Day 59: Mile 702.2 - 716.5
So, sure, there's trail stuff today. It's below. But there's more important stuff.
Ian is the guy handling my resupply, sending me my breakfasts (grape nuts + soy milk powder + chia seeds), a bunch of food you don't expect to find in small-town grocery stores (e.g., dried seaweed and pork sung), and equipment (e.g., my ice axe and microspikes in Kennedy Meadows). He's also my guardian angel when something goes dramatically dramatically wrong, like getting sick above Tehachapi. Well, we were coordinating the upcoming resupply for Bishop on the inReach (pain in the neck to conversate via inReach, but in the Sierras that's often the only game in town) when he sent Terry Braun's phone number--a friend from FBCP--just in case. Ok, I thought, good to have an extra option.
That was just a prelude though. Turns out Ian's dad, back in Illinois, has had an aortal tear and gone into emergency surgery. Aortal problems are no joke: that's the kind of thing that kills people in minutes. So luckily it wasn't an aortal rupture, and luckily they caught it in time, but still, it's surgery to fix a life-threatening condition. Ian's flying back to Illinois tomorrow--as early a flight as he can get. So Terry business was so he could hand off resupply duties to Terry. Which is fine: I won't need a real resupply until Bishop, and I'll be stopping in Lone Pine along the way so I'll be able to call Terry and go over things with him. But hopefully Ian's dad pulls through, and hopefully his family will get some time to recuperate from what will only have been a very real, very fearsome, scare. I post this blog on a delay so by the time folks read this outcomes will have passed, but if you are of a religious inclination, include Ian and his family in your thoughts and meditations for a moment. He's a good guy, he's helped me tremendously over the two months of this trip--much more than I could have expected, and likely much more than I even deserved--and I hope that his dad recovers, gets better, and that his family is all the stronger for it in the end.
So that's the important thing for today. If you read nothing else, read the above, and offer up a quick prayer. The rest of the blog'll wait; I'll still be here when you get back.
Today I headed out from Kennedy Meadows and got back on trail. I had originally thought to take two zeroes at Kennedy Meadows: the first for gear and resupply, the second for writing, photos, and maybe--and this was ambitious--maybe even get the second Old Friend to come round. Anyway, that's what Hangn' Out is doing--taking two zeroes (although his plans for them are much different than what mine were--they involve more sleeping)--but I wanted to get back on trail and get going. I don't feel as bad about being behind, but I also know that that feeling can readily come back, and my only defense is, hey, look, I'm out here, doing my best. So let's get out there.
I got a final breakfast at the General Store, then got a ride to the trailhead from trail angel Rebecca, the Fossil Lady, who gave Hangn' Out and me a ride back from Grumpy's last night. And a 0.7-mile drive later, I was back on trail. Today was forecast to be hot--in fact, this whole week is forecast to be hot, with temps in the triple digits in Ridgecrest, and in the 90s in the Sierras. But that's fine by me: I prefer the heat to the cold since I *get* the heat. Yeah, it's hot and you're slow and lethargic, but I understand that'll happen, I've dealt with that (a lot--southern California, after all) and I know how what happens and how to react. But cold? That's scary. I tried to explain this to Hangn' Out, but he was just incredulous. When it's cold you just put on more layers, he said. Yeah, I said, but what about my fingers. Oh, that's easy, you do this, he said, and whipped his arms around like limp noodles back and forth. Repeat a few times, he said, and the blood will flow back into your hands. Like a centrifuge, I said. Yeah, he said. What about cold feet, I asked. Ok, well, you won't be able to do this, but for cold feet mountaineers basically do what you're supposed to do for a sprained ankle: you ice it regularly. Turns out doing so will eventually expand the blood vessels in the feet, and you won't get as cold feet. Hangn' Out had done exactly that for an ankle sprain a long time ago--iced it for 20 minutes every 2 hours for a couple weeks--and never had cold feet since. So there's a solution for that too.
Eh, I still prefer the heat.
And the trail was hot today. Today begins--not the Sierras per se--but the transition to the Sierras. It's still hot, and it's still a lot of sand and scrub-brush, but now there's also some large trees and shade, and there's water--actual water--every 10 miles or so as opposed to every 20. Things are becoming more green, rivers have begun to appear. You can tell because there will be a sudden line of bright green grass going down a canyon, or bright green grass sprouting in sinewy lines among a valley of otherwise scrub-brush, or even, towards the end, bright blue courses slowly flowing through. Ah, water! So while we're not in the Sierras yet, the hints are there.
For today, I didn't hike big miles, just a touch over 14, to the bridge over the South Fork Kern River in Monache Meadows. The reason is only partially because I'm lazy: right after this, there's a big climb, a pass of sorts, up over 10,000 feet. In the past, I've had altitude problems over 9,500, so I wanted to camp here at the base at around 8,000 ("camp low"), acclimate some, and see how I do tomorrow ("and hike high"). Already, I felt slower toward the end of the day, although whether this was due to the heat, the elevation, or just a the previous hiking, wasn't clear.
So that's the plan: see what 10,000 feet feels like tomorrow. There were some interesting bits of scenery today: there's a section where the trail climbs up a canyon to a pass, and on one side the canyon has been burned, and everything is the white bones of dead tree trunks, windy and hot and climbing, with the rock cliffs up above baring their teeth. But cross over the saddle to the other side, and suddenly in less than 10 steps you're in live woods, with birdsong, shaded and cooled by breeze, with the mysterious cliffs above just glanced between the branches and more alluring than frightening. And where the wind does howl, sure, but far above, far beyond our concerns, ensconced here as we are in these stately woods. And all that, on less than half a mile, would give way as well, opening to meadows not of grass, but of shrub, but shrub green and plentiful and touched by a spackling of pale gold--the little flowers and dried stalks. And here eventually the trail would come to wide valleys, where the blue of Snake Creek joined the blue of the South Fork Kern River, and I saw something that I haven't seen yet on trail: intimations of truly alpine landscapes. They're not here yet, but from this, well, if you say they're coming, I'll believe you!
-- Kennedy Meadows > Kennedy Meadows Campground > Kern River > Crag Creek > Beck Meadow Spring > Monache Meadow
-- In the morning, I had been talking with Sandals--who came in Kennedy Meadows yesterday, I think--about the trail, and we were talking about how the water caches in the desert section were life savers, and an old timer the next table over heard us. The water caches are ruining the trail, he said, and in my opinion they should get rid of them. He had done the PCT a while back, before Guthooks and even more importantly, before popularity, and the PCT had been more of a wilderness experience, as he put it. Now, you have to go to the CDT to get wilderness, he declared, and he didn't even think about the AT. And that's true: Hangn' Out would mention later in the day that he would talk about the trail to his friends back in Idaho (where he's from), and would say, no it's not like you're thinking, I'm not out in the bush somewhere, there's a freeway of people out here! (Did I mention he's from Idaho?--because a freeway of people means something *very* *different* for someone from LA!) The old-timer has a point: the trail isn't what it used to be, when there used to be less than 50 people on the trail, and when you passed by someone going the other way, you stopped for hours and went over notes of what you'd seen for the past few days. But this is a classic problem: on the one hand, you want more people to experience things like the wonder and splendor of the outdoors, on the other hand, if they do so invariably there will be a bus tour and a McDonald's right there to greet them. (Although I've been on one of those bus tours--with my parents and my aunt from Taiwan just a couple years ago--and how else was, say, my aunt from Taiwan going to see Yosemite and the Grand Canyon? She can't hike out 10 miles, let alone backpack for 3 days or somesuch! So though it may sound like I'm poo-pooing the bus tours, they *do* provide a service, and one that me and my family have taken advantage of.) So where do you strike the balance? Before I headed out today, Hangn' Out showed me all these pictures of his family's cabin out in Idaho close to the Snake River--and it's stunningly beautiful out there, especially in the winter--because he wants people to get out there and see it. And last night, Steve showed me all those pictures of the Golden Trout Wilderness, because he wants me to convince Kyle (Stewart, of JPL and now UCLA) and that whole group to go out there. So, yeah, we want people out here. But we also don't want people out here. So is it not actually the people per se, but the type of people? Maybe we want people with a certain attitude, a certain respect, a certain humility, a certain reverence--great as our own--for all this, let me call it, creation? (That's a religious term, but it fits here.) And though creation certainly inspires that in some, there's no guarantee it does for all, and maybe that's what we chafe against? I don't know: this is one of them big questions, and I'm not good with those!
-- At Kennedy Meadows Campground there was a table setup with two volunteers from the PCTA, and him (Oak) and a her (whose name, unfortunately, I forget; a two part with a rhyme like itsy-bitsy, but not that). They were there to stamp your permit--if you wanted to, no pressure (and they were pretty laid back). To help control traffic on the PCT and JMT, the PCTA and forest service want folks to 1) not flip-flop the Sierras (that's when, in high snow years, northbounders do the Sierras north-to-south--i.e., backwards--in order to better manage the snow), and 2) get through the Sierras in 35 days. So they stamp your entry into the Sierras here at Kennedy Meadow Campgrounds. I asked if getting the stamp would help relations between the PCTA and forest service, and they said, yeah, it'd help, and so I got the stamp. Then talked to them about the Sierras. They had hiked the PCT back in 2018, a very different snow year, but repeated the advice of almost no snow this year, so a lot of the standard strategies (ford streams in the morning when the water is lower for less chance of drowning; cross passes at midday when the snow is melted a bit so it's not solid ice, but not so much that it's become mush and you're postholing all the way; respect and beware of the mosquitos!) didn't strictly apply, and probably became things to keep in mind rather than things to absolutely do to make it. They recommended summiting Whitney for sunrise (yeah, we'll see about that), and, oh, when I got to the table I was recording my distance to get my hourly mph-on-trail. How fast are you going, she asked? 2.5 mph was my number. Yeah, she said, take it slow through the Sierras. Don't go faster than 3 mph!, she joked. (I did ask, and they took more than 35 days, closer to 37?, 38?, their time through the Sierras. But they had snow.)
-- Anyway, I chatted with them for a bit, then as I left who should come up but Gutfish, who introduced me to Jamie, his wife, who was with him. They were about to get advice on the Sierras too from these two fine folk, although he was much more directed, talking about passes and daily mileage and whatnot. I had tarried for a while already, so I headed out, although in the back of my mind, I'm thinking maybe I should have stayed and listened. Probably could have learned a thing or two or three; probably should have! Ah well, so it goes.
-- I made camp quickly, in a little ledge-ish flat spot near a tree. Evening has fallen, and even as I'm writing this I heard a sound outside, maybe up the ridge. Something like a fire extinguisher being shot off. I wasn't sure if the first one was real--maybe I just moved or something and *thought* I heard it coming from outside--but then I seem to have heard it again. Don't know what it is, maybe some sort of animal? If I think about it too much, it'll start getting scary, so let's not do that.
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