Days 38-53, miles 702-907 (34% of the trail)

Not dead yet. I'm in Mammoth Lakes for two zero days. I've rented a car to run some errands, like going to the dentist and exchanging stuff from my storage unit in Bishop (45 minutes away). In my down time I'm usually just decompressing, since the hiking in the Sierra Nevada has been so taxing. And, well, I'm terrible at describing everything I've seen. I'm overwhelmed.

In the past 200 miles of trail I've been through eight or nine mountain passes at 11,000-13,000'. Almost all of my miles above 11,000' have been in snow. I've postholed knee-deep into freezing water wearing sneakers and socks, and gotten dry in a few hours of high altitude sun. I've caught and eaten trout from lakes at 10,000'. I've been drinking water straight from transparent streams, no treatment. I've forded creeks of snowmelt up to my waist, after which I'm gasping and doubled over from the cold shock. It's like a whole-body ice cream headache. I've watched hikers get knocked over by swift currents, briefly swimming as they grab a tree from the opposite shore.

I hiked to the summit of Mt. Whitney from the PCT. This was my third summit, and my first approach from the west side. My plan was to start at 12:15 am, anticipating a 5-hr ascent, in order to catch the sunrise. Isao from Japan said it sounded like climbing Mt. Fuji. He preferred to sleep. A few miles in, I spotted a pair of shining blue eyes ahead of me in the dark. I stood on a stump to make myself look bigger and started banging my ice axe to scare it off, but the eyes just smoothly moved while facing me. It wasn't a jumpy deer, plus the eyes were set too wide. A few minutes later I was met by Animal Style (Israel) and Jet Pack (USA). Safer in numbers, we continued up with our headlamps illuminating the snow. The summit was frigid with steady 20 mph winds, but the morning alpenglow was more than worth it. We piled into the summit hut, sharing whiskey, before heading back down.

The past two weeks have just been constant spectacular alpine terrain. Transparent lakes surrounded by walls of granite cut by white ribbon waterfalls. Raging ice blue rivers leaping over boulders. It's also been really hard. Hiking twenty miles here feels like thirty in the desert. Above 11,000', every step is labored. You just feel like there's always less gas.

Some people have been quitting. A German hiker wasn't handling the altitude well over some of the passes. He got off the trail at Bishop, caught a flight to LAX, and then to Frankfurt. One woman with a recent hip replacement was having trouble at Forester pass (earliest and one of the scariest passes). A couple of hikers helped her walk for four hours until she couldn't go on. One of them had a GPS beacon, and they SOS'd to get a helicopter to carry her out. Other hikers are just getting bored, 45-65 days of hiking was enough. I can't imagine quitting, just because my worst frigid morning waking up in the wilderness with fresh mosquito bites is still 100x better than waking up in my bed during a weekday. This is an incredible way to live.

​Days 34-37, miles 652-702 (26% of the trail)

The hiking mellowed out from mile 652. It got cooler and greener, with a real, running spring swarming with mosquitoes. But hey, water. Ran into a (wild?) bull on the trail. Free range and grass fed. No idea how it got out to the PCT. We left each other alone. No interest in trying out one of Hemingway's other "sports."

I made it to the Kennedy Meadows General Store on June 10, day 36 of my hike. The end of the desert and the start of the Sierra. The store has a large patio filled with hikers this time of year. Each time a new hiker approaches, everyone applauds. It's a great finish to all that grueling desert hiking. It was some of the hardest hiking I've ever done.

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was everywhere. Hikers were examining brand new ice axes and unboxing microspikes. Talked briefly about tenkara fishing with Downtime, a Swede who saw me unpacking my new rod. G-String (California) was having trouble with his. They're telescoping rods and it seemed he was too vigorous swinging it out, getting the last piece stuck. He thought I might have been a tenkara master and could fix it, but nope.

Hiked out the next afternoon. Too crowded for me. Many of us toked that day, while a large group was all giggly from shrooms. I started walking at 5:30 pm, mostly sober, hoping to camp alone for once.

Gear Changes

Out:

umbrella

sawyer filter

titanium mug

body glide

In:

ice axe

microspikes

one trekking pole with snow basket

tenkara fishing rod (3.4 oz, carbon fiber)

bear canister

windstopper gloves

DEET and picaridin insect repellants

headnet

baseball cap

Aqua Mira drops

Cheap waterproof socks from Amazon

Days 27-33, miles 559-652 (25% of the trail)

[Day numbers may be a little off]

The next day was simple. I hitched into Tehachapi, ran into some new and old faces. The big news was a new forest fire, the Chimney Fire, which was causing a closure of the PCT from mile 652 to 702. Later in the day I determined I could keep hiking and get off into town at mile 652 if the fire was still active. I showered that night and prepared to leave the next afternoon.

What followed was a stretch of some of the worst hiking I've suffered through this far. After a bit of night hiking, I cowboy camped at 10:30 pm and got up at 4 am. I had picked up a plastic Coke bottle of water on the trail. I could use some more water, and it was litter. The trail continued up for a thousand feet of gain. When I topped out, I poured the bottle into my Platypus bottle (flexible plastic bottles that can be rolled up when empty) and a piney scent filled the air. Not water. There were now two separate layers of liquid in the Platy. Blobs of clear liquid stuck to the inside surface of the bottle. It seemed to be an oily fuel. It wasn't alcohol though and it wasn't white gas, which smell and look different. I had to assess my situation. I had contaminated my last water container and had no drinkable water. The next water source was 12 miles down the trail; I couldn't get that far safely. The container was ruined and I couldn't continue 3 days to the next town with only 4 liters of total capacity. I needed to return to Tehachapi for new containers, which meant I needed to descend, and doing that would require some water as well. I'd need to bum some off other hikers. It was mid-day and this unplanned trip back to town would cost me most of the day. All of this was realized in an instant. It was annoying, but I still had plenty of days to get to Kennedy Meadows at mile 702. So I began to head back down the hill.

A hiker gave me a liter of water which was plenty. Then I ran into a couple, who, after hearing my plight, gave me another 2-liter Platypus. They gave me some more water and I was back on track.

After 4 hours of punishingly hot mid-day hiking uphill, I reached the water source. It was a concrete cistern about a foot deep. The water was covered in bright green algae, and mosquito larvae and tadpoles were wriggling throughout. Five hikers were drawing from it and filtering it. An Australian girl said she was "excited" for this flavorful water. Around twenty others were lying around siesta'ing. I filled up, treated my water, chatted with hikers, and slept for an hour.

The rest of the hike to mile 652 was a grind. Wake up at the ass crack of dawn, rinse and repeat. One night we reached camp at 10:30 pm with winds howling past Joshua trees. Tents were warping in the wind and looked ready to take off, but all held fast. Other parties showed up shortly, sweeping their headlamps around the dirt and manzanita trees, illuminating our tents like paper lanterns. Presente (Portlander I've been leapfrogging on the trail with in the past few weeks) would later describe the feeling that night as being on another planet. We were explorers in the dark. This was one of those tough times in the wilderness that gives way to a sense of wonder.

The next day was a smooth walk to the highway where mile 652 crosses. Stuck my thumb out and got a ride from a young French couple. They were touring the US for two months and liked it thus far. They dropped me off in Ridgecrest, which was a broiling 106 °F. Resupplied with 6,700 calories for the 50 mile trip to Kennedy Meadows (150 cal/mile, had 800 cal leftover), and returned to the trail the next day. 

Days 25-26, mile 559 (21% of the trail)

The aqueduct was pretty ok. I left Hikertown at 5:30 pm and walked 16 miles to a bridge with a water spigot. It was mostly flat, but climbed a little into a wind farm. Temps were cool. Winds seemed to be 30-40 mph. It was hard to push through, but I wanted to maximize my nighttime hiking. Near the end, at around midnight, I spotted a hiker hunkering down for the night in a grassy ditch by the dirt road which made up the trail. "I can't take this wind, so I'm sleeping here," shouted at me in a British accent. Told him it was good to see another hiker out here, and kept walking. I reached the bridge at 12:30 am, and cowboy camped (sleeping outside without a tent or other enclosed shelter, just a sleeping bag, pad on a groundsheet) next to a small concrete building on one end. Winds stayed the entire night. Another party arrived at 3:30 am, headlamps shining, and I tried to fall back asleep.

I got up an hour later. Pre-dawn hiking, siesta, then night hiking was the plan. The following section was through a large wind farm. This was fine. Wind turbines are surprisingly noisy up close. Reached Tylerhorse Canyon at 8 am, which had a flowing creek and a large oak tree. I was the first to arrive that day, but in a few hours there were about a dozen hikers trying to beat the heat. I left around noon because it really wasn't that hot.

Then I miscalculated. While the temp wasn't that high, the air was much dryer than in earlier parts of the trail. I brought 2.5 liters of water to hike 15 miles. A couple hours in, I saw the trail switchback up a hill for 1,500', fully exposed. I had around a liter left and over 10 miles until the nearest road. I had to ration (a sip every 15 minutes, on the hour), and started slowing my pace to avoid overheating, since I couldn't afford to sweat much. I figured I could reach the top, wait until sunset, then descend for 7 miles to the road, and hitch into town. I'd be very thirsty, but I could do it.

I didn't die. At the top was a massive water cache stocked with 30 gallons and a basket of green apples. I stayed for an hour, considered camping there, but ended up just going all the way down. Around 7 pm, a naked guy wearing only sneakers came running up the trail. It was Coppertone, a trail angel who makes root beer floats for hikers at various points on the trail. I reached the parking lot where his van was parked. He came back down, put on clothes, and we talked about running before I went to sleep on the edge of the lot.