Day 60 Had most of my stuff packed so soon after I had had a quick breakfast, I checked out of the hotel. I walked about a mile down to route 120, which is the major route transversing Yosemite from east to west. I had planned to hitch from there and if that didn’t pan out take the one daily bus departure at about nine am. I thought it would be a relatively easy hitch…
Day 59 I’ll be frank with you: nothing epic happened today here in the somewhat touristy and mostly calm Lee Vining. So bear that in mind should you continue reading. Speaking of bearing or rather bears, I also apologize for staying here and not camping in Tuolumne, which apparently is kind of the epicenter of bear activity. That could potentially have led to more interesting posts than this one. When I woke up I was…
Day 58 Probably more than I have ever done before here on trail I just wanted to feel clean again and get back to civilization for a short while. The Vermilion Valley Resort didn’t really cut it with their lack of water, so I hadn’t had a shower since Bishop, which was eight days ago. Between a shower and me were twenty two miles and two passes. I convinced myself to not focus on just…
Day 57 As with most other days here on the bear country part of the PCT, I start in the dark by relocating my bear canister that I placed over two hundred feet from my tent yesterday. At first I couldn’t find it this morning so either a bear had been playing with it or I simply had remembered well enough where I put it as the surrounding landscape had few very distinct markings. I…
Day 56 Firstly I must admit that the title of this post is misleading given the fact that there were no calamity today. I just got tired the “EPONYM Pass” titling and wanted to make an ironic jab at clickbait. There was a small mishap, however. Well, I forgot to set my alarm this morning so I unfortunately slept in, which is to say that I woke up at 5:30. The ferry out of Vermilion…
Day 55 “A mountain pass a day keeps something something at bay”. I wanted to make a proverb like that but haven’t filled out the somethings yet. Anyways, a pass a day is exactly what has been going on since Mount Whitney, but today is the last of the bigger ones, and wasn’t even as big as high as the other ones. It was also much easier than the other ones as there were only…
Day 54 Today I for once actually got a bit of condensation in my tent, but nothing serious, I can just dry stuff out later. As previously mentioned, I wanted to cross Muir Pass early today so that I could avoid slushy ice and post-holing through it, so I got going before the sun. It was cold as usual, but not as bad as yesterday. First obstacle of the day was a creek fording that…
Day 53 Coooooold. Cold cold cold. That was how I felt when I got out of my sleeping bag this morning before the sun rose and would start to make the snow slushy on Mather Pass, which I camped less than one mile from. I wore basically all my clothing but that wasn’t enough to be comfortable and even though I was in the lucky situation of having dry shoes and socks my feet hurt…
Day 52 Last night I camped about four miles from Pinchot pass which I intended to, well, you know, pass. Preferably it should be before the snow got too slushy, so I was one of the first out of the bat. My shoes were still rather wet and comd from yesterday’s late fording, but I had a pair of dry socks to put in them, so it wasn’t that bad. Nearing the pass I ran…
Day 51 First goal of the day was to actually get all the way back to the PCT by backtracking the seven and a half miles over Kearsarge Pass. This felt slightly as a waste of time, but think this is the longest I will ever have to walk off trail for a resupply. On the way to the PCT, I met a couple of other hikers. Two of them I had been keeping up…