Day 74- July 2nd

So today was a very special day. Claire's birthday! It was fun to spoil my lady as much as I could, which unfortunately didn't mean very much. Breakfast in tent? Haha. At least we started the day right by sleeping in! :)

Leaving camp at 10am instead of the usual 7am was quite pleasant. We had such a fun but tiring day yesterday that today our legs let us know about it! Claire and I both had super tight quads and really sore shoulders and back. We just have to eat faster to lose some of that pack weight! 

As we headed away from our camping spot above the lake, we looked back and were rewarded with a nice view:

We descended waaaaay down through the pretty valley. Beautiful views of streams, rivers, cliffs, and waterfalls awaited us at every turn.

This is becoming routine for us now! Up a mountain through the snow in the morning, and then wayyyyy down into the beautiful lake-dotted valley. Then most way up the next mountain, usually following a pretty river. 

Yesterday we crushed TWO passes in one day. Today the down and back up stage between passes was about 22 miles. So today was just waaaaaay down, and waaaaaay back up.

In the middle of the down and up, we took a nice break at a PERFECT spot on a big boulder overlooking the river below. Eating M&M's in this place? Not too bad of a birthday if you ask Claire.

Back up through stunning meadows along a cascading river we went! There were different huge rock formations on both sides, making us feel like we were in Yosemite already! We saw a few deer including another baby and her mother.

We found a beautiful campsite right along the river pictured above, only 5.25 miles from the top of Muir Pass. Today we did 14.45 miles! Not bad for starting at 10am :)

-Thanks for reading! 

Day 73- July 1st

Today was a blast!! We started up a tough climb up Pinchot Pass which was BRUTAL! Over 3000 foot elevation gain in 5.66 miles! Beautiful, but brutal..

We made it up and over the pass by 11:30am, and dropped down into Marjorie Lake and its surrounding lakes.

We walked down past the lakes and down into the wooded valley. We had a lot of stream crossings today, some of them were really intense! Eventually we forded two forks of the Kings River at the bottom of the valley and started back up to the next pass: Mather Pass.

From where we had camped we had been planning in just making it 14 miles and camping just before the final mile ascent of Mather Pass in the morning. But as we climbed the beautiful trail up towards Mather and crosses 3 or 4 more fords, we realized how great we were on time. We could make it up and over Mather Pass today! Why not?

The climb got steeper and steeper, and we finally came up to the last 0.8 miles. Switchbacks STRAIGHT up the mountain! We were so tired but kept pushing and pushing and finally made the top!! I had hoped to reach the top by 7pm and we had done it by 5:50pm! 

Starving, I whipped out the stove up at 12,100 feet and we downed two packs of ramen. Mmmmm, how satisfying on the top of a high Pass! It felt so nice to just relax with my baby way up there and overlook the gorgeous view in front of us.

On the way down the North side there was lots of snow. Enough to get 2 really fun glissades in!! Even with the glissades, the two miles down from the pass took a LONG time. Because of the precariously positioned and unstable snow drifts, we often had to make our own way down the mountain!

When we finally got back to the snow-free path, we were stopped in our tracks once again but this time by something different:

The colors of the sunset in the area we were coming down into blew our minds! Pink mountains and beautiful clouds with far off peaks in the distance and some lovely lakes nearby. What a way to end the day!!

We found a nice campsite just before it got dark. We normally try to find a campsite by 7pm but today was so fun and worth it! When we get the urge to keep going for a long day, we take advantage of it! 

Today we did 17.35 miles, which is VERY good for the Sierra!! We went 5,100 feet up and 3,416 feet down! We only took 3 short breaks, yet somehow, we still feel great! My shoulders are pretty sore from the pack weight, but that's about it. My beautiful surroundings energize me and make me forget about the occasional annoyances and pain and soreness of backpacking. This is the most beautiful place I've ever hiked through, hands down!

Tonight we're camped at 10,870 feet! We're right above that lake pictured in the last photos. Today was perfect. It was a new favorite day on the entire PCT for both Claire and I! And tomorrow is Claire's birthday! Man, life is good... 

-Thanks for reading! 

Day 72- June 30th

This morning I had cereal and milk!!! Not exciting? Try eating a protein bar for breakfast every morning for a few months and then have cereal and milk! I had bought the family size bag of frosted mini wheats at the store in Lone Pine and Claire and I finally decided to get some dehydrated milk. So good!

Yummy!!

We left our nice little camping spot by 8am, and headed up towards Glen Pass. We had only camped 2 miles away last night. I read in Yogi's book that Glen Pass is the iciest and scariest pass of them all! Also, my paper map has it printed next to its elevation that it particularly holds snow on its North facing side for a long time which can be dangerous.

The way up was beautiful! We came across a few lakes, some of them still half frozen! They were so blue it was unreal! Neither of us had seen a lake so blue.

We went straight up over many switchbacks, the two miles taking a grueling 2 1/2 hours. When we finally got near the top and turned around, the view was great.

As we popped over the actual pass that we saw in front of us wasn't too bad either!

See that line in the snow in the right of the picture? The one that looks horizontal? That was our trail down and it was DEFINITELY not flat!

There were a few sketchy spots that we had to just make our own path safely down. There were a few glissade paths downs very steep slope up top, but we decided to try our first glissade a little lower on the trail. Glissading is when you slide on your but down the snow instead of "postholing" down (stepping in others' deep footprints).

And glissade we did!!

The first run through we went down in our shirts and got ice burn on our bottoms. The second time we opted for our rain pants and they made much better sliding devices than our bare skin!

We descended down through Rae Lakes. The lakes are absolutely stunning with high snowy peaks looming behind them. There were 3 main lakes with many other smaller ones speckled about. We met a hiker named Pathfinder who was in the middle of catching some dinner. 

He let this one go because it was so small, but I'm sure he ended up eating some good fish tonight. I told him his name should be "Fishfinder" instead of Pathfinder.

There was just scene after gorgeous scene (including the one at the top of this post) as we descended way down along the lakes and eventually over a really cool suspension bridge.

We were at the bottom of the descent, but it was only 5:45pm, so we decided to keep on a bit longer and chip off a little bit of tomorrow's climb is to Pinchot Pass. Soon after we crossed the bridge we hit a great milestone!

Man, these last 100 miles have taken sooooo long! It was really rough. Both of us getting the stomach flu at separate times, having to take 3 zeros on trail and a zero in Lone Pine after the emergency Whitney Portal descent... Whew!  The next 100 miles will fly by I'm sure! Even though everyone's pace slows in the Sierra, we feel way stronger than before!

We climbed up a ridge alongside a river which continually have us new waterfalls to look at. The west side of the trail had all sorts of seasonal streams coming down from the snowmelt, and the creeks and streams were very swollen and rapid!

Nothing like getting your feet wet in freezing cold water in the last two hours of daylight. Wet shoes in the morning!

Tomorrow we'll climb over 3,000 feet up to Pinchot Pass in just 5.66 miles!! Our packs are still very heavy since we took 9 days of food out of Lone Pine. Today we did 12.5 miles today. Straight up Glen Pass and then down down down over 9 miles. It's been a loooong day! 

-Thanks for reading!