From talking with friends and locals who live around Bishop, Mammoth, and Tahoe, I have gradually learned that there was some truth to the hype this year. Yes, it is not uncommon for people on the PCT web forum/list server (PCT-L) to over-rate the difficulty of the conditions year after year. As Easy Strider put it accurately, "Rule number one of thru-hiking: Don't believe the hype". There is some truth to this statement. If every dire prediction made by people on the PCT-L were true (and I use the word "people" instead of "hiker" because many of the postings made were clearly from individuals who are not on the trail), we should all be dead at this point. To the best of my knowledge, there have yet to be any thru-hiker fatalities this year. Nevertheless, the general consensus among locals is that it has been a LONG time since anyone has seen this much snow in the Sierras. As a result, much more of the trail than usual has been covered by snow and this has slowed progress considerably for all of us hikers who decided to push straight through. Yet the High Sierras are always difficult, always exhausting, and always rewarding for those who brave them. So I won't fuel the hype by saying that our year was so much worse than past years.
Anyhow, the first leg of the Sierras took me from Kennedy Meadows to Kearsarge Pass (exit point for Independence/Lone Pine/Bishop). While at Kennedy Meadows, I teamed up with several other hikers that had been keeping roughly the same pace for the past few weeks: Jacob (later re-named to "Day Breaker"), Easy Strider, and Waldo. We easily covered over 25 miles of perfectly clear trail on the first day as we started our climb up into the high reaches of the mountains. Over the next couple of days, we were introduced to the various challenges and rewards that would dominate our next month of hiking. Our second day provided a good lesson in the character of Sierra snow. Many people have the impression that we're hiking in powder drifts that would be difficult to cross even with snow shoes. Fortunately this is not the case. After months of freezing and thawing since the last big snowfall, the snow out here is fairly hard-packed. In the morning, the top layer of snow is particularly hard/icy and thus is almost as easy to walk on as concrete (microspikes, a cross between Yak-Traks, crampons, and snow chains, are worn by most hikers to provide extra traction). However, the snow softens up as the sun comes up and gradually becomes more difficult to walk on as the day progresses. Come afternoon, there is generally a lot of slipping, sliding, and POSTHOLING. Postholing is the term for when you suddenly break through the thin upper layer of snow and plunge anywhere from ankle to hip deep into softer snow below. Normally postholing is ankle to shin deep, but sometimes buried objects such as trees and rocks conduct heat to soften up larger pockets of snow. Throughout the Sierras, I was generally more concerned about breaking an ankle or leg postholing than I was about falling off one of the steep passes.
I was also introduced to the various degrees of lost which range from "Slightly Misdirected" to "Where the F&*K are we!?" Since snow has covered a large majority of the trail for the past month, it is very common to wander slightly off-course one way, correct heading, hit trail, and then wander off again. So long as you keep your bearings off landmarks and know where you ultimately need to go, being misdirected is not much of a problem. On the other end of the spectrum, there were a few cases in which we completely misjudged our location on the map and lost several hours trying to reorient ourselves. Fortunately we were never completely lost since we always knew our rough whereabouts - but there were some frustrating situations that resulted in more than one late evening of hiking.
Although the Sierras are remarkably challenging, they also offer spectacular scenery. I had originally planned to go straight on through without taking any side trips, but my group convinced me to take an extra day before Forester Pass to summit Mt. Whitney (highest point in the contiguous United States). I had never been above 13,000 feet before, so it was amazing to finally be able to look out over the surrounding snow-blasted peaks from the lofty elevation of 14,494 feet! (Depending on which map datum you trust, more recent estimates place the peak at 14,505'.) Climbing up to the summit, there was still a large snow chute blocking a large section of the trail switchbacks. Rather than make countless traverses of this chute, most PCTers opted to rock scramble up until they were past the snow. On the way back down, I decided to pull out my ice ax and practice the important skills of self-arrest and glissading. The self-arrest is a potentially life-saving maneuver in which you jam the pick of your ice ax into the side of a snow slope after you lose your footing and slip. It is not a terribly complicated technique, but it is something you would be wise to practice before you need it since there is not much time/room for error. The glissade is when you use your ice ax (or trekking poles if the slope is not too steep and/or icy) as a brake while sliding down a snow slope on your butt. Glissading is often easier, quicker, safer, and more fun than trying to walk down sketchy sections of a slope.
The day after Whitney, I embarked for the highest point along the Pacific Crest Trail: Forester Pass (~13,100'). The approach to Forester started with a number of creek crossings where we soaked our shoes/boots (again) before starting a long slog across what felt like an endless snowfield. By the time we hit the snowfield, the snow had softened-up to the point where we were postholing with almost every step. Fortunately we ran into Buffalo Jump Sly and Dirtmongerer, so there were more of us to take turns leading the "boot pack" (the person in front would posthole, but the rest of us could step on the snow compacted by their footprints without sinking). I'll give Buffalo Jump Sly credit for doing the majority of the work across the snowfield, but I had my moment leading up the steep section of snow right beneath the pass. Climbing has always been one of my strengths in cycling and running, and I was glad to see that it had carried over to snow hiking. Since the trail was completely obscured by snow at the base of the pass, I didn't have much choice but to go straight up (generally easier than trying to walk sideways and switchback across slippery snow). Although the soaking wet hiking boots felt like bricks on my feet, I was eager to just finish the climb. About five feet below where the snow transitioned to dry trail (the mountainside was sufficiently steep and windblown that its upper reaches didn't hold a lot of snow), I made my deepest posthole to-date. The snow right next to the rocks of the trail had softened up so much that I sank right down to my waist and had a hard time extracting myself from the pit. I floundered around for about five minutes (at one point falling straight backwards; my back sank in and held me so I wasn't in any danger of going downhill), before I managed to gain purchase on some rocks and heave myself onto the trail. From there, it was pretty clear sailing. Everyone pulled out their ice axes for photos and an extra sense of security when we traversed the steep snow chute near the top of the pass - but enough people had walked the traverse that the footprints formed a pretty level path. From there, it was just a series of glissades, a night of camping, and a long hike out Kearsarge Pass before we could take a break in Bishop, CA.
After catching a ride to Independence from Uber-Bitch (actually a really nice woman) and Bristlecone (so named because he's the oldest living thing on the trail), two trail angels who had camped out at Onion Valley Campground to give hikers rides to town (thus saving ~16 miles of road walking), we took a bus to Bishop since it was the nearest town with a full-service grocery store, outfitter, etc. It wasn't a very restful zero-day, but at least I was able to find my trail running shoes (La Sportiva Wildcats) at the outfitter and mail my hiking boots home. I figured that if I was going to have soaking wet feet the whole time anyways, I might as well have a shoe that doesn't hold water like a bucket. With six days of food and a bit of rest, we promptly returned to the trail with Mammoth as our next destination...
A fascinating account and helpful explanations of techniques and equipment involved in the trek.
ReplyDelete