My friend and I hiked the Rae Lakes Loop 7/27-7/29. We drove up Sunday July 26 and got to Road's End ranger station about 11:30am from L.A. We were the first in line for walk up permits and around 12:15 there were 2 more groups behind us. The ranger cleared up something about the walk ups I wasn't sure about. There are 5 walk up permits set aside for each day. It means that there are permits for 5 people total. For instance, 5 permits for 5 solo hikers or 1 permit for 5 hikers or any iteration of that. I'm assuming all the permits for the next day were handed out right after us. After getting our permit at 1pm we got a car camping spot a few miles away at Moraine. $18/night. First come, first serve. There were at least 50 sites available. We got to the trailhead at 7am the next day. We really lucked out with the weather the entire trip. Perfect! Upper 70's to mid 80's during the day, clear and upper 30's/low 40's at night. As we hiked through Lower Paradise I probably encountered about 5 mosquitoes total. They were pretty much non-existant. Lower Paradise:-) At Woods Creek we met a family hiking the JMT with a boy that looked to be about 12. That was really cool.
