Day 1:
$15/week to park at Mono Village. Got on the trail about 11 AM and made our way up to Crown Lake on the fairly pleasantly graded trail. Camped at the southwestern most site at the lake which was the only thing available. Scenic, but poor lake access as the site to the north blocks the easy access.
Day 2:
Passed a decent looking but exposed camp at the junction above Crown Lake, and headed for the slog over Mule and Burro Passes. Noticed a bit of camping by the creek at the bottom of the hole between the passes, but it's very meh down there. Fill water in Piute Creek if necessary as both passes are quite dry. Burro does have the couple lakes/tarns but they'd take some time to get to with easy x-country travel. Continued down Matterhorn Canyon where the creek is running well and found a big debris flow from Quarry Peak centered about where the trail crosses 9050 ft. The trail is gone (but easy to pass) for maybe 1/4 mi, and another 1/4 to 1/2 mi of random debris. Based on plant growth it seems to have happened earlier this summer. A couple pieces of the 1944 P-70B airplane crash have come down, and Matterhorn Creek is full of silt on the banks (with a bit suspended) all the way down from here. Recommend filling water above to save your filter a bit. Camped at a fairly nice camp with a great granite couch at the creek crossing at 8700 ft.
Day 3:
Kept seeing random small debris flows coming off the ridges until at least when we turned up Wilson Creek. The water at the lower two crossings of Wilson Creek is probably drinkable, but iron contaminated. It's fine toward the upper end and where the trail crosses the creek as it turns west toward Benson Pass. This is the last water until Smedberg Lake; the entire west side of Benson Pass down to the lake is dry. Had a really nice camp on the southwest shore of Smedberg Lake.
Day 4:
Left early for a long day. Stopped for breakfast along the odd little connecter on the bottom of the "U" in the PCT, and thought we saw signs of switchbacks along the Smedberg outlet. They're more visible in person than in the image. The western shore of Smedberg also vaguely reminded me of an old trail. Looked at some old USGS topos when we got home and sure enough the pre-PCT trail used to go down the outlet as of ~1920, and the currently alignment is shown by the 1950s. The original alignment didn't have the connector in the "U" in the PCT. The Rodgers Lake trail went to Smedberg, and the western trail from Rodgers Meadow went to Benson Lake. The since-abandoned trail connected Smedberg and Benson. Sure seemed like a nicer route than the current steep detour.
Then we continued over Seavey Pass, along the nice lakes/tarns, and up through Kerrick Meadow. There're surprisingly few disturbed camping areas and flat places for tents along Rancheria Creek (which was running fairly well thankfully). It seems like most people must camp out in the gravel patches in the middle of the canyon. We thought the winds would be just as bad at Arndt Lake so after a fair amount of looking found a small protected site above the trail on the west side right at 9200 ft, just west of that little blob in the creek on maps.
Day 5:
Quick climb up the rest of scenic Kerrick Meadow, past Peeler Lake, and out. Some of the camps at Peeler closest the lake are now signed closed, so you're mostly limited to a couple smaller sides at the northwest corner and a bit open site along the north shore.
Comments:
This isn't the Inyo, where we've done most of our previous longer distance backpacking. I had read some reports indicating the various passes are harder than their stats would indicate, and it's very true. These trails are quite steep, enough that it makes a noticeable impact on the effort required and travel time.