed specifically for this day. We limit ourselves to two pounds of food per day each. So we pack a bunch of treats that we have to eat before we pack up and leave in the morning. We sorted our food, deposited our garbage from the past four days in the MTR trash cans, and headed down to ford the river. After we got our fill of Warm Lake and the hotsprings, we re-forded the river and found a great little spot on the trail side of the river. Last year fording the river at 6:00am was cold and not really enjoyable. We learned from that and kept our feet dry the next morning by staying on the other side of the river. We fell asleep fat and happy.
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