Day 62: God Willing And The Creeks Don’t Rise

Date: June 10, 2017
Miles: Whitney Trail Mile .8 to 775.2 

“We’ve gone from melted snickers to frozen snickers. I don’t feel like there was ever an in-between.” ~ Strongback 

We slept in until 6 this morning to recover a bit from yesterday, then we packed up and headed out. The first ford of the day was Wallace Creek, which was cold! 

This was where I learned that the Altra boots I had purchased in Lone Pine were, in addition to being the opposite of waterproof, actually really good at keeping water soaked in to the cushy lining of the boot no matter what I tried to get it out. Likewise, the neoprene socks I thought I’d try for post-water crossings were only waterproof for two seconds, but they did do a good job of keeping my feet warm in the wet boots. 

Keeping with the Sierra theme, we spent more time hiking through more snow, and then group forded Wright creek, which was terrifying. I don’t have any pictures because we all went across in a line, linked arm in arm so no one would get swept away by the fast moving rapids. We all made it, the only casualty being John’s sunglasses. We caught our collective breath, dried out a bit and then slogged through a slush covered Bighorn Plateau until we hit Tyndall Creek. The creek was already a fast-moving river with walls of snow on either side, making it impossible to find good ingress and egress points for a while. We had to walk about a mile upriver until we found an intact snow bridge we could cross. From the looks of it and the upcoming heat wave, it won’t be there much longer.  

We camped on a dry patch of rocky ground just past the crossing and readied ourselves for the next day’s Forester Pass crossing by eating a lot and crashing. Should be exciting!