Day 71- June 29th

Today we got to sleep in thanks to our nice, dark room at the Dow Villa. We had grocery shopped yesterday so all there was to do today before checkout at noon was to run to the post office to send some more items home. And eat breakfast of course...

Breakfast burritos it was! Something about a burrito when you've been out in the trail, yum! Never getting over those things..

With all our foods overflowing our bear canisters, we magically got our backpacks to close again. (They might be heavier than they were out of Kennedy Meadows)

We met Tim, the one who's Facebook post I had seen the night before, down in the lobby at 12:30pm sharp. I had randomly been on Facebook and he had randomly offered a ride out of Lone Pine to Kearsarge this afternoon! It was funny because he told us that he doubted anyone would reply, but just felt like seeing anyway. And it happened to work out perfectly for us!

As we headed out to Kearsarge Pass Trail, Tim told us he was picking up his wife where he was dropping us off. Her trail name is Mighty Mouse, and she was the one who my sister told me had been bitten by a rattle snake a while back! What are the odds? She had to take three weeks off the trail but is now doing great again! 

The drive was about half an hour, and by the time we arrived to the trailhead up at 9,200 feet there were raindrops starting to potter patter on the windshield. When we got out of the truck we put on our rain gear right away and good thing for it! It started hailing on us! 

Very small pieces but still hail. The day had been so nice and sunny and had switched up there in an instant. We thanked him again for the ride and headed up in the rain/hail.

Going up Kearsarge was not the easiest feat with our heavy pack-weights. It's all uphill for 5 miles before going down for 2 1/2. The weather couldn't make up its mind. It wasn't too cold yet thunderstorms rolled through the mountain range we were heading up towards. We weren't too worried because we know how quickly these storms can last. Sure enough, the thunder soon stopped.

We saw a few familiar faces coming down the trail, but most exciting was running into Josh!!

Claire had seen Josh briefly while I was doing my day hike, but we missed each other after he descended down from Mt. Whitney. It was so good to see him and we spent a few minutes catching up in the middle of the trail.

What a gorgeous hike this was! We climbed up towards some lakes on the east side of the pass which were pretty neat. 

However, once we crossed over the 11,760 foot pass to the west side is when my mind was really blown! 

On the other side the sun was peaking through an amazing circle in the sky! Soon we were nice and warm again and walking through a beautiful trail.

A little while later the trail started overlooking Bullfrog Lake way down below. Tall snowy-capped peaks loomed in the distance, making for my favorite scene of the day:

We climbed up and over Kearsarge Pass 7.64 miles today. We are camping next to the PCT and JMT again. Tomorrow we'll tackle Glen Pass, the iciest and scariest pass to go over for many hikers, including Yogi herself! We have plenty of time to take and if it's too icy we'll wait a few hours for the snow to get crunchy and easily passable.

Two-pack and Bee's Knees back on the trail in full force! Canada here we come, Woo-hoo!!

-Thanks for reading!