Category: Pacific Crest Trail

Date: June 21, 2017 
Miles: 1221.5 – 1247.2 

 Happy Hike Naked Day! Or Happy Solstice! Whichever you prefer! We were a bunch of big talkers before today, saying that we were going to participate in Hike Naked Day. All of us chickened out this morning. It turned out to be a good thing as the trail is really overgrown in this section and bushwhacking and climbing over one giant fallen tree after another could have had dire consequences.

 In addition, we could have made the one other hiker that we saw all day very uncomfortable. So instead we hiked through this really hot and sultry day fully clothed, creating the worst smells that I have yet to encounter from my body and my clothes (a pungent mix of wet dog and homelessness), and causing the Israeli among us to actually break a real sweat. I swore when I left the Sierras that I would never say that I missed the freezing temperatures, but I ALMOST did just that today. Luckily for me, we were all agreed that we should do the miles necessary to reach the Middle Fork of the Feather River so we could bathe ourselves before we try to get a hitch in to Quincy tomorrow. The cool water made a dent in our filth, but I still feel sorry for whomever picks us up. 

Date: June 20, 2017
Miles: 1207.4 – 1221.5 

We started the day on snow again, and over the miles we tried to keep to the trail but it was almost completely buried. 

Patches of forest meant going up and down mounds of snow or just going straight up hills. Coming down was more challenging, especially since we no longer had ice axes and crampons. There were several steeply angled hills that we had to traverse, where a fall would mean sliding fast into rocks or big tree wells. Cutting steps across the slopes took forever, especially for me. Matthew and Roi have longer legs than I do, and I had to cut two steps for every one of theirs. I fell many times, twice having to self arrest with my hands and feet. In one downhill stretch where we’d ordinarily follow switchbacks down a steep grade, we had to back down a steep snowfield on our hands, knees and feet until we reached rocks, scramble over a small waterfall, and cut steps into a snowbank in order to make any forward progress. 

I am terribly slow and awkward on snow, so I make the group’s progress that much more tedious. They’re good guys, though, and they check often to make sure I’m doing ok. The rest of the day consisted of more snow, blowdowns, stream crossings and route finding. 

A couple miles before we completely gave up for the day, we were passed by Breeze, the fastest hiker I’ve ever seen go past me. We talked to him for a bit and learned that he did the 700 miles from Campo to Kennedy Meadows in one month and has already finished the entire Sierra section. He remarked that it was the third hardest thing he’s ever done in his life, and that he almost died in a river crossing. Then he took off and was out of sight in a matter of seconds. After that, we decided to camp about a mile up the trail at the West branch of Nelson creek, and I washed my dirty, bruised and scratched up legs in the coldest water ever. 

A deer walked right past my tent and looked in as I was getting ready for bed. I’m not much for omens, but I will take it as a sign that the hiking tomorrow will be a little smoother. Because I can make up whatever signs I want. 

Date: June 19, 2017 
Miles: 1195.4 – 1207.4 

“This is freedom.” ~ Roi 

It’s not too often that I sleep past 6 am out here, so when I do – like this morning – it is glorious. The only place open for breakfast was a Resort down the road, so we ate there while we waited for the post office to open.

 I got my Gossamer Gear pack back in the mail today, and it felt like I got an old friend back. I also sent my bear can, crampons and ice axe home. My pack feels like a daypack now! Around noon, Roi, Matthew and I hitched a ride to the trailhead and started the 8 mile climb into the Sierra Buttes. It was steep and the weather was hot and humid.  After a few minutes, my cold shower felt like a very distant memory. 

 Just after the climb, however, the landscape changed and we ran in to more snow. Roi is really ready to be out of it…he slid into a tree well and broke a hiking pole. 

We caught up with Cougar Bait and another hiker who told us that they were so tired of running in to snow again that they were going to skip up to Chester.  They also warned us of a bear in the area…good thing we sent our bear cans home. With the possibility of losing our food bags to a hungry bear in the back of our minds, we ate dinner far away from our camp, and then fell asleep overlooking Deer Lake and listening for animal footsteps in the woods. 

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!