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.