~Friday, August 19th ~
Hungry again! Breakfast is served at 7:30am at the HSCs today's breakfast consisted of: grits, sausage, omelet with spinach and onion, chocolate chip pancakes, and fresh fruit.
Before we hiked to our next HSC, we decided to take a 3 mile hike to see Vogelsang Lake and Vogelsang Pass. A 3 mile RT, 650 ft elevation gain (then loss).
Wildflowers along the way.
Vogelsang Lake
Views to the other side from the Pass. We realized later that we could have taken this route to our next destination, but that's the natural consequence of not hiking with a map - three extra miles and two extra hours. ;-)
So we're heading to Merced Lake HSC - 7.6 miles - not bad. However it was a 2,950 ft elevation loss (which can be harder than a gain) and it was mostly all downhill......
Okay, nice start.
Always nice to walk along water.
You can't tell from this photo, but this section had nicer meadows than the hike to Vogelsang.
Beautiful!!
We followed Fletcher Creek for miles and it was quite breath-taking.
Stopped here for lunch.
Notice the sky is no longer blue. The clouds came in and we were glad - it was getting quite hot.
This is where the "Stairwell from Hell" (as named by the employees) began. Over two miles downhill on the shittiest rocks you've ever walked upon. They weren't flat and nice like steps. No, they were sharp and small and didn't stop!
And it was towards the end of a 10 mile day (remember, we did a 3-mile hike that morning).....
Okay, so there were still some cool views.....
Just as surprised as we were the day before that we got to Vogelsang so quickly, we were equally shocked that there were still almost 2-miles to go at this point!
Still nice views......
Finally the miles of sharp rock steps were done....but alas, still nearly a mile to go! Normally not a big deal, but we were tired and our feet sore at this point.
Getting closer!
Merced High Sierra Camp!! Made it!! :-) (As long as we were here by dinner, 6:30pm, we were good!)
Dinner menu - After showers (yes, some of the HSCs have hot showers), we feasted on awesome vegetable soup, a great Greek salad (in fact, Merced had the best soups and salads of the all the HSCs in our opinion), pineapple chicken, polenta with red peppers (very good), fresh roasted variety of vegetables (awesome), and chocolate chip cookies for dessert.
So here's a good place for this story ~As mentioned, we sometimes re-met the same people - two of whom are Denise and Jackie. Suzanne met Denise the day before at Vogelsang as each were taking care of their morning beauty regiment. For Suzanne, it was basically chapstick (with SPF - fancy!). Denise was putting on an entire face of make-up......including false eyelashes......to hike! We had breakfast with them earlier today and enjoyed them very much. We also found out that Denise paid to have the mules (there are mule rides to the HSCs as well) bring a bottle of wine each night to the camp so they could enjoy wine with their dinner. Impressive. She chose a white the first night, knowing it would keep cold, and reds for the rest of her meals. :-) We also learned through Jackie that Denise had a different outfit (with coordinating lipstick) for each day. If you haven't noticed already, we each have only two shirts. :-)
The Merced High Sierra Camp!!
This is Brock - our roommate for Night #2. He was super nice (from Tennessee), but snored! He told us to wake him if his snoring kept us up - Suzanne can sleep through anything, but Brad woke him up once and asked him to rollover! :-)
The interior of Cabin #6.
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