Day 69: Mile 788.5 - 794.2
Mr Brightside's idea was a good one. He's the one who figured to get back on trail early, to try to beat the daytime heat. So, to wit: catch the early morning bus (i.e., the 7am) that leaves from the Bishop Vons and goes to Independence. Then catch a hitch from Independence up to Onion Valley. We headed out early, stopping only to share an orange at Eastside, and to share a couple donuts at the Vons, grabbed the bus. Got into Independence a little less than an hour later, went up the road to catch a hitch. The first car that came by stopped, and could take two, but there were two girls doing the same thing--the twins Trouble and Tailgate--and we let them have the first hitch. Instead, we caught the second one, maybe 10 minutes later, with Tom Hillman, who chatted about his work and some political grievances all the way up the mountain. Mr Brightside, sitting in the middle, handled the conversational responsibilities, while I just listened. And we got to Onion Valley about 2 hours after heading out, which was pretty good time.
Mr Brightside lead the charge up Kearsarge Pass, setting a very good, very consistent pace. And going up was not as hard as I had anticipated, a tribute both to Brightside's early morning plan (it wasn't too hot yet) and his pace setting (not too fast, slotting comfortably into the infinite incline zone). We made pretty good time up to the top of the pass--we're crushing it as Mr Brightside would put it--and then we separated: I needed to dig out a new SD card for my camera, while he headed out. But that was fine: we would have separated anyway since I was going back by Bullfrog Lake, whereas he was going to take Kearsarge Pass all the way back, which rejoins the PCT a few miles after the Bullfrog Lake junction. (I hoped to catch up with him but, alas, that was the last I saw of him.)
I know that, when I had hiked this route coming the other way, I had said I would take more time to look around when I returned, but really I didn't, but pushed through pretty quickly. Hit the PCT, made the turn, climbed up, and then hit the ascent up to Glen Pass. By now, the day was turning overcast and, as I approached the pass, I got hit by some fat raindrops. And as I headed up the final set of switchbacks to the top, I got hit by a light snow! Nothing sticking, all melting on contact, but definitely white and fluffy. There was a couple from the Bay Area, JMTers, who I had met right before the switchbacks, and they were amazed as well and probably much more excited; I was just more concerned that a peal of thunder would issue forth (always a concern when crossing passes under less than blue skies). But it didn't, and I got to the top rather quickly all told--the final switchbacks are pretty fast--took some shots, then headed down the far side towards Rae Lakes. I will say that Glen Pass is different from the other passes. It's in the rocky upper regions, beyond where green may grow like all the passes, but here the canyon feels much more narrow, and the rocks feel much more immediate. Both in terms of scenery--the rock is broken up by these little lakes but it's mostly boulders and stones, rather than pebble slides--and in terms of the trail--especially on the descent, there was a lot of loose scree compacted down to form trail. So the going to Rae Lakes was slow: for me, this sort of ground requires some concentration to navigate without twisting an ankle. And I did manage to get a bit lost when I finally got down to Rae Lakes: at one point as I was rounding a shore, an Asian couple called down from a boulder above. Where are you going?, they asked. To the Rae Lakes campsite, I replied. You're going the wrong way, they said, this goes towards 60 Lakes. You want to be over there, and they pointed to the other side of a inlet that was expanding into a lake. So I went back, recaught the trail, and headed over to the campsite.
Now there are actually two campsites with bear boxes at Rae Lakes: one before the Ranger Station, and one after. Towards the top of Glen Pass, I had actually been surprised to see Marina coming down the pass--going the wrong way--with a friend. Evidently the friend needed to head back to Bishop, and was going out Kearsarge; Marina was helping her over the pass. And at the top I had been surprised to see Max and Seth, chilling at the pass wrapped in their sleeping bags. Turns out their group had crossed Glen Pass already--yesterday--but since one of their party needed to head back to Bishop, they had all hiked back up to the top to help her out. That's a lot of Glen Pass traverses: once northbound, then once southbound, then if you're Marina a final northbound! I mention this because, chatting with Max at the top, he mentioned the two Rae Lakes campsites, and noted that most people went to the one *before* the Ranger Station, but all the "cool" kids were going to the one *after* the Ranger Station.
Well, you know which one I ended up at! Because, I mean, I haven't been cool since what, like 4th grade?
But more importantly, when I got to campsite Before and scouted it out, yes, indeed, there were a lot of people (enough that I would say, yeah, "most"), but also I saw a familiar tent, walked over, and said hi to Jane and Jean! They were planning for an early night--book time starts at 6:30pm they said, so I only had until then--but I got to catch up on their adventures. In the time between, they had also gone over Kearsarge to resupply, only theirs was more planned and less ad hoc. They had camped at one of the lakes along Kearsarge, then Jane had hiked over the pass, down to Onion Valley, to catch a ride to Mount Williamson Motel and Basecamp in Independence, which caters to hikers. They'll pick you up from the trailhead, but she got there early, got a hitch, got into the Motel, saw a sign on the door saying the proprietors were out running errands, went to run errands herself but rushed back to make sure she got back before they left to ostensibly pick her up, then found that one of the proprietors had been in the office the whole time, and that they actually provide some resupply so she need not have rushed nor even bought so much! But she was done, and they drove her back up to Onion Valley and she crossed back over the pass to rejoin Jean. And Jean, back at camp at the lake, was holding down the fort. Literally. Because the day they were there was very windy--there were whitecaps on the lake--and the tent literally blew away, and she had to chase it down, and then rebuild it.
But other than that, they sounded like they were having a grand time. Coming over Glen Pass, they had seen a small band of bighorn sheep--curved horns and all--walking across the trail straight casual, and wandering up the slope around a boulder. And Jane had wanted to see pikas, these small furry animals with evidently the cutest round ears, who were now endangered as their habitat shrinks (although Jean had mentioned that back in the day, they were plentiful, and sighting one was so common as to go unnoted). And they had finally seen them over this last stretch and verified that, yes, they are indeed as cute as ever. And finally, while at camp one night, Jane had looked over and seen a chipmunk running off with her paper maps in its mouth. Hey, she had said, and given chase. And the chipmunk kept running, although now shedding papers left and right as it went, and Jane kept chasing. In the end she wasn't able to catch it and the chipmunk retained a single map, but Jane was able to pick up the rest. And lest you think this is just a fun story about paper maps rendered meaningless in this digital age, those maps are useful: I asked them if there were any bear boxes coming up on the trail, and out came the maps and a simple glance showed that, nope, there weren't. (Whereas on Guthooks it's more work to scroll through waypoint after waypoint.)
Oh, I had an animal story of my own: coming up to Glen Pass I came over a bluff, around a little bend, and in the nook of the bend was a deer, munching away. And it stopped and looked at me and I at it, then it determined I wasn't a threat and went right back to munching. And even as I walked by, it kept ignoring me and kept munching away. So either it's become so acclimated to hikers that it knows we're nothing special and munching is much more interesting, or I've become so nondescript as to pass off as a strangely lumbering bush (I wear tan pants and a bright green T-shirt--I can pass as a bush in a pinch, like to an inebriated hunter), or perhaps I just smell so bad it's trying to be polite and act like it doesn't notice. Either way, it was nice for me, to just slip by this deer without it bounding off and, for a moment, to maybe feel like I was a part of this outside place.
But it was great catching up with J&J, even if I did make them miss book time a bit (I think they headed in closer to 7pm than 6:30pm). It's nice to talk to some folks who are taking it easier--not doing big miles, not worried about Canada--just doing what they can and enjoying it all the while. And inspiring to realize that, yes, the future can indeed be an active thing, to reassert that if I happen to "miss" something out here, it's not like it's gone: I can always come back. Heck, it makes a great excuse *to* come back: oh, I need to see that little 2 mile side-trail that looked so intriguing. And, yeah, it's only 2 miles but I need to get there, and that'll take a few days of backpacking, and when I get there, well, you never know, best to allocate a few more days just in case. And suddenly what you "missed" becomes a 2-week trip and you're back in the Sierras, doing them the way I'd prefer, the way of Tim and Emily, of J&J, of even Steve back at Kennedy Meadows.
Ah, but that's for another time, another trip. For now: today was a big day--two passes!, and one tackled with a new friend--that ended at a beautiful lake, talking to some (can I say this?) now old friends. What more can you ask for?
-- Bishop > Independence > Onion Valley > Kearsarge Pass > Bullfrog Lake > Glen Pass > Rae Lakes
-- And as we pulled up to Onion Valley via our bus-to-hitch multi-mode route, so did the direct shuttle from the Hostel California. You see, there's another hostel in Bishop--the Hostel California--and there's a shuttle that runs from there to Onion Valley at 7am, 10am, and 1pm. It's how Dylan and Uno got to the trail yesterday: they caught the 1pm shuttle. And I had gone with them just to sign up, but today there was only the 7am shuttle and that was full. Only it wasn't: of the 7 signups, only 2 showed. So we could have just caught the shuttle, which would have been much simpler. But oh well: our more convoluted route nonetheless got there at the same time, so all's well that ends well.
-- I talked with Mr Brightside a lot on the way up Kearsarge. He's a big fan of sports, in particular these days, of "footy", which is Australian rules football. Besides the fact that it's great fun, Brightside likes that it accommodates all types of body types, from bigger burlier guys, to smaller quicker guys, to taller thinner guys: every body type has a place on a footy pitch. Mr Brightside has a certain charming naivete, which springs not only from his relative youth (well, at least as seen by an old cynical fogey like myself) and perhaps from the fact that he went to a Catholic high school with uniforms and a class of only 60 students, so you knew everyone and competed on pretty much every sports team. Even when it came to "hardcore" things, Mr Brightside kept that youthfulness and positivity: for example, he was contemplating getting a tattoo, only his was of a drinking glass on his leg, its middle right at his tan line, and he'd add the caption, it's always half full. To be fair, that *is* hardcore, it's a hardcore positivity you don't always see, even among the idealists floating about the trail!
-- While I don't mention it above, Rae Lakes are actually rather beautiful. They're a series of mountain lakes, tucked into a narrow granite canyon, often with very short shores so you feel like you're hiking on the level with the water. The Lakes form a sort of complex, weaving between the big boulders and little peninsulas of shore, all the waterways connected by little waterfalls burbling over black rock, so it seems that wherever you turn, there's water. And that water is filled with little trout--Golden Trout I'm guessing--shiny and not shy, playing back and forth between shade and sun. Even though my walk through there was brief, I can see why Rae Lakes are a destination!
Comments
Post a Comment