Sun. August 21      Miles today: 20.4         Total so far: 1,721.5         Sierras Section H

We woke up at 5:00 am to find our tarp in a pool of moonlight in the thick forest where we’d camped.  It made getting up and packing a LOT easier!  The moon was still high as we started down the trail, and the mountains all around were beautiful in the early morning light.  We climbed steadily toward Glen Pass, stopping for breakfast along the way, and admiring Lake Charlotte below the trail.

Then the PCT turned west, and the serious climbing began.  The trail was steep and rocky.  Sometimes there were stone stairs and sometimes we were just walking over rocks and boulders.  It was grueling, but there were pretty little wildflowers along the way to make things easier.  Eventually we reached the lake just below the pass, and after more rough, rocky switchbacks, we were at the top of Glen Pass.  There were great views to the north and to the south! 

Then came down, down, a horribly steep, rough trail.  Downhills like this are slow going for me, but I still felt sorry for all the people we met who were puffing their way UP.  Everybody is heading south, and only doing the John Muir Trail, not the PCT.  But finally we were down off the awful rocks, and reached lovely Rae Lakes. The water is so clear that you can see the trout!  The only hard part is the creek between the lakes–it’s deep and roaring and the only way across is a sort of log jumble.  I had heard about this crossing, and figured, “If everybody else can do it, I can do it, too!”  Actually, it turned out to be not bad.

Now we had many more miles of downhill (for a net elevation losss of 4,000 feet since the top of the pass) through a fine green valley with lots of lakes.  Thee were also LOTS of hikers, camping!  We had another tricky creek crossing and a short time later, stopped for lunch.  I have to say that every time we stop for a meal, repacking is made tough by having to stow bear cans in a way that they won’t fall out of or off of our packs.  I can see why the SOBOs we bought them from were so happy to get rid of them!

The valley became more rocky, but instead of boulders and gravel, it was now wide slabs of granite that were MUCH nicer to hike on!  When we were almost at the botom of the valley, near a junction where we would turn east, we saw down the canyon to the west a sight no hiker ever wants to se–a forest fire!  It looked like it had just started, and we were glad to be going the OTHER way!  But first, we had fun crossing a sort of mini-Golden Gate bridge–a cute suspension bridge made of wood and wire.  Only one person at a time may cross, and it does SWAY!  But what beautiful engineering!

Now we began a 4,000 foot CLIMB up to Pinchot Pass.  For several miles, the trail followed rushing, roaring, cascading Woods Creek.  Bill and I were joking, “Wonder if anyone ever kayaked THAT whitewater?”  Off to the right, we got great views of the valley we’d just come down.  The hike up was not bad, because the trail followed a pattern of go up, level off, go up, level off, through a variety of scenery.  There were lots of side creeks, too, very pretty.  As we turned around to look west, the smoke from the fire was much worse.  Several times we met southbound JMT-ers who were anxiously eyeing all the smoke ahead, and we were able to reassure them that the JMT would turn off before going into the canyon where the fire was. 

Eventually we were well above timberline, and headed for the pass, hoping to get across it before making camp.  But we were just short of the top when the sun went down, and not knowng what lay on the other side, we had to stop.  We were at about 12,000 feet elevation.  The “alpenglow” was fabulous to watch as we set up our tarp and prepared for a cold night, and boy, was I glad that there was no chance of the forest fire reaching us–we were among rocks!  We put on lots of layers before crawling into our sleeping bags.

Sat. Aug. 20    Miles today: 21         Total so far: 1,701.1            Sierras Section H

Our 10,300 foot elevation campsite in Crabtree Meadows was a bit chilly–it was 31 degrees this morning. Brrrr!  We hurried to start, because today we would climb Forester Pass, the highest point on the PCT.   Early on, we met a deer by the trail, who seemed very curious about us! The mountains all around were glowing with sunrise light–very pretty, but we had to climb out of the valley before we could find any warm “sunpatch” to stop and eat breakfast. 

The trail entered a very rocky area that made for slow going, but finally we reached green, well-watered Wallace Creek, which is hard to cross in early season, but we could cross on easy steppingstones.  The higher we went,the bigger the mountains, but there were still places with grass and wildflowers to soften the effect of all those rocks.  Up we went, to the Bighorn Plateau, with a last look back at Mt. Whitney.  A short time later we had our first view of Forester Pass.  But just ahead was what the guidebook called “a formidable ford” of Tyndall Creek.  I was worried till I saw the crossing–it was just steppingstones again!  Whew!

Now it was basically a nice gradual climb up toward Forester Pass.  We stopped for a spaghetti lunch with a view, then continued the climb.  Now we were at 11,200 feet.  We saw a couple of fat marmots, and passed some lakes and waterfalls, until we were at the base of the pass.  Looking up, we could visually see NO way to tell HOW we would get up the CLIFF betwen us and the top.  But we kept going, and then there it was–the first switchback of MANY that literally do lift you up the cliff. 

“This is it!” we said, and set ourselves to climb.  As we got higher, we got views of the lake below, and even met a beautiful coppercolored horse and its very polite rider.  But once we were halfway up, I stopped having fun.  For me (not Bill), the trail became scarier and scarier.  The footway became very narrow, it was covered with slippery “ball-bearing rocks”, and the dropoff over the side–well, I tried hard not to look at it.  Telling myself that a HORSE had just come safely down didn’t help.  I got scared-er and scared-er, and really slowed down.  Bill charged ahead, eager to reach the top, so I did get one picture of him crossing in front of the famous snow patch near the top of the pass.  Finally even I was ALMOST there, but to my dismay, the last few switchbacks were very short and tight, and had a HUGE dropoff.  I stopped short, huffing and puffing and also praying, “Please, Lord, help me do this last bit!”   Just as I did at Goat Rocks in Washington, I MADE myself keep putting one foot in front of the other, till I made it all the way. 

Up top was Bill, happily chatting with a young couple from New York, who were doing the John Muir Trail.  They took a picture of us at the top.  It was hard to believe we were at 13,180 feet!  A favorite thru-hiker cheer at this point is, “Downhill to Canada!” but we’d already been to Canada, so we had to make it “Downhill to Ashland!”  Down the north side of the pass were several miles of switchbacks,, some of them down a ridgetop (fortunately a nice WIDE one–not like at Goat Rocks!)  There was another pretty lake in the valley below the pass on this side, too, and finally we were down into the valley, which was rocky at first, but finally much greener, so we stopped there for supper, where I enjoyed the flowers.

On into the late afternoon, we headed into Vidette Meadows, passing another fearless, curious deer by the trail.  But then we began to be concerned.  As we went down into the valley, we passed more and more RECENTLY snapped and uprooted trees, which sometimes totally blocked the trail and forced us to detour around them.  In the midst of the mess, we had a sudden and horrendous realization:

   “This damage happened in last Sunday’s terrible storm.  IF OUR RESUPPLY BOX HAD BEEN ON TIME in Tehachapi, WE WOULD HAVE BEEN HERE DURING THE STORM, and we would have been in an awful situation.”

Note: we found out later that several people had died near Vidette Meadows as a result of lightning strikes during the storm, even though they “did everything right”.  We could have been among them.

Finding a place to camp was frustrating, because there were so many people camped in the Vidette Meadows area, and they were all cooking dinner.  Yikes!  Every bear within 100 miles would be coming to pay a visit!  But the sun was just about down, and there was not enough daylight to get far enough away, so we found a spot near one of the bear boxes and set up our tarp.  Leaving our bear cans by the tarp, I carried the food bags over to the bear box, but when I opened it, I was horrified to find it almost full of other people’s BEAR CANS!  The whole idea of a bear can is that it keeps your food safe, and you don’t need a bear box!  But I managed to squeeze in our food bags. (They were a lot smaller now; most of our remaining food did fit in our bear cans.)

Before going to sleep, we fervently thanked God for delaying us so long in Tehachapi so that we would be safe.  And when I added up our miles, we cheered, because we were across the 1,700 mile mark!  And we’d negotiated Forester Pass, too–the first big pass in the Sierras, and made it across Wallace Creek and Tyndall Creek with no problems.  We had a lot to be thankful for!  We went to sleep with our bear cans next to us and trek poles ready to whop bears with if any of them came around, but had no problems at all.