Day 67: Mile 782.5 - 788.5
So today was the first day under the new philosophy. The plan was to do a short stint on the PCT proper--just 6 miles--then turn onto Kearsarge Pass and try to hitch into Bishop. Kearsarge Pass is a longer route--about 7 miles--but in my mind, perhaps elated from the ideas of yesterday, and likely influenced by the promise of town just around the corner, I felt it was a more mild day.
Which is probably why, with my stuff packed up and ready to go, when the hikers in the campsite next to mine invited me over for breakfast, I said, yeah, let's do that.
And that's how I met Jane and Jean (or J&J as Jean calls them: have you had your vaccine?) (Jean works--worked?--for Kaiser). Jane and Jean are two JMTers, going northbound (not only are the permits easier to get, but that way the sun is always at your back instead of in your eyes, as Jane points out). They're retired now, but pretty active: they live in the Bay Area around the Berkeley/Oakland area, and go rowing together (as in, crew-type rowing) out in one of the waterways by the Bay at least once a week. But a few years ago, Jane got into hiking, and last year actually attempted the JMT, solo, but her trip was ended prematurely by the fires. Since she was traveling north, *towards* the fires, she would keep getting these increasingly concerning reports from southbounders, but she kept going until, finally, she had to get off the trail. And Jean, who could see her dot moving on the map but couldn't contact her (Jane doesn't carry an inReach that can both transmit and receive messages, but rather a Spot that just sends out location), tried leaving messages on her phone that, hey!, warning: your husband is driving up to get you!, hoping that Jane would turn on her phone when she got to the trailhead. And of Jane did no such thing--I don't either, honestly, it's the younger folks that immediately think "phone" when they think civilization--and so was surprised to exit the Sierras, the smoke of the fires right behind her, and see her husband standing there. Oh, you're here, she thought, this is a bit strange and possibly awkward. Which makes sense: you come out of the wilderness where you've been on your own in this very real, very immediate world--whose internal logics are made all the more emphatic by the fires--and you're suddenly confronted with all the trappings and obligations and rules of *another* world, one that feels emotionally alien but you intellectually know to be also-you. It's a strange thing, and Jean's warning--while it may have been motivated more by admonitions about practical behaviors rather than foreshadowing the impending existential collisions of also-you's--was, I think, still pretty on the money. Hey, warning, you out in the woods: your husband is coming to pick you up!
This year, Jane is trying to hike the JMT again, and this time, Jean is coming with. They take it more slow than the PCTers, doing maybe 10 miles a day, but much of that is intentional: they take it easy, enjoy what's at hand a lot more (rather than, say, eagerly seeking what's next). I got drawn into that sense of time, ended up spending, what, 2 hours?, "eating breakfast" with them. We talked about a lot more, about how Jane is a member of a quilting group, and how it's actually in some ways nicer with COVID, since they used to invite prominent quilters from around the country, fly them out to the local chapter, then all schlep their gear to some venue and do the workshop there. Whereas now everybody stayed home and just video-conferenced in--no hotel stays, no rides to and from the airport, no gear schlepping! Or how they had once attended a hiker conference, and evidently the collective noun for hikers is a "ruck". Jane has a very inquisitive conversational style, always asking questions, but never in an inquisitive way: you don't feel she's asking questions, she's just making conversation, but inspiring a ton of interesting information anyway. And Jean has a very snarky style, a very dark sort of humor--I think it's the years working in medicine--but always delivered with a disarming smile and self-aware deprecation that coats it so well you almost don't notice the bite. (Oh, but it's there!) They were great fun to talk to, and I did as the sun came out and lit the peaks of the canyon, then the sides, then us, then it was full daylight and not really morning-light anymore, and I would have stayed and chatted until the it all started going the other way, into dark again, but unfortuantely I had to hike and they had to too, so eventually I bid my adieu's and got going. (Although I did give them the name of this blog--they read a lot on the trail, and Jean has this whole virtual bookshelf of library books and blogs all prepped for the trip, with this whole system for keeping them on the bookshelf if you know what I mean--so they just might see this entry, in which case, hello! Just FYI, a friend of mine has a 7th grade son, Kyle, who reads this blog and says my writing has a particular "style" which he happens to "like". So this writing is 7th-grader approved!) (Which is actually high praise: Kyle reads a *lot*, evidently.)
As for the actual hiking of the day, it came in two parts. In the first I was on the PCT, coming down through the canyon I had seen so stirringly from Forester Pass, and it was different in it than above it, but still pretty wonderful. Because it was a narrow canyon, and here the trees were tall and their bristles dark, and then hid the granite mountainsides so you were always glancing up and seeing this intriguing tumble-top of a cliff face, or that tantalizing part-peak, through the trees. And as Picard once pointed out, that "suggests a mystery, and to many humans, a mystery is irresistible". Only this time, it would have to remain so--I had town to get to!--so while I often stopped to get shots of the granite shapes, never managing to get the whole thing in frame (but that was also the beauty of the attempt), I had to content myself with Cain's observation (as he killed Abel yet again), "I keep telling you: it's the mystery that endures, not the explanation".
(Although I will say this: at one point, the view *did* open up, and I looked up at a broad swath of mountains, and across the middle saw what looked like a series of stairs ascending up to a throne at what must have been the peak. And like how the warmth of the sun in the morning made me realize how people could come to worship the sun, seeing that formation made me realize how people could envision giants--beings powerful enough to carve sheer cliffs of stair in the highest mountains and hardest granite--and even gods, for who but a god could sit atop such a lofty throne, the world rendered small and paltry below; and their thoughts, their perspective, would that not be anything but divine?)
The second part of the hike was the divert onto Kearsarge Pass, to head to Onion Valley and ultimately to town. This section, I must admit, I went through pretty quickly. It was very pretty--this trail first passes by Bullfrog Lake, which Emily had recommended with reverant tones--and that lake was indeed spectacular, its deep-blue waters calm on this sunny blue-sky day, with the backdrop of all the peaks rising helter-skelter behind it, each intriguing. (And then there were also the naked hikers jumping into it--today was the summer solstice, and there's a "tradition" of PCTers hiking naked on the solstice. I saw some from afar by the lake as I was gathering water, they came to the edge, jumped in for a swim, then got out and put on clothes. Going into town I assume, and while nakedness may be PCT tradition, I don't think it goes over as well when you're trying to catch a hitch into Bishop!) But I assured myself that rushing through this part was ok, because I was going to come through this again on my way back, so I'd get to see it again.
As for Kearsarge Pass itself: the ascent up to the Pass was tough--and windy!, especially at the top--and felt steeper than the passes before. And the way down: that felt really long! Perhaps because the *ascent* to a pass always dominates the mind, but the descent from Kearsarge down to Onion Valley is pretty long. It took me a while to realize this--oh, I've gone over the top, the end will just be around the corner now--but that wasn't the case, and it just kept going on and on and on, switchbacking down and down and down, now finally reaching the treeline, now finally passing the lakes, now finally dropping down the rock tumble into the lower woods.
And on this part, I bumped into another hiker, a day-hiker named Michelle, and we got to talking. Her son is doing the PCT this year, and she was doing some support, driving to some of the trailheads as he went along. He was pretty quick--he had stopped at one point to run a 50-mile race, then got back on trail--and she had hiked all over the place in these mountains. She'd gotten very used to sleeping in her car, as she put it, and drove to the eastern Sierras, up to Utah, going to all these places just to go, with nary a plan but lots of time and interest, and just seeing what it was like up there. She had actually been in training last year, going up and down the eastern Sierras in preparation for a Whitney ascent, which she was planning to do late in the year, *after* permit season (i.e., in the snow--this is hardcore, in case you didn't know) and she was doing her final preparatory hikes when she went home, was in the shower, and suddenly her hip just sort of collapsed. And it hurt so much, and she could barely walk, and she went to all the doctors, and they couldn't diagnose anything (although she suspects it's a torn labrum) and only now was she back up in these mountains she loved, doing just a small hike from Onion Valley up to the lakes and back--just 10 miles--and even this now required so many painkillers. But it was worth it for her, just to be out here. Michelle, though slow, was still fun to talk to (although I may have been bothering her, peppering her with my questions--she kept saying that she didn't mind if I went ahead, I was clearly faster, but I lingered and asked more questions--maybe I just couldn't take the hint!) and, as seems par for the course out here, a person who looks ordinary but, once you get to talking to them, is pretty extraordinary. (And that's the secret: once you get to talking to them, *everybody's* pretty extraordinary.)
I did eventually get to the parking lot, and said goodbye to Michelle (her son was staying here tonight, so she was going to sleep in her truck in the parking lot), and started looking for a hitch. Only now it was late, and the sun was going down over the mountains behind, and the wind was picking up, and there wasn't much traffic out anymore. Most of the people in the lot were now here for the night, rather than day-hiking. And I'm absolutely horrible at talking to people when I'm not hiking, when I'm off-trail, absolutely terrible about getting hitches. And this one would take a while--over an hour. In the end, I didn't even get the hitch--I rather parasitically attached myself to two other hikers, V-Dubs and Suave (the latter of whom was my way in: we had shared a ride from Ridgecrest to Walker Pass, when Traps was driving), and they were much better at talking to random folks in random cars. Eventually V-Dub was able to convince Martin--another guy who was staying at the parking lot tonight to get an early start into the mountains tomorrow, but was willing to give us a ride into Independence as a last resort--to give us a ride and, after a lot of rearranging, we packed our bags and ourselves into his car and headed down.
This began the car ride to Bishop, for Martin was a nice guy and once we got him talking about being out and about, he was happy and willing to keep driving. Martin was a pretty adventurous guy: he liked the wilderness aspect of it all, being out there on your own. He described adventures in slot canyons, where it got so narrow you had to hold your bag in your hand in front of you, turn sideways, and just manage to squeeze through, he described adventures in places all linked by how remote they were. And he liked stories, he kept asking for stories. You guys gotta tell me stories, he would keep saying. And V-Dubs and Suave could oblige: V-Dubs, who looks pretty young with big wide eyes and two braided pigtails, nonetheless is straight hardcore, having done the CDT and a bunch of other trails I'd never heard of. And Suave lived up in Washington, and had had adventures where he just went, no trail, just over this range into a valley, then over that range into a valley, and so on and so on. And here all I had was, yeah, I'm a day-hiker who lives in Orange County and have done some hikes around there. Oh, says Martin, who lives around San Diego, have you done Cactus-to-Clouds? Umm, it's on my list, is all I can reply, lamely. I felt very insufficient for that car ride, trying to make myself small and hide away, avoid revealing my paltry resume. Listening to these folks talk about traversing true remote-wilds, where you go for days without seeing people, where you really have no one to depend on but yourself, it really reminded me that there are people of a whole other class out here. And, honestly, people that I couldn't hold a candle to.
But Martin kept driving, and they kept talking, and I kept my mouth largely shut, and eventually Martin got us to Independence, and then he took the turn and *kept* driving, and they *kept* talking, all the extra 40 minutes or so to Bishop, and we got to Bishop, and got dropped off at a brewery there. And V-Dubs offered to give him a little something for his trouble, but he refused, saying, hey, someone once did me a good turn coming down from Whitney, so I'm just paying it back. It all goes around, he said, so you do good things for other people and it'll come around. And that's how, after a day of many long conversations, I finally got into Bishop, albeit much later than I had planned, being just a bit before sunset. And V-Dubs and Suave went into the brewery to meet up with their group, and I bid my adieu and instead headed off to my hotel.
-- Campsite > Bubbs Creek > Vidette Creek > Bullfrog Lake > Kearsarge Pass > Onion Valley > Bishop
-- Jane showed me the most amazing trick with the bear canister, one that absolutely blew my mind and changed the game. So the bear canister I use is the Bear Vault BV500: it's the big blue plastic one where the lid has two small tabs that lock it into place. The lid is made of hard, solid plastic, but right above these two little tabs is more pliable plastic: the idea is to press this pliable plastic in, to allow you to rotate the lid-tabs past this hard plastic post that functions as a gatekeeper. So normally the lid-tabs just bump into the can-post and the lid can't continue rotating and so is locked; but press in on the pliable plastic just above the lid-tab and the lid-tab will shift inwards just enough to pass the post. The thing is, this is really hard to do, even with my limber hands and opposable thumbs: it's always a pain in the neck to get the bear canister open. But Jane has a trick! She jabs the end of her trowel, say, between the post and lid, so that the curve of the trowel is opposite that of the lid. She then just rotates the lid to open. When the lid-tab gets close to the post, it rides the curve of the trowel, pressing in the pliable plastic, and the lid-tab slips past. When I first saw her do it, I would've sworn that her bear canister wasn't even locked, so smooth was the rotation! But then she did it again, I heard the clicks of the locks, and it worked again! Maybe you have to have struggled to open a bear canister every morning with your fingers freezing, trying to push your fingertips against this "pliable" plastic, giving up and looking for a rock, trying the rock, failing with the rock, trying another rock, failing again, going back to your fingers, and finally getting it open, just to get your hand sanitizer so you can put it back into your hip belt pouch--but this is straight up revolutionary! This is the sort of thing that Linus Torvalds meant when he said (at a Google Tech Talk), "That is the kind of performance that actually changes how you work. It’s no longer doing the same thing faster, it’s allowing you to work in a completely different manner." He may not have known it at the time, but he was talking about using the end of your trowel to open a BV500!
-- Fun fact on the how conditions can change so rapidly when you drive. So when we were in the Onion Valley parking lot looking for a hitch, the sun had gone down in the mountains--it goes down early in the mountains--and I had put on my puffy because it was getting dark and cold and windy. And then, about an hour and a half later, I'm in Bishop, and the sun hasn't set yet, and it's still desert daytime hot and I'm sweating up a storm, but unwilling to take the time to shed my now-ridiculous puffy because I'm racing to check-in to my hotel before some front lobby closes. To my mind, it's just a testament to the power of the car, that it can take you from one extreme of weather to another so quickly, that it can literally turn back the dial of sunset, make the sun rise above the horizon and come *back*, and turn cold night into baking day.
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