Hiking the JMT: Marie Lakes to Muir Trail Ranch (Day 12)

Heart Lake, on the way down from Selden Pass

Highlights of Day 12

Said farewell to Marie Lakes, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen
Crossed Selden Pass
Swam in the hot springs near Muir Trail Ranch
Charged cell phone (which we are using as camera) at Muir Trail Ranch charging station
For those who are inclined, MTR lets people use their computer & internet for $10/15 minutes. (And the last time we had data/cell service was Mammoth, so it is a noteworthy occasion)

Trail Journal

8:50 pm

Taking a relaxing dip in the hot springs near Muir Trail Ranch.

Today we went swimming in the hot springs near MTR! We got here pretty early in the day, set up camp, and then crossed the headwaters of the San Joaquin (what a trip it was seeing that! It’s so infinitely more beautiful than the river/channel in the Central Valley) to a meadow where there is a series of hot springs of varying temperatures. It was quite luxurious! The most relaxed I’ve felt the whole time on the trail.

On the way back across the river I accidentally lost a flip-flop. Oops! I feel worse about setting loose what is to become trash than I do about not having it…though I’m also a bit bummed about that. Still, it was a fun experience. I took a dip in the river for a “cold treatment” after the slightly sulphuric hot springs. Now I feel cleaner than I’ve felt in days!

The not so good thing today is that Gadget has 3 welts on the back of her neck that look like really inflamed bug bites. The freaky thing is that two of the bites have fatty-feeling bumps 1-2 inches from them. In my worse-case scenario I keep fearing that they’re from some bug that injected eggs into her neck or burrowed under her skin. (I know, I know, this is probably the stuff of horror films rather than reality–but when you’re far from medical attention, it is easy to let the imagination go wild!) In my best-case scenario, I keep trying to convince myself that they’re just irritated bug bites, and that the bumps are completely benign. (Editorial note: Yup, they were totally benign.)

The bottom lines that I keep coming back to are that if we exit the trail and it turns out to be nothing, I’ll be so so so so disappointed to have aborted. With my work schedule, I don’t anticipate having another opportunity to return to the JMT for several years. On the other hand, if we stay on the trail & it turns out to be something serious, I would never forgive myself. The most important thing is that we both stay safe & healthy, so we can have many more adventures in the outdoors and in life.

Basically neither of us knows what to do. We both want to keep going, no doubt, but we’re also both pretty worried. There aren’t really many viable exits between here & the end of the trail, 100 miles from here, so it feels rather like we have to decide now.

There’s no phone service here, and the ranch doesn’t have any phones, but they have a computer we can use ($10 for 15 minutes) so our current plan is to send an email to my dad and to Gadgets’s sister–our two resident nurses in the family–and see if they can offer any insight before the end of the day, when we have to decide if we’re staying or going.
Cross your fingers for us please, universe.