Kearsarge Pass to Red's Meadow, June 20th-26th

June 18th-19th - Lone Pine & Bishop

After spending the day in Lone Pine I caught a ride with Aloha up to Bishop, where I had friends staying, and spent another day there buying groceries and organizing my food for the next section.  I don't have much for photographs of any of the towns, but for anyone planning to hike the PCT, my basic advice is this:

If you want a proper town to buy food in, go to Bishop because it has both a big Von's and a K-mart.  Stay at the Vagabond there, because it's cheap as far as hotels go and has a computer in the lobby.  Bishop's not as ambient as Lone Pine and it takes longer to walk around there, but you can buy whatever you want and it has a great variety of restaurants.

If you're not picky or if you're getting food via mail drop, then you can probably skip Bishop.  Lone Pine and Independence are much closer to the trail, and both have at least one place to buy food.  They're also much more ambient - Lone Pine looks like something straight out of an old Western, and has a hostel where I stayed in a dormitory-style room (with a nice bathroom inside it just for the girls in that room) for $25.  I didn't spend any time in Independence, but hitch hiking back to the trail with a couple of other hikers we got a ride from Strider and Doug, a couple who had recently moved out to the area and bought the Mt. Williamson Motel.  They were avid hikers and were looking to do more business with PCT hikers - they said that groups of hikers could share their cabins to economize and that they could even pick people up at the trail head, which would be a real bonus for anyone getting in at an odd time of day.  I've never even seen their hotel, much less stayed in it, but I liked them so I wanted to pass the information on.   

June 20th - Kearsarge Pass & Glen Pass

This section of the trail was different for me than sections before.  I definitely pushed myself harder physically.  Part of that was that I'd bought a plane ticket to get to a family gathering and needed to be at the Reno Airport to catch it, but part of it was for another reason.  I have to honestly say that the hardest part of the trail for me has been the social dynamic.  If you've read Sheryl Strayed's book Wild, then you have a mental picture of PCT hiking as something where you don't see other people for weeks at a time.  Back when Sheryl Strayed hiked it things were very different - now there are guidebooks, apps, established trail angels, and even a kickoff party.  I heard that they gave out 1,200 permits this year, although some of those would have been section hikers and many of those who planned on thru-hiking would have dropped out after a few days.  Still, there are hundreds of people attempting to thru-hike the PCT right now, and it's honestly a bit of a scene in a way that makes you feel like you're in high school.  I've overheard someone comparing the number of Facebook friends they had in common with different trail angels and positing what that meant about the relative popularity of those trail angels, which made my head spin.  I've heard a hiker saying that it couldn't be known that he, a celebrity, wasn't using a bear canister, because then other hikers would think that they didn't have to use one either.  I've had it directed at me as well - there's a slightly older guy who stopped speaking to me because he thought I was using too much of the bandwidth at a computer station near the trail.  He never addressed me directly on the issue, but now any town I see him in, he makes a minor curse in my direction and won't look directly at me.  I had two people that I'd felt really close to and thought I was hiking with for the next section check out of their hotel room and leave town together without telling me.  I've had a text message about me sent to me on accident by someone I'd really opened up to.  The majority of the people I've met have been kind, fun, and generally awesome and I've been shown incredible kindnesses by strangers, but this stretch was where I'd just had enough of being back in high school. 

I left Bishop on the morning of the 20th, riding the public bus south to Independence and then hitching to the trail head with two other hikers.   

Heading back up towards Kearsarge Pass

Heading back up Kearsarge Pass I saw a mule train in the distance.  By the time I reached the top of the pass it was already down on the other side and had taken a turn that I wouldn't take so I didn't catch it, but I later heard that they were carrying resupplies to hikers for a $400 fee.  I'm guessing that it's mainly John Muir Trail hikers that use the service, since the JMT takes only about three weeks and people who do it seem to have more money than people who have time to hike the entire PCT.  

A mule train resupplying hikers

Bullfrog Lake on the way down from Kearsarge Pass - this time I wouldn't pass it but would stay to the right and meet up with the PCT on the Kearsarge trail.

Back on the PCT I continued over Glen Pass, where I met a group of southbound JMT hikers who took my picture.  

Glen Pass!

Coming down Glen Pass

Determined to make two more passes the next day, I hiked into the dark.  

The reflection of the moon in the water at night

June 21st - Pinchot Pass & Mather Pass

In the morning I charged off again, heading for Pinchot Pass. 

800 miles!

Thistles always make me think of Tolstoy's Hadji Murad.

I think that John and then Muir for a middle name would be a good name for a boy.

Approaching Pinchot Pass

I made it there by midday, and then climbed down to the nearest lake for lunch.  

 Pinchot Pass!

Lunch break

 Fording stream after stream, I started to wonder about the rocks used for crossing them.  In some cases, such as this, they must have been placed there as a part of trail maintenance:

But in other cases, the rocks look too big to have been moved there by the volunteers working on the trail, and I'm thinking that maybe they just searched for a place where there were already rocks and then made the trail run that way?

In the valley between Pinchot and Mather passes I met Pascal, who was on the trail with his two burros, Daisy and Jimmy.  He let me cuddle with them and was on his own trip which would end in Chile and sounded interesting (his blog is here), but I was determined to get over Mather pass and chatted with him only briefly before moving on. 

 Me and Pascal posing with Daisy

Losing the sun coming up towards Mather Pass

 Mather Pass!

Mather Pass!

Coming down Mather Pass

June 22nd - Muir Pass

There was a long stretch of valley before the ascent to Muir Pass, so just doing that one would be a full day. 

This buck (look right in the center of the picture) just stood and stared at me for the longest time.

Rock cairns are a nice feature of the PCT.  They're a way to mark trail in areas where it's not obvious where to go, without introducing any foreign material.  In the two pictures below the first one shows a cairn clearly, and the second one shows the use of one.  It doesn't alter the landscape in any way (it's hard even to see it in the picture), but it makes clear where to go and is very useful to hikers.  

A rock cairn

Center left, the small rock cairn (on top of the large, flat rock) shows hikers which way to go.

The Muir Hut, across a snowfield

I'd been feeling tired and hiking pretty slowly, and I reached Muir Pass a little while before sunset.  There I found the Muir Hut, which intended for emergency use only but was already occupied by two hikers for the night.  One of the two was a southbound JMT hiker who said that there wasn't any place to camp for a few miles down the other side, and I didn't need much convincing to stay there.  I set up my pad and sleeping bag, slugged the last of my brandy in the sunset, cooked dinner on the steps of the hut, and was unconscious within minutes of laying down.    

 

Steve Margheim, this was your brandy in the Fireball bottle - I toasted John Muir in your name.

Sunset on Muir Pass - I think this is going to be my new FB profile picture...

The sun setting from Muir Pass

The Muir Hut

The end of sunset

A young couple that I'd met briefly reached the hut shortly after dark and joined us, and in the morning everyone glared at me.

"I've never heard anyone snore like that," the southbound JMT hiker said, "except my father."

I'm really not sure what to say about snoring.  It's not like the person snoring makes a conscious decision to do it, or even does it by simply being inconsiderate.  They don't have any control over whether or not they do it, so what should you say after you kept people awake all night snoring?

"I'm sorry that you weren't able to sleep while I was." 

"If any of my conscious decisions, like the small amount of brandy I drank before bed, worsened my snoring then I apologize." 

"I'm sorry that you're a big baby."

Probably none of the above would have helped. 

June 23rd - Dragging Butt Downhill 

The fireplace has been rocked up to prevent people from deforesting the areas below to bring firewood up.

The next day was easy, there wasn't even a pass to cross, but I was so tired that I got a late start and moved slower than I had before.  

 My yak trax finally, completely fell apart.  If you're not familiar with them they're a cheap, lightweight alternative to wearing micro-spikes, and I bought them for the Sierras.  Almost anyone who's hiked through the Sierras this year would tell you that you don't need anything and they're probably right, but I'm so clumsy on any slippery surface that I wanted them even for the small patches of snow I'd encounter.  What I didn't count on was the fact that I'd be lazy to take them off in between the snowy patches, and that the rocks would shred them completely in about a hundred miles. 

My yak trax finally giving up the ghost

I think what they mean is "if you drown here, you deserve a Darwin Award."

I crossed my first river where I had to take my shoes off and wade across, but none of those that I would cross in the Sierras and later in Yosemite would be very deep because the snow had been so light. 

My first ford

I was so tired and moving so slowly that I'd only made it 13 or 14 miles, all downhill, when I came to a campground by a bridge.  A little lonely after charging over high mountain passes alone for three days, I stopped to chat with a hiker who had passed me a few hours earlier.  His name was Chris, his trail name was The Man in Black, and talking to him was like being in a completely different world of hikers.  He'd started later than most people, had been hiking with a group of older guys that consistently did 25 miles a day, and then had gotten off the trail to spend ten days at his sister's house and had been hiking alone since then, so he hadn't had the high school experience.  I decided to stay and camp, and Chris made a fire and we sat around talking about the actual trail itself, and gear, and where we from, and all sorts of things. 

June 24th - Selden Pass

Chris needed to pick up a mail drop at the Muir Trail Ranch, so in the morning I said goodbye to him and left his camp. 

Chris, the Man in Black (OK, not here)

I passed this sign, which made me curious.  It looks like it was put up by his family and not by authorities since it's missing some very basic details (like where he was seen on June 17th), and also since there were only one or two signs.  A lot of hikers use those spot tracking devices and I've heard of people being searched for via helicopter when the tracker fails and their family freaks out after not hearing from them for one night, so I really hoped that this was the case with Adam Kirsonis. 

During the day it started to rain, which was actually kind of exciting for me.  I'd been sprinkled on a little my first day hiking from the border, but other than that hadn't been hit by precipitation in the entire three months.  I'd watched hailstorms out the windows of hostels, but had somehow by chance avoided hiking or camping in any weather event. 

My first day hiking in the rain

I'd also been wondering why I kept seeing signs prohibiting campfires above 10,000 feet.  I'd been seeing them for what seemed like weeks now, and kept wondering how it could be easier to start a forest fire at elevation when trees were scarcer, or harder to fight them when they were surely being fought from helicopters.  It wasn't until writing this and thinking out loud to my nephew Riley that I learned the answer.  He looked it up and it's not about fires - it's about deforestation.  At high altitudes there are too few trees to let people burn them for campfires.  it's the same reason that the Muir Hut no longer allows fires and I should have figured it out, but I didn't, my nephew did. 

No fires above 10,000 feet

I crossed Selden Pass, which I thought was the prettiest on the entire trail, and descended to the lakes on the other side of it to make lunch.  On the way down I met a JMT hiker who told me that he'd thru-hiked the PCT in 2011, the last of the big snow years.  He said that he was hiking the JMT this year so that he could see what the Sierras actually looked like, and this made me grateful that I was getting to see things the way I was. 

Selden Pass!

This view down from Selden Pass was my favorite in the Sierras.

Rotation of what?

In the afternoon Chris caught up with me, having found that the Muir Trail Ranch opened earlier than he expected, picked up his package there, and caught up with me.  We hiked together and he showed me wild onions, which I picked a bunch of to add to my dinner. 

Wild Onions!

June 25th - Silver Pass

The rain subsided by evening, and Chris and I camped together and hiked together again the next day.  He had hiked most of the Washington section of the PCT a few years earlier and told me a lot about that, and I enjoyed just walking through the high Sierras and not worrying about anything else. 

Silver Pass!

Looking down from Silver Pass

Stopping for tea (OK, water)

June 26th - Red's Meadow

On the 26th we hiked a half day into Red's Meadow, where there's a bus to the town of Mammoth Lakes. 

900 miles!

The first time I'd seen burn zones in a long time

Red's Meadow had a store where I bought cans of PBR and bottles of lemonade and mixed shandys in my water bottles.  We caught a bus to an upscale recreation center, and then another bus to an upscale shopping center, and then a third bus into town.  The crowd along the way had money, and seemed dominated by mountain bikers.  They wore funny suits that made them look like astronauts or super heroes, and some of the buses had bike racks as long as a car.  Hotels weren't terribly cheap but we got a room and found one more hiker to share it, and we were showered, had clean laundry, and in a barbecue restaurant having lunch by early afternoon.