The "Hard" Section

The last few blog entries have felt a bit rushed, especially the last one. This one is going to be a bit longer as I try and hit the points I missed and generally make up for previous omissions. For those who are just wondering where I am on the trail, I am now at Mammoth Lakes, mile 906.6.

First off, I forgot to include a few statistics I had compiled in Kennedy Meadows. The stats are about my hike from Mexico to Kennedy Meadows. They are the following:

Days - 41
Trail Miles - 702.2
Zeros taken - 2
Average mpd (miles per day) w/ zeros - 17.1
Average mpd w/o zeros - 18.0
Total steps taken since 4/30 - 1,585,910
Average daily steps - 38,681
Highest step count - 60,869

The only real conclusions I have drawn from these statistics are that I am making good progress and if anyone is doing a team step challenge at work and they need a boost to the top, let me know.

The other thing I have forgotten to mention in past posts is that many people are skipping north to avoid the Sierra Range. While I was at the hostel in Bishop there were a ton of other hikers around. It seemed like all of them were jumping north to avoid the snow. When people talked about their friends who were on the trail most of them seemed to have skipped north, as well. It feels like a majority of the PCT class of 2017 has done some amount of skipping ahead to avoid the snow and stream crossings. I can't blame anyone who made that decision - if it wouldn't be fun for someone to do the extreme snow sections it makes sense to skip them, at least in my mind. I am quite curious about what the actual percentage is of people who just went straight through the Sierras.

I think that basically catches me up on things I had meant to post in previous entries but forgot/ran out of time.

While we were packing up at Hostel California in Bishop to get back to trail Santa's Helper, a trail angel, pulled up and offered us a ride back to the trailhead. This would be a nice offer in a normal situation but it was especially awesome here since the trailhead was an hour and a half drive from the hostel. We had to take him up on his offer. As we were driving up the curvy, steep road to the trailhead we noted that there was a lot more water running over the road then there had been the day before. We correctly attributed it to the fact that we are in the middle of a heat wave and the snow melt was really picking up. It was also a bit prophetic for us to chat about this since one and a half days later that road washed out from all the water.

I' not sure how long it will take to repair that road but Kearsarge Pass is an important resupply point for PCT hikers. Without the ability to use it even more people will probably jump north on the trail. Luckily for us, it happened just after we passed through. After the long ride, we had to hike 5 miles over Kearsarge to get back to the PCT. It puts resupplying in a different light when it involves going up and over a pass for miles with a 1-2 hour hitch at the end, rather than taking a more direct route.

Once back on the PCT it was time to start conquering the High Sierra Passes. I had no idea what to expect. I had heard there was a lot of snow and had already done Forrester so I had some ideas, but the section north of Kearsarge was supposed to be the most brutal and tough. It turns out that it was hard, but it is also the most fun I have ever had hiking anything.

This section was an absolute joy to do, especially in such a high snow year. Some of the passes were hard, including Glen and Mather. Some of the passes were fairly easy, I'm looking at you, Muir Pass (Our guidebooks say some people consider Muir pass the hardest because of the miles of snowfields on either side which made the whole group laugh since some days we don't see dry ground), but all in all it has been almost perfect.

I don't really know what else to say about the passes. I have never experienced anything as beautiful or fun, not counting Alicia. Having done most of the difficult passes already I am incredibly happy to be doing them during a high snow year. What has made it so incredible is how different it is from "normal" hiking. It turns out that I love kick stepping up a sheer snow face to a pass.

The winter hiking I have done in Maine doesn't have enormous, clear snow fields or steep snow walls over passes. This has been something new, different and something I will have to find a way to do more of, even if it is just to come back to the Sierras for a week in the early summer, every now and then.

The other half of the challenge around such a high snow year has been the water crossings. All the streams and rivers that the guidebook says are fords become much more difficult with this snow melt and there are many locations that are not marked as even having water that appear to be intense whitewater creeks. There have not been any that we felt were too dangerous to cross though, thankfully. Baxter Creek was fast and deep, rising to a little over waist height, so we formed a triangle with the whole group to cross and that went extremely smoothly. The south fork of the Kings River was terrible where the PCT crossed it so we hiked upstream for a little over 1.5 miles and found a location where it split into 4 different flows and crossed there. We have heard Bear Creek is usually an especially rough crossing so we decided to take a side trail down to some hot springs and then road walk to VVR. I think we could have done Bear Creek by going upstream until it was passable but an easy trail to hot springs seemed like a favorable option. So we made it to VVR. This had been the section I was worried about so I think I will be able to finish the Sierras without breaking a continuous footpath. Some people might consider the hot springs route to be skipping but, for this particular year, anyway that you can complete the Sierras counts in my book.

UPDATE: I wrote everything above hoping I would be able to post while in VVR but their internet connection was damaged due to all the snow this winter so I had to get to Mammoth Lakes to find internet. The following covers those few days.

We hiked out of VVR hoping that crossing Silver Creek wouldn't be too bad. The trail crosses directly below a waterfall and there was some concern that all the snow melt would cause that to be fairly dangerous. It turned out to be no big deal. It was a fun crossing, my feet and lower legs still went numb quickly, but the water flow wasn't so bad.

We continued to hike to Red's Meadow Resort, which is almost directly on trail, as a place to get into Mammoth Lakes. There is a restaurant, store, and campground there so we assumed finding a ride into town wouldn't be too hard. Once we got there it turns out the road to the resort was still closed and wouldn't be open until at least July 16. So we camped there and hiked over Mammoth Pass to get to town. Looking forward, things being closed is still going to be a problem. Tuolumne Meadows is still closed and might open sometime in July. Looks like I will have to carry enough food to make it all the way to Sonora Pass (mile 1016).

Hopefully this entry made up for a few of the subpar previous entries!

Some Real Mountains

The last section was when we hit some serious mountains for the first time on trail. It has been unlike anything else that I have ever done. While the core activity is still hiking, the only similarity is it involves a lot of difficult walking. The first big difference is the timing in the day. A late start is now leave camp at 5 A.M. There has even been a day that had a 3 A.M. start! The reason for the super early start times is snow conditions. At night, the snow firms up and becomes more ice-like. This provides a great hiking surface, only slowing my pace a little. As soon as the sun hits, the snow starts to soften. By mid-afternoon the snow has a layer of soft slush on top that makes hiking incredibly difficult. This causes us to stop hiking by 3 P.M., which is a bizarre feeling. Trying to be asleep before the sun sets is also a kind of strange concept. Some of the sunrise views are incredible though.

This section of trail also eliminates a lot of the freedom that I am used to. Normally, you can hike until you're tired, stop hiking, sleep pretty much wherever. On this section of trail none of those things are true. If it is 3 P.M. you should probably stop hiking before the terrain gets more difficult. You have to think about where to camp and would it be it worth it to continue on but have to sleep on snow instead of dirt. Also, you have to think about the next days miles and where is the best place to camp to get over the next pass. All of these aspects makes this section of trail more mentally exhausting, in addition to the obvious physical effort.

Aside from the effort, it has been absolutely beautiful. First, we did Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 48, and then we did Forrester Pass, the highest point on the PCT. We then hiked out of Kearsarge Pass at mile 788 and hitched up to Bishop, CA. The next section is the longest resupply section yet with 7-8 days on trail until I can get to Vermillion Valley Ranch (VVR).

Once I got in town I had some nice town clothes to wear while I was doing laundry...

Section One Complete

I originally wrote this assuming I would be able to post in Kennedy Meadows, however the wifi there was terrible. I added on some at the end to cover the few days since then.

I have reached Kennedy Meadows, at mile 702.2, completing the Southern California desert section of the PCT. It has been a while since my last post so I'm not going to go into extreme detail about the last 200 miles. It has involved more windmills than I have ever seen, lots of sun, extreme heat, lengthy dry sections, loose sandy mountain climbs, and an unfortunate altercation with a swarm of fire ants that left my right leg full of stinging pain and then mildly numb for a few hours.

Of course, there were also constant impressive views of the desolate mountains. I think that mostly sums up the last few hundred miles.

Kennedy Meadows is, at least to me, the first big milestone of the PCT. It marks the first big shift in terrain and climate of the trail. Before Kennedy Meadows is the Californian desert and following it is the Sierra Mountain Range. The Sierras are the highest set of mountains on the PCT and considered the most difficult section of trail. This year those challenges are amplified by the fact that the Sierras received a record amount of snow this winter. This means that early in the season roads will still be closed, resupply points will not be available, and there will be complete snow cover above 10,000 feet. Later in the hiking season, as the snow melts, roads will start to open, along with resupply points, but the snow melt will swell the rivers and streams, making crossing them more difficult.

If everything works out, I will hopefully be hitting the Sierras right in between the super snowy, everything closed time and the full snow melt, all the rivers are impassable time. This seems somewhat unlikely. It seems like I have done a good enough job of waiting that most places will be open by the time I get to them. Some places, like the Muir Trail Ranch, won't be open until August but for the most part, roads and resupply points will be available to me. The roads that are still closed, (Highway 120, Sonora pass, and Ebbets pass) should be open by the time I get there. To try and make all of this planning and logistics go a little smoother the group of people I have been hiking with have agreed that we should do the Sierras as a group.

There are six of us that have been generally hiking together for a few weeks now. We haven't always been camping at the same location or doing the exact same number of miles but, in general, we have been sticking near each other. In the Sierras, we will be hiking as a group. On the difficult snowy sections we will move together, staying close enough that we can see the person in front of us and behind us. This will allow us to coordinate our efforts during stream crossings and difficult, snowy ascents. It will also allow the group to have some more emergency items without everyone having to carry all of them. One of us will carry some rope. Two of us will carry emergency blankets. One of us will carry a slightly more robust medkit than my current kit, comprised of some ibuprofen and duct tape.

It should also allow for better decision making, as groups have been consistently shown to come to the correct conclusion more often than individuals. This whole strategy will really go into place once we leave Lone Pine in a few days and head towards Mt Whitney and Forrester pass.

Finally, can people guess what the photo below is? It was taken with my phone so no crazy microscopic shenanigans were used.

UPDATE: The following was added later since I was unable to do anything on the internet in Kennedy Meadows.

I have done the few days from Kennedy Meadows to Lone Pine and am now at mile 744. The day leaving Kennedy Meadows was great. For 10 miles, I climbed up a mountain in a fairly desert-like climate. At the top of that climb I went through a pass and was immediately somewhere new. It was a flat field with a stream running through it surrounded by mountains. Since that moment, I feel like I have officially made it out of the desert.

The last two days have been filled with new mountain scenes on all sides. The mountaintops are now jagged, rocky protrusions that are covered in snow. The temperature also dropped significantly. Last night, the temperature got down to somewhere around 15-20 degrees with high winds and a dusting of snow. Luckily, I camped in a slightly sheltered little area and was nice and warm. I even remembered to put my water filter in my sleeping bag so I didn't need to buy a new one in town today.

Leaving here we head up to do Mt Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48, and Forrester pass, the highest point on the PCT. The next section has those challenges but it does not have any rivers that are going to be overly difficult. I'm ready to finally get to the snow fields of the Sierras!!