I awoke early to the sound of other thru-hikers in camp slowly getting up in the cold morning air. I didn’t want to get out of the sleeping bag, but had to get myself organized since we were planning to leave the campground for the trail around lunch time. I worked on details, things like making sure I had enough vitamins and ibuprofen and journal paper and toilet paper and coffee filters to use as a pre-filter when extracting water for drinking. Then my attention turned to what items to bump ahead while in the Sierras, such as my radio, since no stations were coming in anyway due to the very remote country. Then I worked on putting a box together of items to mail to trail angel sister-in-law, Ashley, in Portland. Then I spread out all the food I had purchased for twelve days on the trail, with no roads for 210 miles, the longest roadless stretch anywhere in the lower 48 for a hiking trail.
While in the midst of looking at the piles of food, I took a break to walk over to the feeding station where 30 or 40 hikers were milling around eating breakfast that some of the thru-hikers were cooking on the Coleman stoves at a picnic table. After breakfast I returned to the scary looking piles of food, wondering how it would be possible to fit and carry so much food in my backpack. After an hour of looking at the 36 or more meals, I finally eliminated some food, loaded two large food bags to the limit, and then made an attempt to pack the backpack. It was bulging at the seams and I had to hang all kinds of stuff on the outside. The 30 lbs of food plus water brought pack weight well over 50 pounds, an excessive number for most backpacking trips.
Quickly I borrowed Squirrels rental car and drove from the campground to the general store to 1)mail my boxes and journals, 2)charge the cell phone, which I decided to carry even though there is no service for 170 miles, just in case I can get a signal from the summit of Mt. Whitney, and 3)to eat a double cheeseburger since they were grilling on the deck outside the general store. While there I visited with Good To Go and Opto.
Around 12:30pm we drove back to the campground. My new hiking crew (Batteries, Pepper Jack, Bloody Knuckles, Freight Train and Intruder) were all packed and waiting patiently for me under a shade tree at the campground. We were just about to don the packs and say goodbye to all the other thru-hikers in camp who were taking part in lunch festivities when Jeff and Donna Saufley drove in to join the party for Meadow Ed’s 60th birthday. We, of course, had to go say hello and goodbye to them. I had to say goodbye to Phantom, Good To Go, Happy, Doodlebug and Whoop Ass, which was very hard to do. Earlier I had said goodbye to Nitro, Bono and Nightingale who were slackpacking with Heinz’s help with his car. I would have loved to stay with all my trail buddies to hike the Sierra, but my heart and my legs were telling me to go today and not to wait 3 or 4 more days for them to catch up. My heart also tells me we have over 1900 miles to hike and I will have the opportunity to hike with them again when we all see each other in a trail town.
So our group of six, plus Luna, who will hike with us 40 miles, put on our packs and walked away from the party in progress and 100 yards from the campground, we were back on the trail. Wow! We actually escaped the hiker vortex, and I managed to do it without taking a zero mile day. The first few miles were gently rolling and followed alongside the Kern River. The two gals in the group, Bloody Knuckles and Pepper Jack, peeled off the trail for a quick skinny dip in the COLD water of the river. Not this southern boy! Both gals are Wisconsin women, used to cold temperatures and cold water. Onward we continued, with the trail now looking like the Sierras, with high jagged granite peaks and valley floors covered in green with snowmelt streams flowing through the meadows.
We climbed from 6,100 feet to 8,400 feet during the afternoon, then dropped back down to 7,800 feet where we stopped just across a bridge which crossed the south fork of the Kern River in Monarche Meadows for dinner and water. After dinner we decided to make camp near the bridge and found some small, flat, sandy sites. I attempted to catch up on journaling (still behind; today is Tuesday and I’m just writing about Sunday). Luna, who lives in LA and is in grad school, thru-hiked in 2003 with Pepper Jack, Bloody Knuckles. Batteries made a small fire as darkness fell and I joined him to enjoy the heat on a cold evening.
Soon I was back in the sleeping bag, all cinched up for another night of cowboy camping. I am excited to be in the Sierras, but very nervous and fearful about dealing with so much snow for so many miles and being cold and wet fording snowmelt runoff. Hopefully I have made a good decision not to flip flop up north and the skills of my fellow hikers having been here before will help us safely get through the Sierras.
Today’s weather: sunny; low 28, high 65. Today’s mileage: 11.5; cumulative miles: 716.7.
