Day 6: Pocket Meadow to Ferry Pick Up-5 Miles

"Fishing Attempt #2"

Up early to catch the ferry

Up early at 5:30 am. Hiked down to the VVR ferry pick up, we easily made it there at 7:45 am hiking 3 miles an hour with easy downhill. Fished and swam in lake Edison until the ferry arrived at 9.

Nick and I waiting to board the ferry

The lake was packed with fish, problem was the biggest ones were only about 4 inches long and wouldn't bite. Trout eat mosquitos and bugs on the top of the water, so fly fishing is the ideal way to fish for them, not bait and hook. It was kind of fun to try to catch them, but relying on fish as a source of food would not be a good idea for us. Maybe somebody who knows what they are doing could make that work, but I'd rather carry my food and know that I can eat anytime anywhere than gamble on catching fish. Plus that would restrict you to camping next to lakes and streams, which wouldn't be impossible, but it would be a pain to hike all day and then have to catch your dinner. The ferry arrived and we rode it across the lake to the VVR resort. 

We spent the day fishing, eating, and hanging out with Chris and Deborah. I took a bath in the lake and washed my clothes in the bathroom sink. For lunch I had a double bacon cheeseburger. Delicious. On Saturdays at VVR they have a BBQ, so we decided to spend the night and bought a couple 6-packs to help kill time until dinner. One of our least favorite new people was Olive, one of the 3 people who worked at VVR. She was combative and annoying to everyone pretty much the whole time, but she can get away with it since she is best friends with the owner of VVR. After a few beers we stopped caring about anything she said or did. The highlight of the day was when Tom and Fred arrived at VVR on the 4pm ferry. Reuniting with them was great, we thought we wouldn't see them again. They both said they were doing well and loving the JMT. We stayed up kind of late sharing stories around a campfire. 

At 2am I was re-inflating my sleeping pad for the second time that night when I heard the first of many loud cracking noises. Every couple of seconds there was a loud CRACK. We figured out it was a bear tossing a bear canister around, so I got up and checked on our bear vaults. They were fine, but we heard people yelling to scare the bear off around 2:30am. I slept like garbage the rest of the night, being mauled by a bear was a childhood phobia of mine and I wasn't about to let that happen. We didn't take many pictures today, it would have interrupted our busy schedule of eating and doing nothing.