A cold breeze began sometime during the night as we lay on our exposed rock in the middle of a huge snow field. I didn’t sleep well, primarily due to not being able to breathe through my nose. I tried to ignore the sounds of my fellow thru-hikers eating breakfast and beginning to pack up. The sun wasn’t going to reach our rock for a long while due to the high peak to our east. I made myself get up and ate breakfast and packed as much as I could without getting out of the sleeping bag. We all left the rock and resumed our snowy hike, with crusty hard sun cupped snow fields to negotiate and lots of rocks to climb down.
It took a couple hours to get past Upper and Lower Palisade Lakes. We finally located bare trail near the Lower Palisade Lake, then negotiated lots of water runoff and patchy snow fields before finally reaching the deep canyon (a fork of Palisades Canyon) with a tremendous set of switchbacks (called the Golden Staircase) down into the canyon. We hiked on real trail for a change and it was nice to have an uninterrupted pace. We stopped for lunch beside a deep flowing river, past Deer Meadow.
While eating, Batteries realized he had left his journal a couple miles back, so we scrapped the idea of reaching Muir Pass tonight. As we sat waiting for him to return from his extra four miles, I caught up on journaling. I enjoyed the break as my legs were worn out and a couple hours sitting in the forest by the river was very relaxing. Batteries returned with his journal in hand around 3pm. Muir Pass was 14 miles away and yet some of my trail mates still had dreams of reaching the snow covered pass and sleeping in the stone hut at the summit. I was not so optimistic that we would reach that destination, based on our history of dealing with long snowy climbs.
The trail continued dropping this afternoon to the middle fork of the Kings River, which was our low point of the day at 8,000 feet. It was actually hot at that elevation and the river was raging with white water spray 20 feet in the air in some places. I was thankful that we did not have to cross the river as it surely would have been dangerous, if not fatal, to cross. From there we began a gentle 700 foot climb to Bishop Pass Trail intersection and despite my general fatigue I covered the trail fairly quickly.
There was a late afternoon break at the intersection where there was still talk of possibly night hiking to Muir Pass. I knew that I couldn’t possibly make a 3,300 foot climb through snow fields in the dark and indicated to my hiking buddies that if they wanted to go for it, that would be fine and I would do my best, but that I was skeptical that I could make it. The next 5.7 miles represented almost a 3,000 foot climb and the grade was still fairly gentle for the first mile and a half, so I knew there would be an abrupt climb at some point.
We reached a campsite area in a mosquito laden meadow (Little Pete's) around 6pm, where Mountain Goat and I stopped as we had heard that we would be eating dinner there. We waited there with Scotland, Pepper Jack, and Bloody Knuckles for the fellas to show, which took about 20 minutes. By then we had made the executive decision to cook dinner. During dinner it was decided that we would hike another 30 minutes, then look for flat space to camp, somewhere below the 10,500 foot threshold of snow fields.
Hilgado and Scotland left the meadow first after dinner, then Mountain Goat and I left to resume hiking to find a site. In about 15 minutes we passed Big Pete’s meadow, another camping opportunity, where Scotland and Hilgado had already begun pitching their tents. Looking at my altimeter with a reading of only 9,200 feet, I knew we should press on to gain both miles and elevation toward tomorrow’s tough snow filled day over Muir Pass.
We suddenly began a very steep climb which I thought would kill me, and Mountain Goat quickly disappeared from sight up above me in the narrow canyon. The river we were paralleling was bursting with millions of gallons of whitewater snowmelt, a spectacle not to be missed. I began to wonder if we had made a mistake passing that last campsite as I saw no end to the steep climb anywhere above.
Finally, 35 minutes after we had left our dinner site, we reached the “No Fires Above This Point” sign at 10,000 feet and I saw some camping opportunities off to the left between the trail and raging river. Too tired to search, I let Mountain Goat scope out for sites and we made the decision to stop. I left my pack on the trail for our hiking buddies to see. They showed up around 8pm and we all cowboy camped, except for Mountain Goat, who pitched his tent. I felt drained, but took advantage of the fire pit and made a fire to enjoy for only the second time since starting the journey. Freight Train made community pudding to share, which we all enjoyed immensely! I couldn’t breathe once in the sleeping bag and had to use the Afrin again so I could sleep. I was one whipped hiker!
Today’s weather: sunny; low 25, high 80. Today’s miles: 14.5; cumulative miles 833.4.
