Month: July 2017

Date: June 17, 2017
Miles: 1168.5 – 1184.7 

I never get tired of waking up to a sunrise on the top of a mountain.  I am working on not getting tired of snow. 

 Hiking started with the sun cups again, and the slush that made every step twice as difficult as it should have been, but it was a manageable kind of tough going. 

I kept trying to boot ski down the slopes like Matthew and Roi do so successfully (I’ve been trying for DAYS), and I kept landing on my ass (as I’ve been doing for DAYS).  Between the falling and glissading in running shorts, I’m pretty sore and scratched up and I’ve left a good bit of my butt in the mountains. Mercifully, the snow ended around mile 1180. I have never been so happy to see bare trail and I have sworn that I will never complain about it again (ha! I’m sure I will). 

We had a much, much easier walk from then on.  Toward the end of the day, we stopped at Pass Creek and took a quick bath in the icy water, which was a welcome relief from the ongoing heat. 

We then strolled the last mile to a nice flat campground and had dinner with Orca, or rather, we ate more of Orca’s gourmet food because it’s way better than ours, before the bugs drove us all to our respective tents for the night. 

Date: June 16, 2017
Miles: 1157 – 1168.5

Guess what we found in Truckee??  

Right away from our starting point at I-80 we were in snow and it lasted all day. The rising temperatures in the area turned it all into a giant slushee, which made it hard to get a lot of miles in, but didn’t make it impassable by any means.

We stopped at the Peter Grubb ski hut for lunch, and learned that the cabin was built by the Sierra club in memory of Peter Grubb, a traveler and ski enthusiast who died in 1937 at the age of 18.  It was a great little place to take a break. 

After lunch we did some climbing and navigated up and down and around the big mounds of snow that accumulate in the forested parts of the trail until we reached a campsite, the only part of which that wasn’t covered by snow was the bridge over the adjacent river. 

At that point, Roi, Matthew and I decided to to get a few more miles in so we said goodbye to John, who planned to sleep on the bridge.  We told him to pass our farewell on to Connor and Katie, who were behind us a little ways because Katie wasn’t feeling very well.  It felt somewhat that we were saying adios for good, but I knew that we would see them again so I refused to get sad about it. 

We climbed uphill for a few more miles until we found a campsite with some dry patches in it. A hiker from Wales that we had met earlier in the day, Orca, camped with us and gave us the rest of his dinner. It was some fancy dehydrated mango chili from a resupply company, which made our ramen and instant potatoes look like pathetic excuses for nourishment. Which they actually are, but we’re cheap.  My stomach was happier than usual by the time I hit the hay, and I fell asleep with the image of a lovely sunset behind my closed eyes. 

Date:  June 13-15, 2017
Miles: A 208 mile hitch from Bishop to Truckee, CA

It was nice to spend a couple days in Bishop doing anything but hiking. We ate a lot, hung out in gear shops (one of the owners showed me and Matthew pictures of his thru-hike in the 70s…giant external frame packs and blue jeans!  Those guys were hard core!), and saw Roi’s favorite Israeli actress play Wonder Woman in the new movie. 

Over a pancake breakfast, we all discussed the pros and cons of going back in to the sierras. The consensus we came to was that we were all capable of continuing on, but that we did not want to spend a month mountaineering, encountering rivers that might not be fordable, and taking unknown chances when we could possibly come back in the fall and see the glory of the Sierra without having to watch our feet navigate the sun cups all day. That last point was my perspective, anyway.  It also seemed that we would not be able to finish the whole trail if we tried to finish the Sierra section at 10 miles a day. 

So at the suggestion of a park ranger and John, we decided to hitch north to John’s friend’s place in Truckee and hike from there. Amazingly, Matthew and I (definitely with the help of the whole gang) got a hitch all the way from Bishop to a campground in Truckee.  John eventually joined us, and his friend Joey picked us up the next morning. Eventually, Roi, Connor and Katie joined us from their trip to Reno and we all enjoyed a day in Truckee, which is a really cute town. 

A big thank you to Joey and Sophie for hosting us at their house and showing us around town. You guys are amazing!!

Date: June 12, 2017
Miles: 787 – 789.1 plus Kearsarge Pass to the Onion Valley campground

I woke up a couple times during the night to a soft pattering noise on the rain fly to my tent. I reached my hand up to push the tent roof upward a bit and snow slid in all directions to the ground. When I got out of my tent this morning, everything was covered by a couple inches of white. 

It was beautiful, and cold, and it filled in the footsteps ahead of us making navigation a little more challenging.  We made it up and over Kearsarge Pass, however, and started the looooong descent down to the Onion Valley Campground.  

There were several other hikers who had already been waiting around at the campground because it is a long way from Independence and getting a ride in to town was tough.  After at least an hour we snagged a ride with Santa’s Little Helper, whom we met at the Bird Springs Pass water cache, and who had now rented a van to shuttle hikers back and forth from the trailhead to Independence and on to Bishop.  He dropped us off in Independence, which basically consists of a minit mart and a French restaurant, and then came back a little bit later to drive us in to Bishop to resupply.  We ate some decent Mexican food (again!), then we packed in to a hotel room. Tomorrow we’ll figure out whether to head back in to the Sierra or to skip north.