9/11 - 9/18 Mile 702.2 - Mile 788.9 Total PCT miles hiked: 1554.8
Dustin and I spent a few days resting at his mom’s house near Sacramento, California. I tried to move as little as possible. I ate almost a gallon of strawberry ice cream. I took two showers. I slept and slept and slept and slept. Then we drove seven hours to Kennedy Meadows, the closest access point to the beginning of the Sierra. I could have gone back to Tehachapi and hiked the miles between Kennedy Meadows and Tehachapi, but I’ll be honest: they’re awful miles. I don’t know if there is even water in critical places because the report hasn’t been updated. It is consistently over 100 degrees there. I felt that it would be irresponsible of me to attempt that alone during a time when few other hikers will be in that section. I decided that in the time I have left on trail, I would rather spend it enjoying myself, seeing as many beautiful things as I could with a friend. So I decided to go to Kennedy Meadows with Dustin. If I feel like it, I’ll go back to Kennedy Meadows later and walk south to Tehachapi. If I don’t feel like it, I don’t. Hiking from that standpoint feels much better than being militant about hiking every mile during a year that I’ve had to jump around due to fire and snow anyway. When we got to Kennedy Meadows, I walked into the general store and picked up my boxes. There were two other hikers on the porch and we sat and talked with them for a while. I had seen pictures and videos of this porch in June and July when it was crowded with hikers who clapped for everyone who walked up. People stayed here for days, sometimes even a week celebrating the end of the desert. We sat on the porch, cooked pots of food and watched clouds gather over the surrounding mountains, lighting flickering over them. It felt so enchanting to be back in the desert. I missed all those dry, tough, beautiful plants, their bright flowers singing out against smooth browns and light greens and grays of the rest of the desert. I packed my bear can (which didn’t fit close to all of my food), shoved the rest of my food into my normal food bag, and put everything back in my pack. It was staggeringly heavy with my extra warm layers and all this food, plus the bear can itself which weighs two pounds. I found some foam from an old sleeping pad to put under my pack straps to stop them from digging into my shoulders. I pitched my tent as it began to sprinkle outside and crawled in. It was still warm out, and I laid naked on top of my sleeping bag and watched lightning flicker through my tent fly, the light still present but muted a little. I thought about how excited I was to be back here, how relieved, how still and calm and I felt in the simplicity of all this. I thought of an Edward Abbey passage that has always inspired me as my eyelids grew heavy. I’m going to list it at the end of this post. We were up at six and walking off into the cool desert morning by 7:15. My nose was stuffy all day and I felt like I had a cold. The sand felt nice underfoot but by lunch the back of my knee ached. We had already climbed 2500 feet with our heavy packs. We had also taken about seven days off so our bodies weren’t quite where we left off with them in Washington. We descended into desert meadows and climbed back up again through sandy, exposed hills. Clouds rolled over, some puffy and white and others dark gray and ominous. After beginning a steeper section of the climb my knee began to hurt badly. Dustin caught up with me and we agreed to camp a mile and a half short of where we had planned, for an 18.5 mile day instead of 20. I slowly made my way to the campsite, a flat little patch of tiny beige gravel on a giant slab of rock. I staked out my tent with rocks because the ground was so hard. I eagerly drank water and cooked my dinner, got ready for bed and into my sleeping bag as soon as possible. I was so exhausted from the day. I slept fitfully, strange and stressful dreams waking me up every few hours. At six when my alarm went off it was still a bit dark. The days are getting noticeably shorter now, the sun setting about an hour earlier. I made hot oatmeal and coffee and relished in the few minutes of warmth it gave me. I drank the coffee with my raincoat over my knees like a blanket. We started walking a bit after that up a steep incline into the day, already growing warm. We ascended just a little, then descended the next five miles to our lunch spot. The miles of descent flew by at such high altitude. Climbing is painfully slow around 10,000 feet, the air thin and with a heavy pack the work is tough. We ate lunch with a couple from England. I put too much water in my dehydrated refried beans and they came out all liquidy but I ate them anyway. After lunch was a tough climb in the sun. The sun up this high is so strong. The tendinitis in my ankle began to twinge and eventually turned into an ache with occasional sharp pain. This is on the opposite leg from my knee pain. Every step hurt. I was exhausted from having a cold. I had a mini nuclear meltdown. I got to a beautiful lookout where there was service and looked up flights home. I dealt with it and kept hiking, toying with the thought in my mind. The pain felt less terrible when the climb evened out. I got to camp and felt better, pitching my tent and cooking my dinner and laughing a little bit. I decided I would sleep on quitting, let the next few days play out and see how my body adapted or didn’t. There are about 53 miles between the next town and I, but they’re some of the toughest miles on trail with the highest elevation gains. I woke up and felt my cold stewing in my head. I was tired even after so many hours of rest. I put on lots of clothes and boiled water in the cold morning. I ate oatmeal and made coffee and felt a little better. I was hiking around 8. We had a short day today which I was happy about. The first ten miles went by pretty quickly as we climbed a bit on bright, rocky hillsides. We had lunch at a little spring called Poison Spring which is always a great name for a water source. I tried to take a nap but even with multiple layers on I was cold. We were up at about 10,000 feet at that point. Military planes flew over us and the sound was so roaring and close. After lunch we climbed some more, ascending to the highest elevation I’ve been yet, 11,000 feet, to camp at Chicken Spring Lake. Just before the lake, the mountains opened into a beautiful meadow framed by big rocky peaks, the boulders on top looking like they were just placed there, like they could topple any second. The sun was so bright up here. I followed a trail to the lake and found a campsite among some large granite boulders. I looked out onto the lake, rippling in the strong wind. I filtered water and set up my tent slowly in the wind. We had gotten to camp early so I planned to pass the time drinking a lot of water and sitting before going to bed. I woke up sometime in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep. I let my brain go to this dangerous place that houses everything I love about my life back in Richmond. I entertained this poisonous thought of buying a plane ticket in Bishop and being back there in less than a week. I felt ecstatic. All of the emotions running through me kept me awake for four hours. Beneath all of it was this feeling of being so utterly done. It was like every thought I had thought into the ground, every embarrassing moment I had rehashed while walking; there was a common denominator among them–that done feeling. I think I’ve talked about the three types of fun (type 1 fun = fun in the moment, type 2 fun = fun in retrospect, type 3 fun = not fun at all but you’re doing something so it’s fun, right?), and I fabricated from that the three types of done: -Type 1 done = saying you’re done but you can be easily talked back into doing what you said you were done with -Type 2 done = you’re really done unless one of several key variables/circumstances changes completely, convincing you to keep doing what you said you were done doing, -Type 3 done = no matter how great something becomes, no matter what circumstances change completely, you’re done. you’ve decided. In Tehachapi, I was type 2 done. Now I was Type 3 done. I could feel the done in my bones. Under every ounce of happiness that thinking about my home life created, that done feeling whispered “it’s time to be finished with this.” When I woke up I stared at my rain fly, the sun illuminating my tent like a tiny lantern. I thought about how there really wasn’t any way I could finish this season, there were too many miles left, I didn’t have that kind of money, I would probably claw out my own eyes if I waited that long to go home (I did the math, if I hiked all the miles it would take me about 40-45 more days). The most mundane thoughts about home made me happy, things like getting a job, going back to school in January, cooking food on a real stove with full size cooking utensils, taking a bath, going for a run and taking a shower after, walking to a bakery wearing clean clothes and sitting there to write in my journal. Finally I got my morning together, got out of my tent, started making breakfast and told Dustin that I wanted to go home in Bishop. I poured water into my pot and tiny slivers of ice floated around inside. He was a little taken aback but he understood. I cried a little. I don’t really know why. I guess it was because I had to say things like, “I don’t want to be here anymore,” and feel the sting of their truth against the beauty of that “here”–Chicken Spring Lake glistening behind me in the frigid morning against those huge, pale-gray peaks. After breakfast I hiked and it’s all kind of a blur. I was exhausted again all day. I climbed a lot, the sun was hot and bright and I was cold again. We ate lunch at a shady little campsite by a river. We talked about how maybe I shouldn’t hike Mount Whitney tomorrow–it might make me more sick. It will be a day of steep climbing and long miles for such elevation gain, and the day after that we’ll have to hike Forrester Pass, the highest point on the PCT, and it will similarly be a long-mileage day. I felt on the fence about it. When I got to camp, even more exhausted, and I could see Whitney from there, I felt even more on the fence about it. I decided I would see how I slept and make the call in the morning. It was such an amazing opportunity. Here I was at the foot of the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states and it would be my last three days on trail. When would I be here again with these hiking legs? I was coughing up yellow mucus, I had pneumonia a year ago and was now more susceptible to getting it again, I was so tired, there were so many reasons not to do it and so many reasons to just hike the thing. We watched a herd of ponies wander into the meadow by our camp, one of them with a bell around its neck. Two bucks wandered into the meadow from the other direction. I filtered water and Dustin sat on the bank of the creek. I whispered “fight” as the bucks and the ponies stared at each other, kind of sizing each other up. Dustin laughed. Not long after, a man in jeans, a plaid shirt and a cowboy hat, carrying a lasso, walked into the meadow. He saw us and said “I lost one of my horses, which way did the herd come from?” We pointed to a stand of trees on one side of the meadow. He waved thanks and led the horses back that way. We ate dinner and the evening grew chilly. I crawled into my tent wondering if I could get some decent sleep. I would have done just about anything for nyquil or even just a mucinex or something. I slept like a rock and was up at six and getting ready to attempt Whitney. My tent fly was covered in a thin layer of ice. Dustin and I decided to slack pack it, so we left our tents set up with everything we didn’t need inside and started walking around 7. The first few miles were easy terrain with a few tricky stream crossings. We could have just waded through them but the water was freezing, we both only had one pair of socks, and I knew if I had wet feet all day I would get blisters. we were able to cross on logs for the first one, but after that all of the logs people had obviously used for crossing were covered in glimmering ice. We walked up and downstream and eventually found good places to cross on rocks. After that we came upon a junction with a bin of wag bags to use for Mt. Whitney (if you had a permit for the east side, which we both did). A wag bag is a bag to poop in. It’s a ziploc bag with another bag inside and inside and a sheet of thin plastic. You poop on the plastic, put it in the innermost bag (which contains a special powder that makes your poop decompose faster), and put that bag in the outermost bag. Then you take your poop with you. The bags even have a little handle like a shopping bag. Every time I look at one, I imagine someone walking down the street looking really chipper and carrying nothing but a wag bag by that little handle. We each took one just in case and hiked on. We arrived at Guitar Lake around 1pm. It’s shaped like a guitar. Surprise surprise. It’s really beautiful and surrounded by towering gray mountains, their peaks all pointy and jagged. Guitar Lake is just above tree line and the area around it is semi-grassy and filled with all these giant boulders that have fallen off the mountains above. Marmots waddled around eating plants. Water flowed along parts of the trail, shallow streams that made the whole meadow feel like it was spring even though it was on the verge of fall. As I walked through the meadow towards a stream I felt the ground tip beneath me. I had never experienced dizziness like that without nausea. The meadow is at about 11,400 feet. I hoped the altitude sickness wouldn’t keep me from summiting Whitney. I sat down for a bit and then was fine. We filtered water and started climbing the steep switchbacks. I can’t remember the last time I was so out of breath. The air was so thin and only got thinner. I had to stop every other switchback and catch my breath. My heart was beating so fast. We stopped a mile shy of the summit to eat lunch. It was a Saturday so the trail was crowded, which I didn’t really mind, but someone was asleep on the plaque that marks the summit of Whitney. It irritated me. Some men on the summit talked loudly about how many marathons they had run, how much crossfit they did, about how they “used to think altitude sickness was for pussies until they hiked Mount Whitney.” Dustin and I couldn’t deal with any of them anymore and booked it down the mountain, irritated. We imitated them for about ten minutes and then decided they weren’t worth spending time talking about at all. Storm clouds rolled in and we hiked faster, zooming down all the switchbacks, past guitar lake and the meadow and the streams and all of it. I was so tired. I was that kind of sick tired when you can feel the sick behind your eyes and your nose feels really heavy. I made dinner as the sun set, and shivered my way through filtering water and cleaning up and got into my sleeping bag as fast as I could. I was slow waking up and leaving camp. I savored my hot coffee in the cold dawn. I hiked out around 7:30, mentally preparing myself for the long day of climbing ahead. I had Forrester Pass to tackle today, a 13,200 foot notch in what would probably be a huge wall of mountains. As I climbed higher along the sandy trail the sun felt stronger against my skin. It felt good to be warm after shuffling around packing up my tent covered in ice again. I listened to an interview on the news about climate change, about a group of youth suing the federal government for their right to life, liberty and property, claiming that failing to mitigate climate change infringes upon their right to live in a world where they can live as generations before them have, it could actually begin killing us off. I thought about this for a long time. I thought about friends of mine in their thirties who ache to have children and won’t because of how scared they are of the world becoming uninhabitable in that future child’s lifetime. I thought about how much I had seen the effects of climate change play out before me as I spent the last four months outside: the little pieces of ash from the giant fire in southern Washington falling on my tent, the fire that jumped the Columbia River, causing 150 hikers to be evacuated because it spread so fast, all the fires in California, the drought in Washington, the record-shattering heat in every state I had walked through, the record-breaking snow that had fallen this winter. A few hikers died in that snow. Two PCT hikers died trying to cross rivers still at flood stage from that snow in July. That was just here, just my bubble. Irma and Harvey and Jose and all the other storms to come are proof of this escalating change other places. What will things be like in ten years? I have wondered many times if people will be able to hike this trail, or others like it, in the future? Will the weather window become obsolete? Will conditions be too harsh for humans to navigate? Dustin and I ate lunch by Tyndall Creek and laid our tents out to dry. I sat in the warm sun and ate my last tortilla, all shredded up from being slept on and sat on and carted around for the past six days, with beans and cheese and taco bell hot sauce all mixed up in my pot. It was great. We crossed the creek and kept climbing, making our way into a sweeping meadow just above tree line. Lakes sparkled in the sun. Wispy strands of clouds hung in the sky. Peaks surrounded the meadow far away, gray and rocky. The climbing continued as we reached another boulder-filled meadow, similar to guitar lake yesterday. We were greeted by more lakes, streams flowing in the middle of the trail over rocks that were speckled burgundy and brown and purple and pale pink. The sun felt so strong. We were around 12,000 feet when we stopped for water at a swollen stream, an outlet from an alpine lake. We were at the base of Forrester. It was huge above us and we could see the tiny shapes of people climbing the switchbacks to the pass. We climbed a mile up and I stopped for a while to look out over all the trail I had just walked. The lakes glistened as the wind swept ripples over the water, making the light of the sun dance around. The switchbacks were steep and difficult with a full pack, but we reached the top of the pass around 4pm. It was cold and windy and bright. The mountains on the other side were different. This was the boundary of King’s Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park. The mountains before us were pale beige and powerful gray, very pointy and geometric. Dustin and I sat at the pass for a bit and then began our descent to camp. We got to our site around 6, set up our tents and cooked dinner. I ate ramen with the last of my dehydrated refried beans mixed in and some hot sauce. It was great. I ran around trying to get all my bedtime chores done as I shivered in the cold evening. The sunset next to me was pink and cloudy behind a giant peak. This would be my last dinner on trail. That decision was still firm in my mind. My trip would end on such a high note. I climbed two really tall mountains while being sick and dealing with tendinitis. At seven days, this would be my longest stretch out between resupplies. I felt good. I still wanted to go home. A sense of closure had settled upon me today, somewhere around the top of Forrester. That Edward Abbey quote you’ll read soon swirled around in my head. Also I’ve included some info about Mt. Whitney and Forrester Pass in case you were curious. The morning was freezing. My bear canister was covered in ice. I made breakfast and started walking into a day full of complex emotion. I was so happy to be done. The hike up Kearsarge Pass to get down into the town of Bishop was steep and difficult. Once I began descending to the other side the miles flew by. I reached the parking lot at the Onion Valley Trailhead and felt an overwhelming sense of relief to be done. A couple of British nurses on a road trip around the US gave us a ride to Independence. After that a surveyor gave us a ride almost an hour away to the town of Bishop. We checked into the hostel and ate a burger. The next day Dustin hiked out with Hats, who we had met a few weeks ago in Stehekin.
About Mt. Whitney: The Mt. Whitney summit is the highest point in the lower 48 states. It is also a terminus of the John Muir Trail. To the east the town of Lone Pine, the Alabama Hills, and the Inyo Mountains are visible. To the south there is a view of the “Needle Peaks,” visible on the final push up Whitney, Day Needle and Keeler Needle. Mount Muir is visible as well. As one walks around the peak, views of the High Sierra Nevada range can be seen. The Sierra Nevada extends 300 miles through California. The mountains in the range are composed of granite and metamorphic rock uplifted from beneath the sea approximately 40 to 60 million years ago, with a rapid rise in the last several million years. The fractured rock featured on Mt. Whitney is the result of the freeze-thaw cycle. After water seeps into the cracks of rocks, it freezes, expands, and breaks the rocks apart.
About Forrester Pass: At 13,200 feet in elevation, Forrester Pass is the highest point on the Pacific Crest Trail, and the first of the major passes that a northbound hiker must cross. The pass is named after a group of forest service personnel who found the pass in 1929.
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.” -Edward Abbey















