Day 49, 15.09 miles

Hey guys long time no see! New record! Writing two blogs in one night! (I hate getting behind, haha). Well, today was super eventful. It’s all been new trail to me, expect the last 2 miles or so, where Claire and I got back on at Kearsarge Pass in 2016 after we were sick. Because everything’s new to me, this is another post with many pictures! (Maybe it’s also because I’m in the Sierra and everything looks so beatiful at every turn!)

We woke up at our beautiful campsite by Tyndall Creek and MAN did I feel great! I knocked out hard and slept a whole 7 hours straight! Only waking up once or twice, rolling into my other side, and immediately going back to sleep. I had a great deluxe oatmeal again like just like yesterday (I could get used to those), and soon my companions were also up and cookin’. 

We left camp a little before 6 and headed towards Forrester! We slept less than 5 miles before the pass, and we wanted to get up to the top no later than 9-10am. Most days you want to be early enough so the snow is crunchy and has grip, but not icy. Then you want to descend while you can still walk on it but it’s soft enough to glissade (to slide down your buttnon snow), but not too soft so that you end up postholing. (Making a leg-length hole with each leg with every step), very unfun. Sounds complicated? It IS! It’s pretty hard to plan your days just right for these conditions and nail it every time. Also, we have a big pass per day until VVR!! 

Beautiful morning

We could tell that the first areas we were walking through while climbing up had very recently been snow-patched. There were wet craters where you know snow had just been. It didn’t take very long for us to reach the patches, and eventually fields as we approached Forrester. 

Looking forward

And back..

 

Look middle-left in the picture above. See that little notch in the vertical cliff?? Let’s zoom in...

Yes my friends, THAT is Forrester Pass...

Whew! I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get the butterflies big time when I realized which pass it was in the mountainside. It really does look as intimidating as they say! Luckily, after the long flat ice fields, there were only about 20 of the STEEPEST switchbacks we’ve had yet, (even steeper than Whitney), before some gut-wrenching cliff side cuts, and then the notorious 50 ft ice chute traverse, just before the top :)

I gotta say though, the views did not disappoint!

Lower switchbacks 

Julian going up the VERY steep upper switchbacks

Looking down at Keglegs. It’s a lot more vertical than it looks in this picture!!

Looking back down..

The trail literally on the cliff side. Not for the faint of heart..

Keglegs carefully crossing the ice chute. 

It’s hard to get a good angle of this traverse since it’s plastered against a cliff face and the trail never  faces it straight on or from underneath. However, once you get to the top, you can peer down from the very top of the chute..

The little footprint line in the middle of the drop is where we cross over down below.. I’m standing on the top of the pass

The chute wasn’t as bad today as it is normally hyped up to be.. A lot of people carry microspikes over 100 miles and use it for these 50 feet alone. It felt so great to cruise over it, hit the last few switchbacks, and then be standing atop to PCT’s highest point in the nice warm sun!

It’s really hard to keep your eyes open when you’ve just taken off your sunglasses and hat at 13,200 feet!

On the North side of the pass there was a long snowy traverse leading to some cliffs high above a large frozen lake. There were a few butt-marks from previous glissaders, but everyone that was up here today was well aware of the deadly consequence of taking this glissade. There’s a large hidden rock field between the glissade and the lake, and after you navigate that safely, you’d have to walk along the icy banks of the frozen lake and around its drainage, and then navigate your way back uphill to the PCT. I think I’ll take the stairs!! :)

Hikers starting to traverse the other side

Glissade of fear down through hidden rocks of danger and into the frozen lake of doom? I’ll pass

Northbound on traverse.. don’t want to slip here...

Looking back towards the pass

Ahhhhhh....

The cornice ridge after the traverse

Yew!!

Down we go back into the forest and valleys!

After taking a few dry switchbacks after the snowy ridge, I came across the drainage of the lake and up to a nice wall of snow. Nemo was there with Happy and another hiker. He was teaching them how to self-arrest with their ice axes. Since I’m a little more experienced on snow than Jules and Keglegs, I was a good 15 minutes ahead of them. I decided I’d create a nice glissading practice-course for them as we hadn’t had one yet on this pass. We all had a blast climbing up and flissading down the small hill for about half an hour!

So fun!!

The Penguin

After that we continued down and down through the snow fields on the North side of the pass. After a while we broke the snow barrier and stopped at a lunch spot with a beautiful view to have some food and dry out/change our socks and shoes.

Beautiful Blue Lake

Water straight from the source #nofilter

Nice smooth boulder patches to hop down on

Crossing snow bridges directly over a side creek

Gaaaaaaahhh!!!

I love this action shot I caught of Happy, Nemo, Julian, and Keglegs. This was 100% candid and not posed!

The view from our lunch spot

At lunch, we met this really cool hiker from South Africa named Peter. He is one of two people from South Africa doing the PCT this year and is a pretty popular for it on his country. He’s doing the PCT to help kids fight cancer in his country. He had crossed Tyndall Creek early in the morning, amd his GoPro fell out of his pack and into the swift river! He had plunged into the freezing waters to try and retrieve it but it was long gone. This had all of the footage of the Soerra so far that he was going to use in the documentary he was making for his cause back home. What a bummer! 

Because of this, he was headed out of Kearsarge Pass, so that he could go get another camera before continuing on. Because he had planned to go to VVR, he had a few days of extra food and after talking with us a while, have some to us as he was headed into town soon and we still had a few more days to push.

Peter (picture taken later)

Because he gave us some extra food, we decided that instead of doing a long double-pass in one of the upcoming days, we each had enough food now to stretch it to 5 more days for the 5 remaining passes instead of 4 more, and going close to or over 20 miles each day. This means we can have 15-18 mile days instead and take our time in this beautiful place while we’re in it!

Down further in the valley

A fun log crossing

Bubb’s Creek

Ahhhhh!!

After we hit the bottom, we started to climb up again very steeply, to approach Glen Pass, which we’ll summit tomorrow. It really is up and then down and then up every day here for the next 5 days!!

And up again!!

We passed the exit for Kearsarge Pass, after finalizing our new game-plan between the three of us. We also ran into Alright! He had been hiking with Shadow, Omri, and Early Bird, and it seems like the latter two are close behind. Alright (previously Aaron, whom I met in Julian at mile 77), gave us some sad/bad news that Shadow’s shin and leg is badly injured and he has decided to take a few weeks off trail. I’m wishing him a swift recovery, and I strongly he’ll come back and finish no problem!

We headed up some beautiful staircases as pictured above. It’s amazing how much work goes into this trail! Soon we came across some small campsites, just over a mile from the top of Glen Pass.

The view from camp

After we all ate and just as we had said goodnight and we’re retreating into our tents, we heard Solo and Stache coming down towards tre camp!

These two!!

They had gotten off at Kearsarge Pass to go to Bishop to pick up some packages including their bear cans and new shoes, and now they were catching up to us. They’re so fast! They also had run into some trouble; their packages hadn’t arrived! They had to buy super expensive bear canisters last minute in Bishop. And to top things off, Stache had thrown away his shoes before he realized the new shoes hadn’t come in yet, and now he’s rocking sandals until Mammoth!! Another 115 miles away!! AND they’re continuing up into Glen Pass and a couple miles of snow after 8pm!! Crazy boys! 

Stache’s kicks for the next 115 miles and 7 snowy passes... 

I brushed my teeth to this view...

Well! It’s now past 10:15pm but I have caught up with my blogs and it feels so good!! Since I’ve been having phone problems, I’ve had to charge my phone more than usual, and since it’s been so beautiful everyday, I’ve been taking more pictures and writing longer blogs at night. That plus extending our stretch to 5 more days until VVR starting tomorrow, means that my phone might die before then if I continue to blog every night. I am glad I got to finish at least these last two since they were such exciting days. I might just save the battery for pictures and do the next 4 or 5 blogs once we get to VVR, so the following few posts might be shorter and not as detailed. 

Short-ish day tomorrow and sleeping in until at least 5:30!! 

Thanks for reading!!