We entered Red's around 11am, ate burgers and promptly caught the shuttle into Mammoth. Ran into Terence and Philip on the shuttle and ate bbq for dinner. It was time to hike our separate ways, again, now that Far Out was a Sierra mountain pass master, so I spent 7/3 wandering Mammoth by myself, acquiring a tent, a new, much smaller, pair of pants, and resupply both for the stretch to Tuolumne Meadows.and from it, sending myself a priority mail package. On the shuttle back to Red's, I met two sisters, Sunshine and Trailbird, who were hiking parts of the JMT. They'd lost the trail somehow, and had been very relieved to have come off a side trail right at the Agnew Meadows shuttle stop. We were friends right away, sat talking and eating at the Red's store, then decided to share a backpacker space at the campground. Next to us were Seahawk, Bumblebee and Any Minute Now, whom I'd been running into for months and had never conversed with

Next morning, Seahawk, Bee and Any Minute headed to the store for coffee before the trail, and I walked to nearby Devil's Postpile with the sisters. This crazy rock formation, caused by temperature-specific joint fracturing, is composed of hexagonal "posts." At the top of the pile, they're smoothed by glacial movement, giving them the appearance of a tiled floor.

Around noon, after a nice breakfast to the waiter's surprising choice of a Shane McGowan and the Popes album, I departed my new friends and made an effort to find the damned northbound trail. Like many other annoyed hikers, I only succeeded after over an hour of frustrated searching in the heat. A side trail at an extreme angle, the PCT from Red's is marked only by a subtle rock cairn.