Author: Jennifer Johnson

Date: June 18, 2017 
Miles: 1184.7 – 1195.4 

Pollen coated my tent and everything in it this morning with a fine, staticky yellow dust.  While I was cleaning it off of my pack, I discovered that a spider had made a good sized home inside of the brain pocket, who knows how long ago. He pooped on me when I made him relocate. Oh nature…I totally get why we invented houses. 

I had the breakfast of champions after I got everything packed up – a giant honey bun and coffee flavored with brownie mix. Champions with diabetes and high cholesterol, perhaps, but champions nonetheless.  I walk so fast after I have this combo. About as fast as my heart beats. 

 The walking today made my feet so happy. The trail was relatively flat and cushioned with scented pine needles, shade trees were plentiful and the rivers had bridges for crossing.  

We took a side trail in to Sierra City and the closer we got to town, the higher the temperature went. Sierra City is a cute little town just a few blocks long.  We stopped at the Red Moose Cafe for lunch and chatted with the owner for a while. He was really friendly, offering us little bottles of shampoo and soap for the public shower, which was freezing cold…but free!

We resupplied at the super expensive store and hung out on the porch there with other hikers like Orca and a guy named Cougar Bait so that we could use the wifi and pass the time. 

Katie and Connor caught up with us there later in the day and we all camped behind the local Lutheran church, which offered a free place to tent.  Small towns like these along the trail have been so amazingly accommodating…I have been grateful for their generosity. 

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. 

Date: June 11, 2017
Miles: 775.2 – 787 

“We signed up for this.” ~ Shortcut

The last three days I’ve experienced some of the most difficult, exhilarating, and nerve-racking moments that I can remember having in a long while, with the summiting of Mt. Whitney (the tallest mountain in the lower 48), fording the rapids of White Creek, miles of snow travel, and today’s crossing of Forester Pass, which is the highest point on the PCT at 13,200 feet. 

We left camp at 4 am and made our way across nearly 5 miles of frozen sun cups until we reached a point below the Pass at which we had to climb a steep wall of snow (the trail switchbacks were buried somewhere underneath) and then step our way across a ledge cut in to the cornice near the top of the pass. One misstep on the ledge could have meant a long slide down the icy chute. I was nervous for John since he lost one of his microspikes somewhere on the trail yesterday and so was climbing with just the one he had left. I was also nervous for myself since I have a healthy fear of heights. My legs were shaking pretty badly by the time I crossed to the other side and I couldn’t stop breathing hard for a few minutes. It was amazing. 

After the pass, we descended into Kings Canyon National Park and walked in between the Kearsarge Pinnacles and a raging Bubbs Creek. The sights of the walls of rock shooting up on either side of us and the water cascading rapidly over smooth slabs and waterfall chutes was what I pictured in my mind when I thought about going through the Sierras. The snow has added an exhausting element to that image…I would like to come back when the trail is clear so I can really experience this place without having to give it so much energy. 

We reached Vidette Meadow (more of a swamp at this time of year) and decided to stop and camp since we didn’t like the look of some gray clouds building to the west of us and we didn’t want to do the following 1000 foot climb and be stuck in a snowstorm. Connor got a fire going and we were able to dry out our shoes for the first time in days. The wind picked up and we all retreated to our tents at about 5:30 pm to escape the cold. I didn’t mind…it gave me a little time to myself to actually read a little before my sore body and falling eyelids decided it was time for sleep. 

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!

Date: June 9, 2017
Miles: Guitar Lake to summit of Mt. Whitney, then back to mile .8 on Mt. Whitney Trail. 

* Warning – there is one definitely NSFW pic in this post. But it’s funny. *

I slept horribly last night. I don’t know if it was the anticipation of the Mt. Whitney climb today or the elevation. I should have slept well…I was in the most comfortable, warm spot in my quilt and I was exhausted from yesterday’s hike. But I tossed and turned until 3 am, when I got up and got ready to leave camp at 4. Despite not sleeping, though, I felt good.

 The first couple hours of the hike was on consolidated snow under a full moon. 

The rest of the climb was a temperate grade, with some scrambling and a couple snow patches, up to a very windy summit at 14,505 feet.  

We stayed on the summit long enough for Roi and Connor to have their picture taken triumphantly au natural and then we quickly headed back down the mountain to get out of the constant wind. 

We had nap time at camp, then packed up and headed a few miles toward the PCT to camp near the creek by the Crabtree Meadow Ranger station.  

Katie finally got the trail name Shortcut because of her affinity for cutting switchbacks and for finding a more straightforward way of getting from point A to B. As we rehydrated our dinners, we talked about all of the high fat foods with which we could try to put some weight on our bones again…honey buns with butter on them came out as a clear favorite and we all swore we would fill our bear cans with those the next time we resupplied. Food is a frequent topic of conversation, especially this week when we’re all burning so many more calories and feeling hunger pangs most of the day. 

We all went to bed at 6:45 pm to the sound of a helicopter circling through the Meadow several times, hoping it was a training exercise and not a search and rescue.  (Note: We heard a few days later that the helicopter was there to pick up our friend Gummies who developed pulmonary edema from the altitude. He has since recovered, for which I am grateful. It’s also a good example of why hikers should carry locator beacons like the Spot or the InReach…it’s a good thing he did!) 

Date: June 8, 2017
Miles: 760.5 – 5 miles before Mt. Whitney on Mt. Whitney trail. 

This morning started with a big climb over Guyot Pass and…surprise…more snow! We unexpectedly found Orange, John and Gringo at the junction to Mt. Whitney and they hiked out with us from that point. I was excited to get to our first actual in-the-creek crossing at Whitney Creek, which ended up being bracingly cold but uneventful. 

We headed up the John Muir Trail to Guitar Lake in slushy snow. I slipped and slid all over the place, and was exhausted by the time we found a place to camp up the shore from the lake. 

Gringo let us know that he was leaving for Vegas and Orange said that he was going to spend a few days in Independence waiting for us to finish the next few days and join him there. At that point, I decided that I would take the next couple days to decide whether I’m going to finish the Sierras or skip ahead. It is beautiful out here in the snow, but I would love to be able to enjoy the scenery without constantly staring at my feet so I can stay upright through the suncups or sliding around in the slush.

At the end of the day, I found a sweet little ledge on which to set up my tent, and we all made plans to leave at 4 am the next morning for a Mt. Whitney summit.  Exciting!

Date: June 7, 2017
Miles: 750.9 – 760.5 

I cowboy camped last night and when I woke up, my quilt was completely frosted over. I was toasty warm though, and it felt pretty awesome to think that I slept outside at 11,000 feet.  

We all packed up and headed back to the trail, working our way down mounds of snow, crossing into Sequoia National Park and passing through the Siberian Outpost to Rock Creek. We didn’t make much mileage, but it was tiring nonetheless. Not only is it physically draining to walk through snow all day, but it can be mentally tough for a hiker who is used to making 20-30 miles a day to suddenly be held to 10-15 miles. They’re like greyhounds being held at the race gate. 

I learned a new skill today…boot skiing. I’m pretty awful at it. Most of the time I end up on my ass.  I’m sure I’m going to get more practice than I can handle out here. 

We reached camp early in the day, but we didn’t want to go on because of the huge climb out of the creek with no campsites located within a reasonable distance. So I took some extra time to sit alone by the creek soaking up sun and thinking about home. I’ve been feeling lonely and homesick since Tim left and have had the thought that I could go home and still feel like I’ve accomplished something without finishing the trail.  I read some of my Pacific Crest Trials book to try to get a different perspective, and reviewed my list of reasons for doing this and that helped relieve my trail blues a little.  I went to bed feeling more optimistic and decided that I will give the trail one more week and see how I feel then.