#ca section k

The Woolly Mules Ears (Wyethia mollis) are common along much of the PCT.  But nowhere are they more abundant than in the northern portion of Section K (south of Donner Pass) and throughout Section L (north of Donner Pass). The Woolly Mules Ear is a member of the aster family with a distinctive yellow flower and broad leaves covered in soft hairs.  To the touch in the spring and summer the leaves feel not unlike the soft, pliable ears of a mule.  This perennial herb grows in forests and other mountain habitat such as dry open meadows with sagebrush. It grows from a tough taproot that makes it possible to thrive in volcanic soils because of its deep roots. The seeds are edible and taste similar to sunflower seeds.  I personally love the broad expanses of Mules Ears that cover the rounded hilltops north and south of Donner Pass as pictured above.

By late summer and fall, the desiccated leaves make a rustling sound when moved by mountain breezes.  I’ve walked this same stretch in the autumn and love their constant murmur.  Karen ‘Pickles’ deSousa took these photos (below) from Section L one recent fall near Castle Peak.  Although less dramatic than the larch we have featured in recent posts, the subtle browns and yellows of the Mules Ears make for a wonderful addition to the northern Sierra in September and October.

As we have noted before, imagine seeing a landscape painting like this on display in a drab, industrial city of the Northeast in the late 1800s.  It would capture the imagination of many and soon come to represent the magical world of the far west in this very young country (Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Montana, Arizona, and Washington were all granted statehood in 1889 or later)

Edwin Deakin, born in Sheffield, England, emigrated to the United States in 1856 at the age of 18.  Just prior to 1870 Edwin, along with his entire extended family, moved from Chicago to San Francisco, California. He quickly established a successful career as a painter of the untamed California wilderness. In 1874 he exhibited a Lake Tahoe scene at the Chicago Academy of Arts. The top scene above is of Mt. Tallac, which lies just east of Dick’s Pass on the PCT.  Mt. Tallac (9,735′) is accessible from a trail that departs from the PCT on the south side of Gilmore Lake in the Desolation Wilderness. The bottom scene is of Donner Lake.

Although California remained home for Deakin (Berkeley, in fact), he traveled extensively in Europe as well as other parts of the US.  Interestingly, Deakin became famous, and much copied, for his pendulous grapes he drew in his still lifes.

Over the years, we have posted a number of Weathercarrot’s images from the PCT. These three photos were taken on the trail just south of Donner Summit, which, from my perspective, includes some of the most spectacular crest walking along the entire PCT.  The views in both directions were often dramatic with Lake Tahoe to the east and layers of mountains to the west. Tinker Knob, Granite Chief (the namesake for the wilderness), and Ward Peak . . . wonderful.

The distinctive Aloha Lake in Desolation Wilderness is actually a reservoir with a dam on the south end.  The water eventually reaches the American River.  The hundreds of dead lodgepole pine snags that poke above the lake’s surface once grew in the basin that was flooded by the dam.  Aloha Lake now contributes to the water provided to the City of Sacramento.

This photo was taken by Philip Kramer, author of a relatively new guide to the PCT between Tuolumne Meadows and the Oregon/California border.  Check out his website at http://www.philipkramer.com/

Here is another image from Philip’s walks on the trail.

By Kit 'Chinchilla' and Jacob 'Pyrite'

Kit (Chinchilla) and Jacob (Pyrite) completed a honeymoon thru-hike on the PCT in 2011. They shared their photos and essays at thehungryhoneymoon.wordpress.com.  

It is interesting just how much difference a year can make in the level of difficulty of hiking the PCT.  When I crossed Dick's Pass in July, 2009, the summit was completely clear of snow.  The photo from Mt. Whitney in the prior post, documents the very different reality that 2012 hikers will face with a far lower snow pack than Chinchilla and Pyrite faced in the mega-snow year of 2012.  Not only is this a great PCT story, but a reminder about the lessons to be learned on the trail.

“The world is older and bigger than we are. This is a hard truth for some folks to swallow.” -Ed Abbey

Pyrite and I were a little less than three months in, and over 1100 miles into our thru-hike when we reached Echo Lake near Lake Tahoe, CA in early July, 2011. We planned to meet Pyrite's parents for resupply, and spent a zero relaxing in South Lake Tahoe. Faced with a high snow year, we learned about the delicate balance between taking pride in our accomplishments, and maintaining humility and a healthy respect for the forces and rhythms of the natural world. We carried tales of torrential river crossings, precipitous passes, and were simply happy we made it safely through the challenges north of Kennedy Meadows and in the High Sierra. Some days we felt superhuman; brimming with delight. Other days, the elegiac realities of slogging through, over, and under snow seemed insurmountable. To keep our spirits up, our thoughts turned to the possibility of once again, walking on dirt. Talk on the trail said we would see more and more dirt as we approached and passed Sierra City, CA. To lighten our load, and in anticipation of what was ahead, we ditched our ice axes at Sonora Pass, and carried on with trekking poles and micro spikes. 

Pyrite's parents graciously met us at Echo Lake to bring supplies, and hiked out with us to spend a night at Lake Aloha in Desolation Wilderness. Beneath the expansive granite peaks surrounding azure patches speckling the frozen lake, we spent the evening with them. They had a fresh perspective, which was a mirror for us to reflect on where we had been.

After coffee and breakfast the next morning, we said farewell and headed vaguely North. 

Although still hiking through snow, our spirits were rejuvenated and we felt empowered by our experiences to make smart decisions. We believed the most difficult part of the pilgrimage was behind us. Brazen with confidence, we continued on. The following is Pyrite's account on a pass I will remember.

We got to the top of Dicks Pass (a fairly modest pass at something like 9400 ft). We barely glanced at the map before looking towards our descent. From the top of the pass it dropped quickly into a deep bowl, where the bottom of the bowl dropped away again into Dick's Lake, about 1000 feet down from where we were. The edge at the top was a nearly vertical cornice, maybe 60 degrees. It was early in the morning and the snow was icy. 

Chinchilla and I looked around for the best route down. Nothing looked particularly good. The top of the pass was corniced with rock above it. I started cutting steps, knowing that at least the incline of the snow would get less severe on the way down. I cut steps about five feet down, so my face was in line with Chinchilla’s feet.

I looked up at her with apprehension.

“I don’t know about this…” 

We agreed, I wasn’t very safe. It was hard getting my feet in and each step was yet more unstable. I began moving back up when I slipped.

I was sliding down the bowl. 

Fast. 

I reached out and stuck my fingers as deep into the snow as I could get them. I clawed and gripped onto whatever crust I could manage. I dug my toes in. I cursed. 

Chinchilla yelled “Stop!” 

I tried to stop.  Fingers.  Elbows. Knees. Anything into the snow.

I flipped and dug my heels in like a crab. I think it was my pack that finally added the last bit friction of necessary to stop. I came to rest about 300 vertical feet down from the top, maybe 20 feet from where the bowl started to drop into the lake. My sunglasses and trekking poles were scattered across the slope. Deep gouges decorated the snow where I had stuck various body parts.

I stood up, looked at my hands, and thought to myself that they were still cold so that’s why the blood hadn’t started welling up out of them.  I waited and no blood came. Hands intact I checked myself for further injury when Chinchilla called down,

“How was it?” 

Since I was uninjured and merely shaking from the intense adrenaline rush that I got, I replied “Not bad.” 

She responded “Should I come down?” since we had talked about the possibility of glissading. 

When I had said not bad I meant not bad considering I almost just died.   Her coming down in a similar fashion was out of the question. I sure as hell should not have done that. 

I thought for a second, grabbed my 3mm rope that I purchased to get across rivers, and headed back up the slope. En route I retrieved my sunglasses and trekking poles.  It wasn’t as hard on the way up, without pack. I used my trekking poles as a self-arrest tool. I felt okay about getting back up to Chinchilla.  The adrenaline rush erased my fear.

Upon reaching the top, we decided to tie the rope around Chinchilla’s hip belt and then around my waist and use a carabiner as a belay device to lower her down. I kicked in deep foot pockets and guided the rope through the device, lowering her down. We only had 100′ of the rope, and the snow Chinchilla was damn steep, so I told her to dig her feet in and stand up. Slowly and carefully, I made the decent, again.

I had Chinchilla untie herself in case I went plummeting down 300′ again. 

No sense in taking her down with me. 

I thought of possible ways to rappel down, but it wasn't feasible. The tips of my trekking poles were in my fists (we had really lightweight gossamer gear trekking poles, so the traditional technique to self arrest would not work). The second time was more successful, and I got to Chinchilla, kicked in again and started the process all over. 

300' later, we reached my pack. I put it on and we traversed east to the trees. I decided it would be a good idea to figure out where exactly we needed to meet up with the trail.  I pulled out the map and took a good look and realized that the trail went up from the pass. Up a ridge and it didn’t come down to our elevation until about a mile away.  It struck me, not only did I do something horribly risky, but it was unnecessary. Tired from the scare, and dejected from our negligence, we worked our way around the lake to meet up with the trail successfully and without further incident.

This was, by far, the stupidest mistake we made on the trail. We were so accustomed to dangerous and sketchy situations in the Sierra and North Yosemite, we didn’t stop to think that maybe the trail didn’t go straight down from Dick's Pass. I kicked myself repeatedly for the next couple of days, while being thankful that nothing serious happened.

Photo:  Will Dane and his wife, Teri

Will Dane touches on many of the themes that we see in the stories in The Pacific Crest Trailside Reader -- our inclination toward hubris and overconfidence, the challenge of managing career and family in order to return to the trail, and the siren call of the PCT. There is a reason why trail demographics seem to be weighted toward people without children (never had 'em, yet to have 'em, or had 'em and now they are grown up). Life is just much less complicated.

By Will Dane

Fresh out of college in 2002, I moved to Ashland, Oregon with the express purpose of training for and then completing (later in July) a PCT hike from there to the Washington border. I completed less than half of that trek, getting as far as Route 58 before foot pain, fatigue, and a message from my landlord threatening eviction because of a forgotten rent payment urged me back home. Back in Ashland, I forsook my hiking gear for my mountain bike, promising myself that, some day, I would finish the Oregon section of the PCT. As a single 24 year old guy who didn’t even have a job, it was hard to imagine that anything could ever hinder that vaguely conceived goal. But it was only a few months later when I met a girl in a tiny cafe in a tiny town in the Sierras of California, which I had been lured into by a sign advertising espresso while in the middle of a drive back to Ashland from a day hike on Freel Peak in Nevada. Within a year of that day, we were married, with a son, a mortgage, and all the other trappings of adult domestic life, in a town on the coast of our native Massachusetts. As our son grew, my hiking gear gathered dust and mildew in the basement.

By 2009, we felt like our time on the east coast had run its course, with my previously dormant desire to be in the wilderness stirring again, and we decided to move back to California. We settled in a small town in the western foothills of the Sierras. I soon began a daily routine of walking along a canal-side trail near our house. It wasn’t long before the idea hit me, while I was walking there one day, to do another section of the PCT. Of course, my original goal of finishing Oregon would be impossible, but I figured I could shoehorn a trip of a few days’ length among the routines and rituals of everyday life, the deadlines at work, the weekend birthday parties, the afterschool events. Section K in California seemed like a good choice because of its closeness to our house and its easily accessible beginning and end points, off of Route 50 near South Lake Tahoe, and I-80 near Truckee. I looked at my calendar and found a quiet weekend late in September, and talked to my boss about taking the Thursday and Friday off from work.

My preparation for the trip was minimal, as my attention to preparing for the trip vied with my attention to my family and my job. There was also the onset of a certain, insidious form of complacency over the intervening years between this and the longer trek in Oregon. I looked back on who I was during the Oregon trek fondly but a little dismissively, as a much younger man, still a kid in many ways, who knew hardly anything about some of the most important aspects of life. I assumed that my seven additional years of experience would make me naturally better prepared for this trek, and because it was so much shorter than what I had attempted in Oregon, how much could preparation matter anyway? 

Well, that complacency colored the hike right from the start. I set off from Echo Lake on Wednesday afternoon, and soon realized that I would have to make camp much earlier than I had planned, because of a late start caused by some last minute demands at work, and the fact that I had less daylight to work with than I was used to from the Oregon trek, which had been in July, with the sun now setting before 7 p.m. I made camp high above Tamarack Lake as the sun went down, and after dinner I mixed the last six ounces of my water with some whey powder, and shrugged that off, figuring I could make my way down to the lake first thing in the morning to replenish the water supply. Waking up before dawn, I only found the lake after a long oblivious route through the darkness, and as I made breakfast with my legs already a bit tired, with the sun already on its way up and reminding me that I could have been hiking already if I had just brought more water when I started, I first started to rethink my attitude toward the earlier trek and the person I had been then. Back then, how had I avoided being caught short of water? Why was I making the mistake now, as an older and supposedly wiser man?

The next morning, it became clear to me that I also could have prepared better in terms of gear. My appreciation of a tender sunrise scene at mirror-like Middle Velma Lake, as rich morning light brought the lakeside trees to life, with a few birds gently breaking the perfect silence as the air warmed and brightened, was dulled by frustration as I dealt with a slowly pumping water purifier whose ceramic filter was becoming clogged faster than on the Oregon trip because, with not one creek or spring running, it had been pumping liter after liter of dirtier lake water. I had known that my main source of water would be lakes, so why hadn’t I thought to bring an extra filter, or at least a practical way to use the iodine tablets that I had bought at the last minute as a backup plan in Tahoe City? I wonder now what the pictures would look like, and the words in my journal would sound like, if I had just brought an extra filter and thus freed my mind at that moment to focus on the camera and notebook.