Walking in a Winter Wonder Land: Kearsarge to Mammoth

After making a quick resupply in Bishop, our group picked up the team name "Jacob & Co." (later changed to "Daybreaker & Co.") before heading back out into the Sierras via Kearsarge Pass.  Uber-Bitch bestowed the named "Jacob & Co." on us since Jacob was the only one who had not yet received a trail name; thus his name stood out enough to be memorable to her apparently.  Although we had only been off of Kearsarge for a day and a half, it was amazing how much difference that time made on trail conditions.  The local weather had been typically hot for June (and sunny as always), and Kearsarge had a fairly thin snowpack on it to begin with, so a good bit of trail had cleared up while we were in town.  Despite climbing some three to four thousand feet up the Kearsarge Pass Trail to get back to the PCT, we ended up making better time than we did during our earlier descent.  Between making good time and being well-fueled from a Chinese All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet, we managed to get two passes in on our first day (Kearsarge and Glen)!  To make matters even better, Buffalo Jump Sly caught up with us after we had pitched camp and finished dinner.  Sly is one of the older, more experienced, and interesting hikers that I have hiked with, and it was good to have him back in our group.  After entering Bishop with us, he had to stay behind about half a day to sort out some resupply package issues with the post office.  In his spare time, he managed to get a large coil of rope for our group since we were concerned about the upcoming river crossings.  Apparently he asked a man in Bishop for recommendations on where he could find a good quality rope for the purpose, and the man just so happened to be the district? hydrologist for the area.  I'm not entirely sure what a hydrologist does, but the guy was nice enough to drive Sly to his house and outright give him a 50' length of rope free-of-charge!

From there, the next few days took on a roller-coaster feel of ups and downs both physically and emotionally.  Primarily, the second day out was just plain rough for everyone - especially for myself.  Although the ascent over Pinchot Pass was accomplished easily enough, the rest of the day was filled with slogging through snowy forests (constantly misdirected and searching for the trail) and crossing one ice-cold creek after another.  We were already tired and fairly damp by the time we reached the South Fork of the Kings River between 4 and 5 PM.  Until then, we had not been concerned about this thin blue line on the map because we had yet to hear any warnings or bad reports on the PCT-L (or elsewhere).  I wouldn't say we came upon a raging river, but it was immediately clear that this would be a difficult crossing.  The water appeared to be at least waist-deep and was moving at a speed just shy of becoming whitewater.  After staring at the creek for a few minutes and scouting up and down the bank for an optimal crossing point, I saw another guy who was just hiking with his girlfriend plunge in to attempt a crossing.  Between being a fairly large guy and having a good amount of skill/experience (which I didn't appreciate at the time), he made the crossing look easy.  So I jumped in up to my waist and attempted to cross immediately after him.  Unfortunately I was not as skilled and/or lucky, and I was shocked at how quickly I pitched forward into the rushing water.  I was still near the bank, so I immediately grabbed hold of something as freezing water rushed past my chest.  Sly offered me a hand back up onto the bank where I realized that I had just lost one of my trekking poles.

A quick side note about trekking poles:  there are two philosophies regarding how to hold your poles that I have seen on the trail.  Some people like to keep their wrists inside the wrist loops of their poles at all times so that they never lose attachment from their poles.  They also claim that when slipping, the fabric loops provide a last minute point of contact with their poles that helps them regain balance.  Other people never hike with their wrists inside the loops.  The logic here is that once you fall, it's best to just jettison your poles so that you can catch yourself on your hands without obstruction.  You also reduce the risk of spraining/breaking a wrist.  I fall into the later category of hikers, and am thus at a greater risk of losing poles.

After this first mishap, we scouted for a better crossing and decided to make a go for it slightly downstream.   Realizing that I was not the most adept at crossing fast water (on my feet, anyhow), I asked Daybreaker if he could help me get across the swiftest section.  We linked arms and slowly proceeded across while facing upstream to brace ourselves against the torrent of water.  Everything seemed to be going well and we had almost made it to shore when suddenly Daybreaker lost his footing on a slippery rocket and went down!  Being as I was linked to him and using him for support, I also plunged straight into some of the coldest water I ever hope to experience!

What happened next couldn't have occupied the span of more than 10-20 seconds, but it felt like eternity.  I was clearly near the bank and almost on shore since I wasn't swept any farther than 10 feet back from where I fell, but this wasn't immediately clear because the rushing water - way too close for comfort to my face - was extremely disorienting.  By the book, there are many good reasons that I was aware of for getting into the "whitewater swimmer's position" and paddling to shore as quickly as possible.  However, instinct took complete control over rationality and I frantically dug my toes into the river bottom to stop myself from being swept further downstream and to push myself to shore.  I reached for anything I could find that was attached to shore with the ominous thought at the back of my mind that I might very well have to abandon my pack.  I don't know what I grabbed on the shore (bush, rock, root, hell if I know), but the second I grasped it I hauled myself and my soaking pack out of the water.  After climbing over the bank and back to the trail, I took stock of my situation.  I lost my other trekking pole.  I had banged my shin quite hard on something that was sharp/rough enough to tear a decent gash (still healing almost a month later, at least the ice water had numbed feeling in my legs at the time).  Most of my gear and clothes were soaked.  Lastly, it was getting late and I was shivering like crazy.  I was not a happy camper.

After taking some time to hop around in the sun to warm up with the few pieces of clothes that I had kept dry (the inside of my pack is lined with a plastic compactor bag), we continued hiking/climbing well into the evening.  We decided to call it quits and camp for the night above snowline at ~10,200'.  We were fortunate to find a large, exposed bolder with a flat top that could fit all of us.  However, there was not enough room for our tents so we simply laid out our sleeping bags to cowboy camp.  It was definitely a cold night, and the heavy condensation quickly froze such that our sleeping bags and packs were coated with a nice layer of frost by daybreak.  I reached over to move one of my shoes when I woke up and knew that we had a problem when the other one came up with it.  They had frozen solidly together!

I have never had my shoes freeze before, and sure enough they were solid as a rock.  There was no way I was going to be able to put them on as rigid as they were, so I held them over my camp stove to make them at least pliable after I had finished making breakfast.  Yet by the time I had finished packing away my gear, they had re-frozen into solid bricks!  Damn it was still cold.  In the end, I wasn't the only one who had frozen shoes, and we waited 45 minutes after the sun came up before we could finally get them on.

Once we got going, we headed towards Mather Pass - one of the more technical passes of the PCT.  Although we had a bit of a detour early on by swinging way too far left as we approached the pass via a snowfield, I managed to borrow a map (I carry Eric the Black's PCT Atlas which is convenient as a guidebook but useless as a true topographical map) and pinpoint both our current location and where we needed to go to hit the pass.  This was one of the biggest advantages of hiking in a group.  We all had turns where we could make bad navigational judgements, but usually there'd be at least one of us who would recognize the correct path.  After being the weak link the day before, it was definitely uplifting to be of use to the group again.  Once we hit the pass, it was a challenging but enjoyable climb.  This was the only pass where I ever felt that I needed my ice ax in case of a fall during the ascent; since then I have only used it as a glissading tool.

Once we got over the pass and down the other side, our spirits were further buoyed as we hit dry trail and descended the "Golden Staircase" (an amazing demonstration of trail/rock work, I hope I can get some pictures from the other hikers) into Le Conte Canyon.  Le Conte Canyon in Kings Canyon National Park was simply amazing between its scenery, clear trail, greenery, and only-knee-deep creek crossings.  The next day also worked out well as we timed our ascent of Muir Pass perfectly.  We went over early in the morning and pushed ourselves to haul ass across the snowfield on the other side so that we could reach dry ground before the snow softened too much.

 

The rest of the trip was challenging but uneventful.  Noteworthy passes/water crossings were: Seldon Pass, Silver Pass, Evolution Creek (crossed at the meadow via the old PCT trail where the water was waist-deep but slow-moving), Bear Creek, and Mono Creek (one guidebook warned "... one slip could be fatal", but we didn't have any problems).  After our previous nights above 10,000', it felt outright warm to spend our last few nights around 8,000'.  We parted ways with Sly at Vermillion Valley Resort since he had to go in to pick up a package, and we pushed on for another long day and a half to take a much needed zero in Mammoth.