On a long distance hike like this, one of the biggest concerns for us is the weather. When we live a normal life (by which I mean contributing to corporate America by trading our time for money) we don’t really think about the weather, except when it affects our “days off.” When we arrived in Bishop and received the report of the next snowfall, our plans were completely ruined.
I had been trying to stick to some sort of schedule to meet a friend of mine in Yosemite Valley, but if we waited out the time, I’d miss my window. Annoyed by this and the amount of money we were spending in Bishop for so long, I suggested we return to the trail the next night, camp at the trailhead, and hike the next day. This would mean camping during the end of the storm, but hiking once it was clear. My weather report said there would be 1-4 inches of snow, so I thought it would be okay.
Getting ready to try to stuff our food into this bear can for the next section!
The group agreed and we spent our last day in the city doing absolutely nothing. We barely left the hotel room and it was the most boring zero I’ve ever had in my life. I’m normally a busy person in my life off the court, and on the court I find there are too many tasks to spend a whole day just relaxing. But relax, we did it. As night fell, I was eager to get back on the trail: I missed our tent, I missed not having cell service, and I missed the smell of pine trees.
Debbie, the tracking angel who had taken Cactus and me to Bishop, was scheduled to pick us up the next day at 1:00 pm. So we left our hotel and went to a coffee shop to wait until then. We ordered food at a barbecue place, somewhere on the way back to Kearsarge Pass, and Debbie kindly agreed to let us pick it up along the way. We then climbed, climbed, and climbed to the Onion Valley trailhead, where we would hike to Kearsarge Pass. To our horror, the weather report I had trusted was quite wrong.
View from the halfway point to Kearsarge Pass.
The parking lot, trees, campsites, and just about everything else up there was covered in a lot of snow. Snow that was still falling quite heavily from the sky. We felt compromised (we had asked this poor woman to drive us here), so we all got out of her jeep, grabbed our backpacks, and headed to the campground. We were originally going to stay there, get up early to get over the pass the next day and assess the snow from there. I didn’t expect the complete mountainside to be under a white blanket.
We all headed straight for the pit baths, the only verifiably dry place in the area. We placed our backpacks in one of the bathrooms and gathered in the other, using our bear cans as seats. We sat in a circle there, first discussing our plans, then eating our barbecue, and finally deciding to treat the bathroom like a movie theater. We placed a small phone tripod on the door handle and settled in to watch The Princess Bride. Then we all split up. Spice set up her tent outside in the snow because she didn’t want to sleep alone in a bathroom. Cactus and I took one side, and Dairy Queen and Bang Bang took the other, and we squeezed between the toilet bowl and the wall.
All getting ready for movie night in the pit bathrooms!
The next morning, we all woke up very early and ready to walk. There weren’t many tracks to follow, and the trail was covered in about a foot of powder snow. We continued on, anxiety beginning to grow in my chest as we went. I felt nauseous and short of breath. My cough had returned as quickly as it had disappeared. Was all this just me getting worked up? I tried to calm down, but the panic was rising.
I didn’t enjoy walking in the snow at all: my feet were already wet and cold. I kept thinking about the passes ahead. How steep would they be? Should I slide more? If it was warm, how slushy would the snow get on the steep descents? I didn’t want to be a part of it, but I had to move on. I was so scared I could barely breathe…or was it the altitude? Anyway, Cactus and I started discussing our options.
I had set a strict limit in town: I was only comfortable making one pass per day, but our friends were pushing for more. They wanted to forget Kearsarge and Glen that same day, but Glen was one of the two that made me cry. I had heard from several hikers who had hiked the trail before, as well as from a backpacker’s recent Facebook post, that the exit from the Glen was a bit problematic. It was steep and snowing heavily, with some boots difficult to navigate due to people punching holes in the poles. I wanted to do it as early in the morning as possible, to prevent the steep snow from turning into mashed potatoes.
Coming down from Kearsarge the snow was already slushy.
Now, as I climbed Kearsarge, I was going crazy. Once Cactus told me that he was afraid of passes too, I lost my mind. I thought he was the rock between the two of us, the thing I could anchor myself to. But if he was worried too and we were both collapsing on a mountaintop, I didn’t know what we’d do. I suggested that maybe we should move forward a little, at least to skip the passes. We could go back to Bishop, take the bus to Mammoth and get back on the road there.
there was not remarkable It happens, as far as I know, after Mammoth, and the snow report for the year indicated that the Southern Sierras (where we were) had received the most snow. So the trail should be practically snow-free! This way, we would also have plenty of time to meet up with my friend and we could go see Yosemite Valley. Cactus agreed, we turned around and headed back down the pass. We didn’t wait long in the parking lot before a woman offered to take us to at least Independence, and from there we would hitchhike to Bishop.
We stopped at a taco truck in Independence and split a giant helping of carne asada nachos, then started walking a little down the street to a spot where cars could see our outstretched thumbs and stop to pick us up. On the way down the road we ran into Mosby, who had gone off the road at Kennedy Meadows due to illness. We asked him his plan and told him we should hang out in Bishop later once he was done with his city duties. Then, we found our ride.
Our delicious taco truck nachos.
The woman who picked us up was a local nurse and also worked in search and rescue in the area. I sat up front in awe as she told us stories about rescues she had participated in, how she got to the field, and a variety of other things about the area. Then, once in town, Cactus and I checked into our hotel room and immediately got in line to go to the hot tub. It had been a while since I had a hot tub and it felt good to soak my sore feet and legs. We then met Mosby for dinner and talked about what our friends were doing and the road ahead.
Early the next morning, Cactus and I hopped on the bus to Mammoth. It was quite a long trip, but fun to see the snow-capped mountains in the distance. We spent the rest of the day doing a few things (washing clothes, looking for spare parts) but mostly just visiting the city. We went to the movies, ate sushi, and enjoyed the free tram that runs throughout the city.
Me, eating a lot of sushi.
After a restful night’s sleep we felt ready to walk again. The plan was to take it easy to get to Toulumne Meadows, where my friend would meet us. We had a few side quests planned and felt like we could really stop and enjoy the beauty of the trail. We headed back and reached mile 904 of the PCT. This meant we had gone about 114 miles, but we planned to turn back and hike when the snow cleared. We didn’t go far that day and were surprised to find that we had cell service at our campground. We went to sleep excited for the days ahead.
In the morning we headed to Red’s Meadow. The resort itself was closed, so none of the amenities offered there would be available, but the city tram driver had informed us that there was a hot spring there. We were able to find it thanks to a comment on FarOut and spent the morning dipping our feet in the hot mineral pool. Next, we headed to Devil’s Postpile, a geological formation of basalt columns (both intact and broken) just off the trail. We admired the stones, climbed to the top so we could see the hexagonal pattern of the columns that were still standing, and then continued to our planned campsite.
Devil’s Postpile – This was a cool detour!
The next day, I only cared about one thing: getting to Thousand Island Lake. I’ve been excited about Thousand Island Lake ever since I saw it on a postcard I sent to my sister. The lake looked stunning and I finally wanted to enjoy swimming in an alpine lake. However, when we got there I was slightly disappointed. The lake was completely frozen and the water was so cold that my feet instantly went numb. Although we didn’t swim, Cactus and I stayed in the water for a moment and then ran out, exclaiming how painful the water was.
Thousand Island Lake is under that ice.
That day had been gorgeous up to that point: we walked along a ridge with views of lightly snow-capped peaks and mountain lakes below. We saw some aspen trees mixed in with the tall pines, and thought it would be an easy sail to Yosemite. However, he had once again underestimated the snow. After the lake we passed a small pass, Isla Pass, which was covered in snow but with hardly any change in elevation. We then descended a hill that gave way to only a torrent of raging water.
The trail was a creek and I wished I had water shoes. We desperately tried to jump over the rocks, but it was impossible to avoid the water. The snow was melting and the water had nowhere to go but the same way we were going. We crossed several streams with FarOut comments like «easy rock jump for dry crossing» and «reliable logs upstream,» but for us, these were too far away. These streams were knee-deep or more with wide currents and nearby waterfalls. We spent 20 minutes at one of those crossings trying to drag a fallen tree to the other side so we wouldn’t have to walk through freezing water once again, but the water was too high.
We finally found a campsite on a rock slab and pitched our tent using small rocks as stakes. We slept fitfully, knowing that we had to get up early to get through the snow. We didn’t think this one would be as bad as the Forester, but we were still a little worried. So we set our alarms for 2 in the morning and prepared to make what we thought was our final step, and possibly our last walk in the snow. We were wrong again, but it was nice to be hopeful for a while.
