CHAPTER VIII
Granite Stairway to Yosemite

That horizon of high enchantment was visible through Mammoth Pass by the time we reached the popular resort communities located in the Mammoth Lakes Basin. There was no place to camp for the night, nor did we want to share one of the many lakes here with car campers, for if we pushed it, we could camp somewhere along the John Muir Trail that evening.

At a small resort store, while waiting for Bernice buying ice cream, we met our first dis-believer. A little old lady (abbreviated LOL in San Francisco, which is where this one was from) was compelled to ask where we had come from. When told, she stated, "I don't believe you." This was just a whisper of what was to come, but at this time I hugely appreciated her open skepticism, as it made us feel that we had indeed traveled many miles from the Mexican border.

We followed a rental stables private trail, then another popular dirt "freeway trail" with a multitude of day hikers puffing along. It seemed possible that we might be crowded out of meadows by hordes of fellow explorers, or turned back by a deep snowpack, so this time I wasn't promising that our problems would all disappear once back into the mountains. In fact I counseled, "Wait until we hit the Oregon border before letting out a cheer."

I was wrong. Crossing the broad 9,000 foot east-west pass brought us into a perfect wilderness. What a delight to be away from all sign of man improving nature. What a shame that we couldn't have traveled The John Muir Trail instead of force marching up the Owens Valley, for what we did follow to a meadow camp in the crater of a cinder cone was exactly as portrayed in the many Sierra Club publications that sang the praises of the first recreational wilderness trail system established in the country.

What made it even better was that we didn't have to share. Apparently no one else wanted to risk crossing over the snowpack. Further north the trail climbed the famed Donohue Pass, 12,000 feet high, which was so snow-clogged that the Forest Service stated that it would not be open this season. Since it was then the latter part of July, and we were crossing frozen drifts taller than a horse at a mere 9,000 feet—I believed.

By going west, then south, we hoped to cross the Granite Stairway to the other side of the range, and somehow turn north again into Yosemite National Park. We passed by the very famous Devil's Postpile National Monument, a cliff of columnar basalt that didn't impress me, for I had seen similar displays of the lava that had cooled in a polygonal shapes in the Columbia River Gorge that I enjoyed more without all the signs telling me to, "look and see."