Day 72: Mile 823.3 - 838.9

Today was supposed to be a big day. The plan was to cross over Muir Pass today, about 16 miles from our campsite above Palisade Creek. A long day to be sure--even longer when you realize it's 16 miles to Muir Pass itself, at which point you still have to go down the other side a bit to find a campsite--but that was the goal. And we set out early in the morning, before the sun had even crept over the mountains behind us, to achieve that goal. (Or at least Uno and I did; we're slower so we start earlier and Dylan inevitably catches up around midday.)

We didn't make it, of course.

Instead we're camped here, about half a mile from the top of the pass, up past treeline at around 11,500 feet, in what looks like a desolate realm of nothing but rock and rocky soil, sustaining naught but grasses in blotchy patches and the tiniest of flowerlets, surrounded by lone snow patches and snow-melt pools large and consistent enough to be called lakes.

And it's pretty awesome, actually. You're sitting here, amongst the peaks and ridges and pinnacles--it really feels so incredibly out-there, like you've gone somewhere in the wilderness, somewhere where people don't go and maybe aren't meant to go, rather than just somewhere far away. And, yeah, we've walked through this sort of thing before when going over passes, but it's another thing to *camp* here, to stay here, even if only for a night. 

It's so quiet that, if I stop and think about it too much, I'd lower my voice just to not disturb the silence. But then I hear the croacking of the frogs--and just what are frogs doing up here?!--and it doesn't matter.

But for all that--missing our goal--today was a great day for two simple reasons. First, I took a "swim" in an alpine lake (i.e., a lake above treeline), and second, I fell over in the snow.

Let's set this up.

According to Guthooks, Muir Pass is supposed to be one of the most dangerous passes. The approach is pretty gradual (well, as far as passes go), but it normally has extensive snowfields and these can be tricky. But in the absence of snow--like this year--it's really a nice hike. Dylan commented that the four miles leading up to the pass are some of the most beautiful so far, and he has a point: it's certainly distinctive. The Muir Pass traverse starts off in woods, going up a narrow canyon that only seems to grw narrower the higher you get. You're traveling up beside a river--the Middle Fork of the Kings River to be precise--and the trail will switchback close to it every now and again. But you're ascending towards the headwaters of that river, and eventually you'll get over treeline and come to the first alpine lake, out of which the river flows. Only that's not it: this lake is fed by *another* lake, higher up, and now the trail climbs up to *that* one.And sometimes the trail wanders by these established channels, forming these falls and drops. And sometimes, the water flows into the trail--because it's water and flows and it doesn't know "trail" and "not trail" and just flows wherever the resistance is least--and you're hopping over dry rocks just above the gurgling water surface. And sometimes, just sometimes, the trail crosses over these larger boulders--the kind where you need to think about your next step--and underneath, in the dark crevices between the rocks, you can hear the water flowing, and you realize "solid ground" maybe isn't so solid after all, because some of the crevices are filled with soil, and that soil covered in those stunted grasses, but you know that, under it all, it's hollow and just a channel for moving water.

So, really, what's under the ground anyway?

But putting aside those philosophical issues, all that's to say there's a lot of water up there--all flowing over and under and around rocks of every shape and size--and also lakes: the river drops down from above, gathers in a lake, then drains out and continues down. And at one of these lakes, Dylan--who was ahead--had taken a swim, and when we arrived he turned and asked: are you going in? Because there aren't many alpine lakes left.

And I said, yeah, ok, sure. Because, yeah, if lakes above treeline are going to be rare, then I should give it a shot. And I dropped my pack, then dropped my clothes down to my underwear (and nuts, but I was wearing the blatant red underwear, rather than my more somber blues, but them's the breaks). Is it cold, I asked Dylan as I approach the water. Not as cold as you'd think, he replied. And I dipped my foot in and, yeah, it was cold!, but I was commited so I put my other foot in and let that acclimate a bit--like a do at the pool--and then I dropped in.

And it was cold! It was take your breath away cold! It was lungs locking, can't take a full breath cold! And I did manage to swim a bit, some doggie paddling out, then turning onto my back and doing the froggy-backstroke, before turning around and heading back to shore with a stunted freestyle. At which point I got out and clambered back onto the rocks. And Otter, who was there, said, how did the water feel. Cold!, I said. And how does the sun feel now? Cold!, I said, and it was true: I  was still cold--the ice-magic spell from the water is strong and lingering!--that even sun-magic couldn't dispell it. Luckily, though, the rocks were warm, and sitting on them, I warmed up a bit. And so it was that I sat, in naught but my red underwear, on a rock, ate my lunch of tortillas and peanut butter and nutella, and dried off and slowly warmed while I chatted with Otter and Dylan and Uno.

So it was a short dip, but a dip nonetheless!

I will say that my fingertips were numb for a while after, even after I got dressed. I think that--given all my time in southern California, hiking in the heat--my body has been pretty well adapted to heat, but as such has lost its resilience to cold--I fear the snows in Washington with good reason! On one of my fingers--ring finger on my left hand--the numbness lingered longer, and my nail had actually shredded a little bit at the top. This is the finger I broke back in graduate school playing football (because Joe throws *hard*, and I can't catch a football) so maybe it makes sense that it's more sensitive but, yeah, had to trim it down tonight which usually I only like doing in town after a shower (when the nails are warmer and more pliable). But overall, yes, I've gotten my "'swim" in an alpine lake. 

Oh, and afterward--me still dripping and wet and huddling on a warm rock--Dylan commented that, yeah, his first dip had been like this one, where you don't feel you can get a full breath, but in subsequent dips that feeling went away. And I had looked at him--still cold and in my underwear--and said, you're just trying to convince me to go another time. And he just smiled, I think out of embarrassment, but possibly out of deviousness. :p

After finally drying off, it was back to hiking, and up above we came across our first (and likely only) snow traverse: a little curve, shadowed, which still clung to the cold stuff. It was a simple thing--there were footsteps to follow--but in the middle there was a deep punchthrough next to one of the footsteps and I got a bit intimidated, overcompensated, and down I went, falling sideways into the snowbank, my poles now more hinderance than help. So I got a side full of snow. I righted myself and continued without incident, but Dylan--who was the first across--had been snapping shots of the whole thing. He assured me he didn't have shots of my falling, to which I laughed and said you should have, and meant it. It's rather indicative of my hike so far that I'm completely unprepared for how cold the swim is, and I'm completely unprepared for the snow, and in both cases I show it--there's no "fake it 'til you make it" here, there's just "you're a neophyte and it shows". But that's honest--that's the truth, I *am* a neophyte--so I think documenting that is--well, it's still embarrassing--but it's also true so I can't complain.

And that was the hike!

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Some notes:

-- Campsite > Palisade Creek > Middle Fork Kings River > Bishop Pass Junction > --Helen Lake > Campsite

-- On the way up to the first alpine lake, Dylan and I chatted, and he asked about a variety of electrical engineering concepts. And I found myself discussing transform theory, and sigma-delta modulators, and error correcting codes, and photolithography, all these technical concepts, and remembering just how revelatory some of these ideas are. Like the core idea of transform theory: invoking a geometrical interpretation to see transforms as projections of functions onto functions, their integral forms just glorified dot products: that's incredible! But it becomes so commonplace that, after a while, you forget just how incredible. These sorts of technical discussions on trail, with folks--even technical folks--who don't live with this stuff everyday, puts a different light on not only the ideas themselves, but also the place my sort of technical knowledge has in the world at large. The place my technical skillset has in the world at large. In the smaller world of electrical engineering, my skillset has some good points: it tends to be broad (from DSP to  RF, from firmware to manufacturing), it has in-depth knowledge in a few key areas (data converters, synthesizers, and RF), and my systems and chain intuition is good enough that it can improve rapidly (it's past the knee of the curve). So I'd say average to slightly above average in light of my position. But in the wider world, I think my skillset is interpreted differently, I'm just not entirely sure how. (There's the germ of an insight here, but far be it from me to make it happen!)

-- At that first alpine lake, I first noticed the tadpoles in the shallows. They were quite large, and the legs were coming in. And they were *fast*: I tried to catch them with my camera, but even when I was stone-hopping pretty far away--over 10 feet, and my shadow not falling on their pool--they would immediately scamper away under rocks. But they were pretty interesting: I've never seen them that large, and at that developmental midpoint. And it does explain all the frog croaking during the night!

-- How did we choose this campsite? It was getting late in the day, and while we could make it over the pass, we didn't know what the camping would be like on the other side. Now, there's a hut at the top of the pass--a pretty famous one to boot--that you can shelter in, but that's supposed to only be used in emergencies, and we didn't think that not knowing if there's a campsite nearby counted as an emergency. So we decided that, whenever we found a good site, we'd camp. And we *did* find a good site--two in fact. One was an established campsite, overlooking one of the lakes, two formal spots, one informal next to it. Very nice, but windy. The other was in a small depression that Dylan found, right next to the trail. No formal campsites, but flat enough ground to work with though rocky. And with less wind. So we opted for the less-wind option, and here we are! (And I've done so many makeshift campsites by now--I mean, my *first* night was a makeshift campsite--that the only qualm I had here was the rockiness of the soil and whether that would damage the bottom of my tent and/or sleeping pad. But Dylan--who has much more experience than me--thought it would be find, so it'll probably be just that.)