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Nancyann Member
Joined: 28 Jul 2013 Posts: 2316 | TRs | Pics Location: Sultan Basin |
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Nancyann
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Wed Jul 06, 2022 2:40 pm
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“Bring Microspikes, there is still snow up here, and one short snow finger to cross where the runout is FATAL.” What??
This is the message I got from NWHikers wolffie, calling from his cellphone on the PCT a couple of days before leaving for our PCT trip. He was heading northbound and had been working his way up through the Sierras since April. He knew we were starting our trip on Monday and just happened to be finishing up that very section. So I threw my spikes in my pack and added a whippet for good measure. I did end up using them both.
This was my first Sierra backpacking trip, after being smitten by the lovely Winnemuca Lake near Carson Pass, elevation 8,880 feet, last June while dayhiking with my son. I recruited Hiking Partner to drive down to Sacramento where my son lives so we could use his place as a jumping off point for the long drive to Carson Pass. My son graciously volunteered to pick us up at Ebbetts Pass, 30 miles south, six days later and take us back to Carson Pass to retrieve the other car. Hiking Partner’s son wanted to join us so we picked him up at the Sacramento Airport and headed up to the mountains Monday morning. Thankfully, we were able to score one of only three camping permits for Winnemuca Lake, and excitedly headed up the trail mid-day.
DAY ONE
There was much more snow on the ground than last year when I was there, but we found one of the campsites near the lake to be snow free and quite nice. This lake is a few miles off the PCT and camping is very restricted, so we only saw one other group camped there. We were hoping that staying here the first night would help us get used to the higher elevation of the Sierras, around 8,500 to 9,500 feet. In addition to the thin air, the temperature began to drop from the 60’s into the 40’s, setting a pattern that would be with us all week. No complaints though, because the sun was out and the sky was bright blue, and that’s what we came for!
Winnemuca Lake
Hiking Partner with his favorite spaghetti dinner, so happy to be on his first backpack of the year!
DAY TWO
The next morning we got a (sort of) early start and headed over to the PCT to officially began our journey. It wasn’t long before I put on my Microspikes and got out my whippet, because as we far as we could see the PCT was under snow. I appreciated the single boot track that wolffie and other previous thru hikers carved carefully in the snow. Everyone had stepped carefully in each step and the steps were well defined. Good practice for me, because in a couple of days I would be testing my nerves on the infamous fatal runout snow finger.
The entire day was spent traversing annoying intermittent snowfields, but as we descended Carson Pass, we were rewarded with increasingly beautiful scenery.
We found several nice spots to set up our camp at beautiful Lost Lake. No one was there. We had run into quite a few thru hikers heading northbound on the PCT, but they all were anxious to get to Carson Pass to re-supply. It was close to freezing as the sun went down and not a mosquito in sight!
DAY THREE
The next day the PCT took us through dry and often barren terrain with interesting lichen on the rocks and spectacular views of beautiful lakes in a basin below.
Around noon, Hiking Partner’s son received a message on his cell phone that he needed to cut short his trip to tend to a family emergency. He was going to have to go back to Carson Pass and take his dad’s car to North Tahoe where he was storing his truck at a friend’s house. We were sad to see him go because he was a strong hiker and very pleasant company. He gave HP the solar charger he had been carrying and we parted ways. Later in the day we were even more sad to see him go because he accidentally took our cell phone charging cord with him. Between my obsessive picture-taking and keeping track of where we were with Gaia, we really needed that cord!
Hoping that we might run into someone who had an iPhone charging cord we could borrow, we continued on to pretty little Lily Pad Lake, where we set up camp for the night. Again, not a soul in sight. Such a peaceful resting spot, except for a minor annoyance of wind and temperatures dropping into the low ‘40’s. Little did we know what we were in for the next day…
DAY FOUR
I woke up to bright sun after a restless night. My Thermarest pad had developed a slow leak and there is nothing like waking up in the middle of the night on cold, hard granite with a deflated Thermarest underneath. Kind of missing that mossy, pine needley forest duff back home to lie on, but not that much.
Today was the day we had to reckon with the notorious fatal runout snow finger, but also top priority was borrowing a charging cord to bump up our phone batteries. We had some prior experience with this predicament not that long ago, and the outcome was good. Last August during our eight day circumnavigation of Glacier Peak, on Day Two, we discovered that a certain person brought the wrong charging cord for our IPhones. So while hiking in the cold drizzle below Glacier Peak Meadows, HP asked a couple of guys who were taking a snack break if he could buy their charging cord from them. Naturally they turned him down, but one of them, a nice fellow from Missouri, offered to let us use his cord while he was having his snack. We were able to get both our phones charged up and made a new friend as well.
As we proceeded south towards Raymond Peak, an increasing number of (mostly German) northbound thru hikers passed by, and for a brief moment, we thought we hit the jackpot with a nice girl named Rachel, from Seattle. She was sitting in the shade alongside the trail having a snack, so I told her about our predicament and she offered to let us use her IPhone charging cord. Unfortunately, she had a new one which wasn’t compatible with our older phones.
So we exchanged pleasantries and continued on our not-so-merry way. The landscape was changing from a pleasant lake basin to a very dry and rugged ridge, beautiful in its own way, and very windy. The thru hikers had warned us about the high wind up on Raymond Peak, so we were a bit apprehensive.
We rounded a bend, and there it was, the scary snow patch with the trail running right across it, under Raymond Peak, elevation 10,000 feet.
Almost as if on cue, a gust of wind practically knocked us over as we reached the snow crossing. I could see a faint path up a rock outcropping above the snow, so we had a discussion and decided to give the detour a try, instead of hoping the wind wouldn’t blow us off the snow crossing. I only made it a little ways before another, even scarier gust of wind almost blew me off the outcropping. It didn’t help that the steep hill was covered with little pebbles that rolled under your boots like ball bearings. HP, who has many years of climbing under his belt, made it to the top, took off his pack and came back down to get mine. Then I was somehow able to crawl on my belly up to the top of the detour. Lo and behold, the only way down was via a vertical chute covered with more little ball bearings. I looked at HP and said “But I’m not a climber!”, and he said, “Well, you are now!” So, he climbed down the chute first to see if it went, which it did, then coached me down, showing me handholds to use, then climbed back up and retrieved my pack for me, all in gale force winds. Such a hero!
Me with dirt all over my face after crawling on my belly, getting stoked for the ball bearing downclimb.
HP bringing my pack down.
After taking a few minutes to compose ourselves, (me anyway ) we carefully continued on the PCT towards 9,660 feet high Reynolds Peak along a scenic but very cliffy,exposed section of trail. The gusts of wind were relentless and many times we had to stop and crouch down to avoid being blown off our feet.
Looking back at Raymond Peak
My babysitter.
HP took one last picture of me in the wind, and then we turned our phones off, since we had so far been unable to borrow a charging cord and we still had two more nights to go.
It was getting late in the day and we were tired of battling the wind as we grew closer to Reynolds Peak, elevation 9,660 feet, our next objective. We found a patch of snowmelt for water and set up a bivy in a somewhat flat area below the trail, close to Reynolds Pass. We were very thankful that we were not in a burned area. It was somewhat reassuring that we were surrounded by majestic big old pine trees that had weathered high winds for many years. It was way too windy to set up our tarps, so we ate a quick dinner and laid out our sleeping gear. HP’s entire set up almost blew down the mountain in one big gust of wind, so we had to place big, heavy rocks on our sleeping bags and pads. It was going to be a long night…
In the middle of the night, the wind miraculously stopped blowing, and I was pondering just packing up and making a run for it while we could. In reality though, it was so bitter cold, close to freezing, made worse by my leaky Thermarest, so I just tried to go back to sleep.
DAY FIVE
As dawn approached, the winds came roaring back, and I knew we were screwed. About 7am, instead of eating breakfast, we just packed up our gear and tried to get out of there. We didn’t get very far. As we crested the pass, a tremendous blast of wind almost knocked us both off our feet. I thought to myself, this wind is blowing 100 miles per hour! Later I found out that 80 mph gusts were predicted for this area of the Sierras. We crouched down and waited for a break in the gusts, but another one hit us just as hard. At this point, a German couple about our age crested the pass from the other side, looking very shellshocked. The lady told us that the trail they just came up was on an exposed cliff and they had to walk sideways facing the cliff wall so the wind wouldn’t blow them off the mountain.
HP and I had a quick conference and decided to go back down to a sheltered spot behind some boulders and eat breakfast, hoping the wind would die down.
After about an hour and a half, the time between the wind gusts increased, so we decided to try again. We made a plan that we would stop and crouch down when a gust hit, then try to proceed forward when it stopped. I followed directly behind HP and held on to a pack strap when I felt like I was going to be blown off my feet, and we made it over the barren, exposed pass. The cliffy area was very intimidating, but the wind gods took pity on us and we safely made it down to a sheltered area in big pine trees. Meanwhile, several northbound thru hikers were trying to come up, and we stopped to warn them to face in to the cliff. This is when we first heard about the “trail magic” at Ebbetts Pass, where we were to meet my son the next day. We had been planning to spend the night camped at one of the lakes in a basin close to the pass. However, once we heard about the trail angel’s generous offerings, we quickly changed our plans. Both of us had dead iPhones and we still needed to send a message to my son that we were arriving on schedule. We were fairly certain we would find someone with a charging cord at the trail magic station, so we made a beeline for the pass.
As we passed by the pretty lakes where we had planned to camp, the wind was still blowing almost as bad as earlier in the day. It would have been another long, freezing cold night, and we felt certain we made the right decision. At least at Ebbetts Pass we could charge up our phones and possibly enjoy some yummy treats.
When we arrived, we couldn’t believe our good fortune. One of the trail angels had a huge car sized battery pack and the correct charging cord we needed. They had set out an amazing spread of homeade salads, fresh fruit, many different delicious kinds of homeade cookies and pastries, fresh coffee and creamers and even a Coleman stove which they were cooking hamburgers on. They also had an ice chest full of water, seltzers, pop, beer and wine coolers. HP grabbed a freshly made cheeseburger and felt like he had died and gone to heaven after five days of trail food.
I was pretty happy as well and I have to say it was definitely the highlight of our past couple of days!
We sat down in one of the lawn chairs provided and had a fun visit with a big group of jolly Germans who were in no hurry to proceed up the trail. It was awfully nice to just relax and chat after a harrowing experience the previous 24 hours.
This particular group of trail angels spends two weekends at Ebbetts Pass in late June and then moves their operation further north to Donner Pass in July. They are a retired group of hikers who get a lot of enjoyment out of helping the thru hikers as they progress northward through the Sierras, and I must say, they really brightened up our lives!
We hung out with them until late afternoon and then walked southbound across the highway about a quarter mile to an excellent and spacious camping area. We were able to contact my son and arrange to have him pick us up first thing in the morning because not only was it still windy, the temperature had dropped to the low 30’s and there were actually snow flurries!
As I lay on my leaky Thermarest trying to stay warm, I was serenaded by the sweet melody of the hermit thrush, making everything all right. We had lots of challenges on our first backpacking trip in the Sierras, but all in all, it was a great and memorable adventure and I’m already looking forward to coming back next year!
contour5, Kellbell, Kenji, Frank, Opus
contour5, Kellbell, Kenji, Frank, Opus
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bobbi stillaGUAMish
Joined: 13 Jul 2006 Posts: 8012 | TRs | Pics Location: olympics! |
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bobbi
stillaGUAMish
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Thu Jul 07, 2022 4:30 pm
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OMG! what a 'memorable backpacking trip'!
so happy all is well. the trail angels are the best! what a feast!
bobbi ૐ
"Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So…get on your way!" - Oh, the Places You’ll Go! By Dr. Seuss
Nancyann
bobbi ૐ
"Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So…get on your way!" - Oh, the Places You’ll Go! By Dr. Seuss
Nancyann
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Kellbell Member
Joined: 01 Oct 2011 Posts: 580 | TRs | Pics
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Kellbell
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Sat Jul 09, 2022 10:12 am
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Nancyann
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