Vermilion Valley Resort

I have been coming to the VVR every summer for almost 10 years. I stay in the nearby campground for a week or two, and go down to the resort for dinner, showers, ice and miscellanies from the store. For me it is like a home away from home. The owners, Jim and Vickie, do an exemplary job running the place, a seriously complicated operation off the grid in the middle of nowhere. It is clearly a labor of love.
They provide a welcoming oasis of civilization for JMT and PCT thru hikers, including a free place to camp, a free beverage, and a supportive hospitality. The place is usually teeming with an ever changing community of hikers.
The food is not gourmet, but is good and substantial. Milkshakes and homemade pie supplement the main course offerings. On Saturdays they do BBQ from an outdoor grill which is a delicious treat. The wait staff I have found to be friendly but at times a bit overwhelmed when it gets busy. Some do not have a lot of experience, which makes sense considering these are seasonal jobs hours away from civilization. At times a bit of waving is needed to get their attention. No big deal.
The Vermillion Valley usually contains a man made reservoir, but the water is not important to me. It is a beautiful piece of wilderness, and there are many places to hike in the area, which is what I like to do.
But make no mistake. I come for the VVR. If it was not there, or was less attractively maintained and run, I would go elsewhere. I no longer can backpack, so this is the highlight of my summer, and I look forward to it all year long.
Thank you, Jim and Vickie, for making the VVR a great place to visit.

I have to update my review because VVR surely redeemed themselves. They had closed for the season by the time I had arrived and were in the process of closing things down I had still planned on meeting my pick up here leaving the John Muir Trail. I hiked in and was greeted by a friendly fella who had offered to open the store for me so I can resupply or just grab some stuff while I waited. I had nothing but the best customer service here. The rude woman who I had pervasively wrote about was not there (thank goodness) and I had nothing but happy people here that I was engaged with. I am going to finish JMT next year and will start at VVR continuing on. I am looking forward to trying out there food from the restaurant that I have read about and heard from others on JMT/​PCT talk about as being great.

We were here last year on our 2014 JMT thru hike. It was great to eat a hot cooked meal and clean up. It was fun last year but a lady at the counter, Julia was rude. She was only there for a little. This year I brought my daughter. I told her how much fun our group had last year. She was excited. When we got there Julia was at the counter and already seemed irritated. I ignored it and we went on our way and ate had a good night. That next night I kept waiting and waiting for dinner check. My daughter finally got hers and went to go pay it. Julie was at the counter. When my daughter went up there Julia started complaining the people weren’t getting their checks but that wasn’t us Julia started yelling complaining and saying that people for not paying their bill. My daughter was trying to be calm with her letting her know she just want to pay hers. But Julia went on saying people were complaining about us being loud. We told her all she do is tell us we were only singing. Then she just kept saying a bunch of stuff we didn’t understand. It was crazy. After that is became a yelling match and I had to get Julie away from my daughter. As far as I’m concerned vvr is off my list. But one of the staff later I was to find out that Julia was mad at one of the other staff members and basically was taken out on us I will never return back to vvr. Should not have staff that unstable working at your campground. So sad. Wish Jim, owner, was there. It might not of happened. Giving one star is too much.

I just received a call from my husband who is hiking the PCT. He said that this resort was horrible. He went to breakfast with another hiker and they received terrible service. They asked for coffee multiple times but never received it yet were billed for it. When they mentioned this to their server they were given a bunch of attitude. My husband asked if he could order more breakfast and the server copped even more attitude and informed my husband that other people would like to sit and eat too. I can’t even believe that anyone would be that rude. He says that he would never recommend another hiker stop here.
My husband has been hiking for nearly 7 weeks now. He’s away from friends and family, he’s busting his butt every day on the trail. The very least they could do is serve hikers coffee without attitude.
If they would would prefer to not have the business of the hiking community, perhaps they shouldn’t advertise as a resupply station.

My daughter and I stopped while through hiking the JMT July of this year.
There was no TP in any of the toilets.
The shower didn’t work.
The was little food to purchase for resupply.
And the woman working behind the counter had to be the rudest person I’ve met in the last 10 years.
If you’re through hiking the JMT I suggest Muir Trail Ranch instead of this place. It will be closer to the JMT and it would be impossible for the service to be worst than this place.

While thru hiking the JMT I heard about this place while on the trail. They basically described this place as «Disneyland in the middle of nowhere». While this place is most definitely not Disneyland, it’s a godsend if you have been on the trail for a few days.
Unfortunately when I was on the Trail in Mid-​July, lake Edison seemed to be nearly dried up. There is a boat service to take you to the resort (look for the flag), but it costs a few bucks, so we decided to do the 6 mile hike (this was supposed to be a zero day)
They have about 20+ different bottled beers available. First one is on the house. If you’re short on cash you can work for beer and food (a few hours of dish washing or other misc. chores).
I had a breakfast burrito when I arrived. The potatoes were a little undercooked, but it was still better than dehydrated meals and trail mix. A meal will cost you $ 10−20+
Free campsite is an awesome perk. You will want to run a tab while you are there (to eliminate additional credit card fees/​swipe) and it is easy to forget you’re still paying for everything that you get from the store.
Best part of this place is the comradery you will experience with all the hikes that are stopping by. There is a great outdoor patio area with bar stools and tables to socialize and they light a fire at night.
While on the trail this is a luxury. Only reason this doesn’t get 5 stars is because the food was very expensive. I completely understand the pricing though because they are located in the middle of nowhere and have to drive all supplies in as they are hours from the nearest major town.
Happy trails!
PS — no cell service
TLDR; Awesome place in the middle of nowhere. Come here to socialize on the trail.

Beautiful area, but the staff need to get out of the woods more often. This is absolutely the rudest place we’ve ever visited in our outback travels. Might be nice for backpackers to resupply, but we saw hikers being treated badly also, so who knows.
My advice: go see this area! It is worth the drive if you love the outdoors. Just bring everything you need and DON“T rely on VVR for anything but a bad attitude.

I visited this place in June of 2012 on the fifth day of my John Muir hike. The only negative thing I can say about this place is that it is not perfect.
To the whiners– try to imagine the difficulties and challenges of maintaining and running a business in such a remote location. To provide the services that they do in such a remote location is impressive. The pricing is reasonable to begin with, but becomes even more so when you take the remote location in to account.
Please do not complain about the low water levels. The owners of this business have nothing to do with the lack of rain or the decision to release water from Lake Edison. The water level of Lake Edison has nothing to do with the wonderful services provided by the employees at VVR.

JMT Southbound Through Hiker
My buddy and I resupplied here on our JMT hike.
It was nice to take a break, shower, call home, resupply, have some good food and hang out. They work on the honor policy which seems to work really well and you pay for everything at the end. They will charge you a $ 4 credit card fee for the transaction … to avoid this fee (transaction fees are a pet peeve of mine), bring a check with you or send one in your resupply.
The store really has it all — really well stocked … food, ice cream, beer, hiking supplies/​food, stove gas, batteries, postcards, duct tape by the foot, q-​tips … you name it, they pretty much have it. They also have two resupply barrels you can get some food from — WHICH I found a dollar bill in.
The food is a bit pricy but it is REAL good. My buddy and I both ordered the steak dinner and his cut was twice the size of mine. I did show the waitress and she had the cooks grill me another steak to go along with the first one.
Expect to lay down about $ 60-​$ 100 if you resupply /​take the ferry /​eat food /​shower and buy a few things.
Free Camping & 1 Free Beer for thru hikers
$ 6 Showers (w/​Towel)
$ 6 Laundry
$ 2-​$ 4 beers
$ 15 — $ 20 Good Dinner
$ 2/​min to call home
IMHO — if your a south bounder … resupply @ MTR b/​c its not worth carrying the food over Bear Ridge and Seldom Pass. You can resupply for the days from VVR to MTR by using the hiker barrels /​buying food at the store.
Overall, great stop for the JMTer who has some time to kill and really needs a beer.

I experienced VVR while staying for a week at the Vermilion Valley Campground, next door (a very lovely campground by the way). Overall I was really impressed with all the attention to detail at this place. The little store is restocked at least once a week (the owners drive all the way to Fresno to do so, as I understand it), and carries things that backpackers might appreciate, like compasses, plastic bags priced by each one, freeze-​dried food, etc. They also carry beer and wine and various groceries handy if you happen to be car-​camping as we were. The food in the restaurant is very good quality especially if you consider that you are more or less in the middle of nowhere. When we ate dinner there, I had grilled snapper with risotto and «al dente» vegetables with a glass of chardonnay and my husband had Thai beef and shrimp with wild rice and vegetables with a microbrew (they have a great selection of interesting beers). We had lunch there too one day and found it to be very tasty and again high quality especially given the isolation of the location. You can sit inside or outside on their covered patio, where dogs are welcome (we brought ours and she loved every minute of it).
They also offer showers for six bucks, and for that price they also provide soap and a clean towel. There are two bathrooms available for this purpose, and we were told a new shower facility is planned for next year (would have been this year, but this year being a slow year, I guess revenues weren’t what they had hoped… more on this later). They also had a power strip in the restaurant patio area for hikers to charge up any phones or whatever, and there’s a TV there too (they had it tuned to the Olympics when we were there having dinner).
Many of the people you’ll see here are PCT/​JMT through-​hikers, and it’s always interesting to talk to these folks and hear their stories. They stop in here to pick up their resupply packages, and often we observed groups of them sitting around a table, deciding what items would make the cut for them to carry for the next leg of their journey. Things they don’t take with them go into a hiker «pod» that other hikers are welcome to dip into. (I cannot imagine why the reviewer who had «heard» that the resort was re-​selling this stuff would think or write such a thing, especially as it seems they were going on hearsay… but I digress).
The only things that were less than great were two: first, the place could be a bit cleaner (the table we sat down at for dinner needed a good wipe to clear off from the previous occupants, and the bathrooms, which admittedly get a lot of use, could also be a bit cleaner — though really, the possibility of having a nice hot shower at all way up in the middle of nowhere is pretty great, so I didn’t mind this the way I would have in a «regular» hotel or motel).
Secondly, the level of the lake (in fact a reservoir) was so low when we arrived that the views from the campground and resort were mostly of dry lake bed. Obviously the management of this level is the prerogative of the reservoir’s owner/​managers (Southern California Edison? We spoke to someone with some knowledge of this and it seems complicated), but it would have been nice to know ahead of time that this is what we would find. (There is a sign in the store saying, «Don’t complain about the level of the lake if you are still watering your lawn». Fair enough, and even kinda humorous… but a couple of days before we left to go up there, I did not see any indication about this on the resort’s website.)
Anyway, overall I thought the vibe of this place was great, the people there helpful, friendly and interesting, and incidentally preferred it over the outwardly lovely but ultimately disappointing Mono Hot Springs a few miles away on Kaiser Pass Road. I would go there again and would recommend it highly, especially if the lake is full.

I’ve been here twice, now. Once as a backpacker for resupply and once to take my family out on Edison Lake and show them some of the beautiful places I’ve been. Both times I had a bad experience. This place provides hiker services that are nice: resupply, showers, phones, laundry, hot food and the first beer free to thru-​hikers. They also have boat rentals available, which we used the last time. Both times, the attitude of the staff was deplorable. As a hiker, I was treated with sarcasm any time I asked a question, and if I asked for any kind of service (like the use of the phone, which is a service they offer on their website), I was treated as if I was a needy prima donna (i.e. «Oh, do you wanna call your mommy?» That is verbatim). I’m a camper, for God’s sake, I’m pretty self-​sufficient. The second time, my family and I rented a boat for a half-​day and were told to go to the boat ramp a mile down the road, and someone would meet us. Apparently the boats were docked on a sandbar halfway between the resort and the ramp, but no one told us and none of the four employees on ATVs that passed us stopped to help when we waved. We waited an hour before I hiked back to the resort to get someone. The other couple that was waiting for a boat gave up. I hope they got a refund. That day, they were shutting down the ferry service due to low lake levels. When we asked what would happen to all the hikers that depend on the ferry for resupply, the response was «They can hike around. It’s only five miles». Spoken like someone who has never backpacked and couldn’t care less. That is my impression of VVR. Full of people who couldn’t care less. Avoid it if you can.

This place is great. Where else will you find a good meal and warm accommodations in the backcountry of the Sierra. They have a store and a restaurant that has just about everything you could need when you are hiking, fishing or backpacking.
As for the idea that they take things out of hiker’s resupply packages and sell them in the store. Yes, that is true, BUT, it’s not as shady as you think. When a hiker changes their plan or just never ever shows up to claim their resupply, VVR will call the hiker and ask if the hiker wants their package shipped back to them. If they don’t want to pay for the cost to reship a heavy package, then whatever usable contents of the resupply package will be resold in the store to make up for the cost of retrieving the package at the post office and all the other incidentals that occur when VVR staff have to drive 2 hours to the nearest post office. OKAY, hope that clears it up.
Jim, the owner does a great job of making everyone feel at home and helping take care of the thru hikers.