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!