The birds started singing really early this morning–it was nice to hear them!  The PCT in the Sierras is up so high most of the time that there really aren’t many birds.  It was great to hear that early morning “choir sing”.  Unfortunately, last night, all night, we were subjected to the “other” choir–mosquito whines.  There were plenty of them, and we’d been too tired to set up the net tent, so I got pretty well chewed up, and didn’t get much sleep.  Oh well–“On to Carson Pass!” we said as we hit the trail this morning, thinking it would be an easy cruise to breakfast at the visitor center.

Nope! The trail had other ideas. It had a lot of uphill (puff! pant!) and a number of icy snowfields to cross. Bill chopped steps for me with the ice axe.  I’d been thinking about getting shed of the ice axe at Echo Lake, but seeing so much snow, I started to be concerned about Dick’s Pass up above Tahoe.  “I think I’ll keep the ice axe awhile longer,”  I decided.  Some of the snowfields we encountered this morning were small enough that we could go around them, slipping and sliding on steep scree.  I’d rather slip ‘n slide on scree than on hard, icy snow!  But there was compensation–wildflowers of every color, glowing in the early morning light.  Beautiful!  I tried to take photos of them, but no camera can do justice to such amazing light.

The closer you get to Carson Pass, the better the trail, and the views are wonderful. When we reached the visitor center it was 7:30  am, but the volunteers were already there.  Last time we arrived here, the volunteers practically fell over themselves offering us fresh fruit, etc.  This pair, an older husband & wife, told us that yes, they did have fruit, etc., but we would have to wait till they finished setting up everything at the center.  No problem–we settled down at the picnic table to eat our usual breakfast of granola & freezedried fruit.

Then another set of volunteers arrived.  They took one look at us and said, “PCT thruhikers!!  Howsit going?  Want some fruit?” and before we knew it, the picnic table was laden with peaches, bananas, cherries and sodas.  Yum, yum!  And just then, a bunch of other thruhikers popped out of the woods, so we were all sitting there feasting, and VERY grateful to the Carson Pass volunteers!  Everybody was on a tear to get to Echo Lake.  Trouble & Dude are determined to make it by 2 pm, and all the rest of us are saying, “Oh, whatever!  All we care is that we’ll get there sometime today.”

One of the volunteers had mentioned that “When you get to the top of the climb out of here, you’ll get your  first view of Lake Tahoe”.  And yes indeed, there it was–blue, blue Tahoe!  Beautiful! Wildflowers were everywhere, and lots of dayhikers with their very happy dogs.  The trail took us down into what I call “Ponderosa Meadows”, complete with rustic ranch buildings and lots of creek crossings.  One of them was the Truckee River, but I’m not sure which one–there were so many!  There was still snow on all the mountains around us, and when the trail climbed back up again, sure enough, we were dealing with snow once more–nothing very bad, but it did slow me down.  It was a very warm day, and I was glad whenever we got to some shade.  There were big piled-up thunderclouds to the east, and after awhile, we began to hear the sound of thunder, but didn’t see any lightning. 

My sore right ankle was feeling much better, which was very encouraging!.  Eventually we began “the big downhill” to Echo Sno-Park. I remembered this from 2005 as horribly rough and rocky– and it still is. For me, that means very slow going. Sigh. But we made it, and did enjoy the views of Lake Tahoe on the way down. Even though the trail is very rocky, it  is very pretty and green.  Finally we were back “on the flat”, walking along near the snow park, and I was just commenting to Bill, “Well, we’re almost to Highway 50, but it’s still a ways to Echo Lake,” when oh no!  I twisted my sore ankle AGAIN on a little rock in the otherwise smooth trail.  It really hurt!  From that point on, I was limping badly and yelping  when the ankle bent even a little bit.  I was really bummed about it.  At the parking lot near the highway, we saw Granite and Terrapin trying to “yogi” a ride from dayhikers.  We told them it was often easier to get a ride down to South Lake Tahoe from Echo Lake Resort, and they said  they might do that if they had no luck at the snow park.  On we went, me limping badly, as the PCT spent quite some time parallelling Highway 50.  Once we’d crossed the highway, it was another 1.5 miles to Echo Lake, and it was obvious that Bill was itching to get there.  So I told him, “Go for it–I’ll get there when I can,” and he soon disappeared into the woods. 

By now it was a very hot afternoon, and I was sweaty, hurting and pretty miserable.  What if the ankle turned out to be serious enough to force me to stop hiking?  Since I was all by myself, I did sniffle a bit and did ask God to please help me be brave and please help the ankle to recover.  By the time I got to Echo Lake, I was more or less a wreck.  I saw Bill–he’d picked up our resupply box–but all I could think was “Cold drinks!”  I mumbled something at Bill about “See you in a minute” and headed straight into the store to buy a pink grapefruit juice and an orange juice.  Then I sort of staggered back outside and collapsed on the picnic bench where a number of hikers were gathered.  I did nothing for awhile but steadily sip the cold juice.  Oh man, did it taste good!!

Finally I felt recovered enough to chat with the other hikers.  Most of them were busy “spiffing” to make themselves presentable enough to hitch rides into town.  All the other hikers are much younger than we are–they were full of vim and vigor, and talking excitedly about the buffets and casinos of South Lake Tahoe.  Bill and I went down there in 2005, and though it was nice to rest in a motel and eat at the buffets, we had agreed it wasn’t worth the bother of getting there and back.  The two Israeli girls, Noga and Shani, hung around for a long time, talking to people.  When they decided to get an ice cream shake, they had a hard time deciding what flavor to choose out of the HUGE menu of possibilities.  They finally went for fresh raspberry, and said it was really good! 

Bill and I got two huge, fantastic sandwiches, and went to sit and eat in the shade at the side of the store.  Leaning on the wall, we ate and discussed what to do next.  The post office was closed, and would not reopen till 11 am tomorrow. We had bear cans to mail home, but Bill did not want to wait around that long. With my very sore ankle, I DID want to wait.  In the end, though, I told Bill I’d talk to the store people and see if there was a way to mail the bear cans today.  It took some doing, but finally I was able to talk to the store manager, who also runs the post office, and she agreed to take the bear cans!  So we loaded the cans with our Microspikes and Yak Trax, and waved them GOODBYE!  Two old ladies were sitting and eating ice cream by the post office window, and I had to explain to them why we were so happy to get rid of those strange black cans!

I made one last try at persuading Bill to camp at Echo Lake (I was thinking about how nice it would be to just camp now and get a good rest before starting early in the morning, but he was very determined to hike on.  So I sat in the shade (it was still hot) sorting food into the food bags.  Then I got one more cold juice drink before we hit the trail again at 6 pm.  I was worried about where on earth we could camp.  There are cabins all along the lake for quite a distance.  But when we started hiking, I was very pleased to discover that my sore ankle felt MUCH better.  I guess the 3+ hours of rest had really helped!  

The walk around Echo Lake is so pretty, and it was especially beautiful in the evening light.  We made it almost all the way past the lake before the sun went down, and at that point, we snuck off the trail into a flat place surrounded by bushes, to set up a stealth camp.  We could hear the boats on the lake and the dogs in the cabins barking, but nobody knew where we were, except the mosquitoes!   We set up the net tent so we could sleep in peace.  I was desperately tired, and the thought of another night with mosquitoes chewing on me was just too much.  Hooray for the net tent!  And there was a beautiful sunset.  I lay in my sleeping bag and listened to the voices of evening hikers going by on the trail, and thought about how great it was that tomorrow, I’ll be able to carry a much lighter pack. 

Walk to Rauros:  High wolds of the Brown Lands, Gollum grows more daring

  Bill and I had a really good night’s sleep last night, and commented as we were packing up this morning, “You know, that’s the first campsite we’ve had in quite awhile where we weren’t within sound of rushing water!”  And we hadn’t gone far this morning, when whom should we meet heading SOBO but Wyoming! We had not seen her for weeks. Turns out that she and some friends had flipped up to Ashland and were headed south. It was great to see her!  Wyoming said that as it turned out, they may not have saved themselves much “snow grief”, because the Siskyous, Marbles and Trinities were full of snow AND lots of blowdowns on the trail, which made for awfully tough going.  We were so relieved to see she was OK!

We reached Ebbett’s Pass just as a sweet old guy came driving by.  He stopped his car to talk to us, and we told him about hiking the PCT.  He was fascinated, and wished us well before heading on.   There was a sign beside the trail at the road which said there was a trail angel 300 yards to the west, so we walked up to check it out, hoping for maybe a nice breakfast??   But no luck.  There was no sign of anybody. 

 So we headed back to the PCT and started out on what I call “The Vulcan Geology Walk.” For miles we walked along the base of a row of amazing volcanic pinnacles and domes. We could see the Carson valley in the distance– the wildflowers were awesome.  Eventually the trail turned left and headed right through the volcanics and into a land of what I can only call “pumice hills”, where there were still some snow traverses to do on northfacing hillsides.  We were leapfrogging with Granite and Terrapin most of the day.

As the morning went on, it became increasingly hot, and we were very glad that the trail sometimes wound through dark groves of huge trees, where the shade was very welcome!  But in the afternoon, the PCT settled into a long uphill winding through big boulders in a forest with no views till finally we were out in the open again, walking through open pumice fields, around a peak called “The Nipple”, with a stiff wind blowing.   My right ankle began to ache very badly from all the rocky trail, so when we stopped for supper in the lee of a single gnarly tree, I took some Motrin to help.

But sore ankle and gusty wind could not take away from the fact that our views of the Blue Lakes down below were awesome. We finally reached the top of the climb, and of course there were more snowfields to cross as we went down, but they weren’t too bad.  Good!  Trying to walk on snow with a sore ankle isn’t fun!  When we were still up fairly high, we met Terrapin filtering water from a creek by the trail.  She said she and Granite had stopped for the day, and that they’d located “marginal” camping in the trees nearby.  She said there was room for us, too, but Bill wanted to keep going and camp lower down.  Despite taking 2 Motrin, my ankle was really bothering me, so I was sort of limping along behind Bill as best I could.   

We kept on going till we found a nice quiet spot in a little grove of trees, with a tolerable mosquito level.  “I think I shall call today ‘Lava Day’, ”  I said.  “We sure have been in the lava!  And the best wildflower display yet, too!”  Actually, this section of the trail after Ebbett’s Pass really is very beautiful and interesting, with its gnarly trees, awesome flowers of every color, lava formations and beautiful lakes.  But I was also thinking, “Echo Lake tomorrow!  No more bear cans!”

Walk to Rauros:  Boromir grows increasingly anxious, Gollum is spotted with a log

No mosquitoes last night! And none till this afternoon! And for a good several hours this morning, the trail just cruised along through gorgeous scenery. It was a total joy to be hiking on such a morning! I was thinking, “Wow! At this rate we might make 27 miles!”

We spent a good while this morning walking along the Carson River canyon.  It’s a very pretty place–very forested, but with occasional open spots where the views were wonderful. And the trail was easy, too.  But alas, all good things do come to an end.  The PCT made a left turn and began to seriously CLIMB!  From that point on, it felt as if we were climbing for the whole rest of the day (not really true–there were some downhills!).  But what makes uphills hard for us is that our packs are so heavy with the bear cans, ice axe, etc.  Bill and I are SO looking forward to getting back to  “regular ol’ base weight”.

But uphill grind or not, there is no denying that the scenery was gorgeous–what a mixture of granitic and volcanic!  You can be walking along a trail that winds through big granite boulders, then suddenly you’re on pumice-y stuff, or looking at what’s obviously a volcano.  Peak 9500 is a prime example, and the PCT gets up close ‘n personal with that extinct volcano cone.  We saw other formations that looked like Devil’s Postpile.  Also amazing was the effect of the orange-colored lichen growing on the gnarly, twisted lava boulders–it made them look as if they were still molten lava!  And the higher we got, the more open the forest was, and there were stunning views of snowclad peaks all along the horizon.  Every meadow we came to was a deep, intense green, and wildflowers were everywhere.

As we were hiking along near Peak 9500, we met a whole group of Boy Scouts and their fearless leaders, taking a break beside the trail.  “Hi!” sang out one of the leaders.  “You guys want some ice cream?”   Ice cream!!??  How on earth could they possibly have ice cream?  But we weren’t about to turn down an ice cream opportunity.  “We sure do want ice cream!” I said.  “Do you have some?”   “Weeeelll, actually not,” said the leader.  “But we know where you can get some.”   “OK, where is it?”  (I had visions of maybe a trail angel up ahead at a road crossing).  “Weeelll, actually we just heard a rumor that there’s a Mc D’s up ahead a couple of miles off the trail.”   

OK, OK, so these Scouts were a bunch of practical jokers.  But that wasn’t all.  It turned out that the group we’d just been talking to was only half the Scout troop.  After we’d walked on for just a couple of minutes, we met the other half of the Scouts, hiking right along, but grinning evilly and carrying big snowballs!  We had no problem figuring out what they planned to do with those snowy missiles when they caught up with the rest of their gang.  It was actually rather tempting to turn around and follow them, just to watch the fun!

As we continued our climb, the trail unfortunately did have some issues. Periodically we went through stretches of deep woods, where snow lingered, plus every northfacing slope had plenty of snow left.  This did slow us down (my fault, as usual).  We stopped for lunch in a clump of determined trees that were clinging way up high on a sagebrushy hillside.  No mosquitoes!  We could eat in peace!  Then we spent the afternoon on a long, tiring climb up to the saddle by Tryon Peak.  There were many remnants of old cow fence–slowly rotting old posts, but no barbed wire.   There were still a few old cow pies, too.  When we reached the top of the saddle and looked down the other side, we groaned–it was northfacing, and full of snow.  The PCT headed off to the right, into a snow-piled white fir forest.  But–we could see Noble Lake down in the valley below.

 So we said “Phooey!” and went straight down, aiming at the lake, where we knew we could find the PCT again.  It worked!  We got to the lakeshore in time to eat supper, and only a few mosquitoes joined us!  Granite and Terrapin passed us while we were eating, and we were soon after them, following the long series of switchbacks down the lava field mountainside with its dramatic volcanic outcrops.

Then– oh my! The outlet creek of Noble Lake (which we had to cross) was a roaring whitewater torrent, charging all over the trail. Yikes! But we knew that Granite and Terrapin had made it through, so surely we could, too.  Bill went first, very carefully, and immediately found that though it LOOKED very roaring and impressive, it actually wasn’t deep at all.  “That wasn’t  too bad,” he said.   So I waded across without a problem.  Whew!  “Next flat place we get to, we camp!” we vowed. We were very tired.  

But after the outlet creek crossing, the trail headed up and up on more steep mountainsides–no flat places available!  I went into what I call “hike ‘n scan” mode, where I am hiking at less than full speed, while simultaneously looking everywhere for someplace with camping potential.  After a little while, I noticed a possibility up ahead and was very happy–but when we got there, oh dear!  Granite and Terrapin had beat us to it, and there was only room for them on the tiny bit of “flat”.  We waved and pushed on for awhile longer before I spotted a tiny bit of a campsite in a grove of trees perched on the rocky mountainside.  The mossies were waiting to welcome us, but Bill said,  “No putting up the net tent.  I am too tired.”  So we just threw down a cowboy camp and crawled into our sleeping bags.  We were totally wiped out.

Walk to Rauros:  Still in Brown Lands, river broadens

Well, I guess you could say today was “snow day”–lots and lots of it, including plenty of  traverses across STEEP snow on mountainsides!  But yahoo!   We made it up and over Sonora Pass, our last big pass.

Last night the mossies stayed up all night, humming around our net tent.  When I had to get up and go to “the bathroom” at 4:45 am,  they swarmed me and I got lots of bites.  Grrrr!  When it was time to pack up this morning, we had to wear full raingear plus headnets to protect ourselves from the mossie squadrons.   Well, we did expect this, having heard from other thruhiker journals that this is typical Sierras-in-July.

The hiking today began with a nice walk through the forest, then the climbing began.  The higher we went, the more the terrain opened up, and the views were increasingly gorgeous.  Not only that, but once we were up above timberline and out in the breeze–no more mosquitoes!  We began to meet other hikers, and began another day of leapfrogging with Barak and Uri, two guys from Israel. It took a bit of hunting for trail in the snow going up, but there were no steep traverses.  Everything on this side of Sonora Pass is very rounded and sort of mellow.  We took the “shortcut trail” , though, which goes straight up, and OK, that was steep, and I had the ice axe out again.  As usual, Bill just headed right up, and I was slow.  But wow, the views from the top were stupendous! Sierra peaks, all snowy, dominated the horizon to the south, and the dramatic volcanics of the Sonora Pass area were everywhere else.  Many hikers say (and I am inclined to agree) that Sonora Pass is the “best” of all the High Sierra passes.

But large snowfields were everywhere (in fact, we walked by the place where we camped in 2005, and it was covered with snow).  All the trail signs were buried.  As we started down the far side of the pass, we caught up with Uri and Barak, who were worried and frustrated.  They desperately wanted to take pictures of the spectacular scenery, but weren’t sure if their camera was working.  It seems that on the last big creek crossing (where even Bill had trouble with the current),  Uri was knocked down by the river and though he managed to swim ashore, his camera got soaked.  Mostly he and Barak were worried about the camera memory card, because it had ALL their pics starting all the way back in Campo!  So we did a test.  They took the memory card out of Uri’s camera and we put it in ours and checked to see if it was working.  Hallelujah!   It worked! Uri and Barak practically did a victory dance right there on the trail.  They were able to take pics of Sonora Pass, and everything was OK. 

Leaving a very happy Israeli duo, Bill and I headed on into the snow.  We immediately saw that  the PCT is routed (of course) to go on the shadiest, snowiest slopes. So much of today was snow traversing on (thank God!) nice snow, perfect for walking.  We met lots of people–a bunch of SOBO’s, who had skipped up to Ashland and headed south from there, to give the Sierras more time to melt.  It was fun to see them all, and an amazing sight to see so many hikers, after days of being “just us.”  Since I am slow on snow, a number of other hikers finally caught up with us–Dude & Trouble, and Granite & Terrapin.

We ate lunch hunkered down behind some stunted trees, and  that was our last meal of the day, because we both agreed that we did not want to stop and camp till we were “below snow and above mosquitoes”, as Bill put it.  By 3:15pm, we reached the road at Sonora Pass, and there was Thomas, a trail angel with carrots, water, snacks, offer of a ride to town, AND a big black plastic garbage bag. “Give me your garbage!” he said, and we were very glad to hand it over!

Many hikers go off the trail here and into town, but we pushed on, headed up our last climb of the day.  The snow was not bad, since it was on the south side of the mountain, and the views were great!  So were the wildflowers–blooming in every crack and cranny.  The rocks are no longer “granitic” but “volcanic”, so we knew we were making progress north!  We climbed past the dramatic “Pinnacles”, then a little while later and we were at the top, cheering because it was our last time at 10,000 feet!   While we were standing around taking pictures and cheering, some other hikers came along and asked why we were celebrating so much.  We explained that this was the last time the PCT goes up to 10,000 feet.  “Oh!” they said, and out came the camera phone.  “Tell us about it–we’ll film you!”  So we did a rerun of cheering and celebrating–“Last time at 10,000! (wave all 10 fingers)  Last time at 10,000!”

But from that point, the PCT route down to the Carson River stayed on the NORTH side of the valley.  The south side was snowfree, but we were back to hunting for trail in the snow (slow and frustrating!) until we finally stopped at about 7:30.  We had succeeded in getting below the snow, and there were only a few mosquitoes.  We were very tired and a bit hungry, since we skipped eating supper in order to reach the “no snow zone”.  It was very cold, so we set up the tarp and enjoyed a beautiful alpenglow sunset view after we were snuggled into our sleeping bags.  All the other hikers have passed us, since I am so slow on snow.  But if we can just get back to “regular trail”, I think we will catch up again!  And I am very grateful that the snow at least was nice to us today–no icy stuff and no postholing!

Walk to Rauros:  North of the Field of Celebrant in the Brown Lands

If yesterday was “big canyon day”, today was lake, pond, mud and mosquito day!  We had to hike in headnets almost all day, and put on full raingear to protect us from the starving hordes of mossies every time we took a break, but yahoo, we passed the 1,000 mile mark, and we made it out of Yosemite!

Getting up was hard– our clothes were still wet from last night’s late ford, and we hadn’t slept well because the mosquitoes didn’t go to bed last night.  Usually they do, and we can sleep in peace even without a net tent.  Not last night!  And as soon as we started to get up, hungry mosquitoes pounced on us as fast as they could. But the long climb up to Macomb Pass took care of any shivers, the wildflowers were lovely, and we were amused by the fact that PCT’s scenic lakeshore route by Wilma Lake was actually underwater, in the lake. (We had to bushwhack another route).

Again, a comment on Yosemite trails.  We early season hikers hardly ever get to use them!  They are either so muddy and wet that we have to make our own trail, or so rough and rocky that it’s slow going–or even (as this morning) completely underwater!  I think that the folks who plan trail routes ought to come up into the mountains this time of year and take a look at the conditions! 

There was a long, viewless uphill-through-forest section of the PCT, enlivened somewhat by the good-size nearby creek that occasionally went into cascades and falls that were quite impressive.  We also started leapfrogging with some other hikers (some of them were slower–we caught up with Uri, Jaybird and Alex–and some were faster–they caught up with us!)  We stopped for lunch in Grace Meadow, and enjoyed the lovely view there. 

Then came a slog up to Dorothy Lake on a rough, steep trail, but hooray!  At the lake, the WIND was blowing.  No mosquitoes! When we finished the walk around the lake and the  final climb to the top of Dorothy Lake Pass  (which is the exit from Yosemite) we were standing in the snow by the almost-buried sign at the Yosemite border, cheering and yelling “Throw the bear cans in the lake!” when Jaybird came along and wondered what was going on.

“We’re so done with Yosemite!” we told him. Then we hiked happily along the nice, smooth dirt trail… till it disappeared into the snow, and we were back to hunting for the trail.  Sigh. But eventually we located it again and made it all the way down to Walker Meadow, where at last we got to put up the net tent and sleep in peace! (We put up the tarp, too–it was getting cloudy)   The alpenglow on the mountains across the way as we were setting up camp amid swarms of mosquitoes was very beautiful, though.  It feels so good to know we’ve reached the 1,000 mile mark, and there’s only one more big pass to go!

Walk to Rauros:  Trees begin thinning on either side of the river