Day 18: Evolution (mile 123/211)

The sound of flinty hailstones hitting the tent a couple of inches above my face woke me up. I opted to stay warm in my sleeping bag until the lazy get-up hour of around 08:30. While sitting on a fallen tree fixing my feet (still in remarkably good nick compared to the snowglobe of lost toenails and compound blisters I’d anticipated), a spindly doe crashed through the forest. “Do your thing, girl – I won’t hurt you”, I announced. I love seeing the different fauna out here, but absolutely none of the creatures want to be friends with me. 

Extremities filed, lubed and socked, I started walking through the sometimes-vertiginous canyon. This valley is a lot greener and wetter than those I’ve blundered through from the north. I like seeing the flora, too. Cloudy and chill, I wished – not for the first time – for a puffy jacket like I see on … all the other hikers out here. A bridge over the river was out, so I Crash-Bandicooted across a rickety temp bridge daubed “1 Person At A Time” on the bolted-together planks. 

It was a day of climbing – sometimes switchbacked, sometimes gradual. I put my flipflops on to ford a river, keen to preserve my precious dry (though filthy) Darn Toughs. I was hungry a lot today. I saw a doe leading two fawns up towards Evolution Lake. Another beautiful high-elevation mouse with big round ears, no tail, chinchilla-dappled body and blonde chest – I said “hey cutie” and it scuttled off into the rocks. 

The end-of-day haul up to Evolution Lake was tired and cold and hungry, but several people had told me it was their favourite spot on the whole JMT, so I was looking forward. All the peaks round here are named for biologists. It’s all incredibly daunting scenery. I ran into my VVR shuttle buddy and her mom; they showed me a rocky campsite up the hill from the lake, moved their bear canisters away. The flat patch was a little smaller than my tent, but with some incursion and rock-anchoring under bushes, I got the ‘mid pitched.