Honeybuzz and I hiked 30.3 miles today, my longest yet, with a leisurely seven a.m. start and a two-hour lunch break at the Feather River. Near the end of a 4,000-foot descent to the river, Honeybuzz was about 100 feet ahead of me when he spooked a Mountain Lion off the trail. I heard a […]
I spent the day walking with Honeybuzz and we made good progress despite about ten miles of snow. My GPS once again proved extremely useful, and I fell five times on slippery traverses this morning, sliding into tree wells on three occasions. Otherwise, the trail generally followed long, dry, forested, gently undulating ridge tops, with […]
For the first time in almost four weeks I dropped below 6,000 feet, hiked on clear trail all day, and even broke a sweat because it was summery and warm outside. No snow at all! Kind of ironic, then, that today’s top headline in the Reno newspaper was “Snow Bogs Down Hikers.” I put in […]
I woke up late this morning feeling depressed, exhausted, with a headache, and dreading the next section of snow-covered trail. Things could only get better from there, and they eventually did – after I’d slogged through 15 miles of snowpack, wandering alone in a confusing forest for most of the day with just my iPhone’s […]
Today marks exactly two months on the trail, during which I’ve walked every day except for one day off. Though I haven’t quite hit the halfway point yet, I’m hoping to be finished in another two months with bigger mileage ahead. This morning I walked with Balls and Sunshine for a while before we met […]
Despite several hours in snow, I hiked 29.1 miles today – my longest day of the trip so far. I spent 14 hours on the trail, from 6:30 to 8:30, without many breaks. About midafternoon I caught up to Sunshine and Balls, a cheerful 11-year-old girl hiking the whole PCT with her dad this summer. […]
This morning kicked off with five miles of heavy, continuous snowpack inside dense forest – ugh. But then Honeybuzz, Annie and I dropped down to cross busy Highway 50, twelve miles west of South Lake Tahoe (where, apparently, a celebrity golf tournament this weekend is featuring Michael Jordon among others), and walked into the Echo […]
Today was a breakthrough day: the trail was relatively clear of snow, and, though we got lost a few times, Honeybuzz, Annie and I were able to maintain a good pace and hiked 26 miles – my biggest day since hitting the Sierras. We crossed Highway 88 at Carson Pass and talked for a while […]
After nine miles of wandering through snow-covered forest this morning, and getting lost a few times, I hit Ebbetts Pass at Highway 4 before noon. Expecting a bare and remote mountain road crossing, I was surprised to find a blue canopy there: trail magic! A friendly guy named Doug had just set up an incredible […]
This morning my thermometer read 29 degrees, and my shoes were frozen rock solid outside my tent. Isn’t this mid-July in California? I spent the day hiking with several others, most of the time on snow, often off trail since we kept getting lost. Navigation in the forest with ten feet of snow on the […]
It was hard to escape Bridgeport this morning. After mailing my bear canister home at the post office, buying a few groceries, and eating a giant avocado burger for breakfast, it was time to hit the road. Five of us lined up at the edge of town to hitchhike back to the trail at Sonora […]
At about eight this morning I hit the 1,000-mile mark, appropriately enough at a thigh-deep stream crossing. Only 1,650 to go until Canada! Otherwise it was a solid day. I put in more than 20 miles to reach Sonora Pass and hitchhiked with some other PCTers to a town called Bridgeport, where I’m sleeping tonight […]
This morning the water had dropped significantly and we were able to cross the river in Stubblefield Canyon before the sun hit, though it was waist-deep, fast, a little scary, and ice cold. Thus began today’s slogfest. The farther north I go, the more snow I encounter, and the more demoralizing it gets. Today we […]
These mountains are wearing me like ice on granite. Another absolutely brutal day today had me feeling a bit less invincible than usual by dinnertime. Quake, Unload, Honeybuzz and I lost the trail directly out of camp under five feet of continuous snow and spent a frustrating hour downclimbing a series of steep cliffs and […]
It took 12 hours to cover 20 very strenuous miles today, pushing hard all day without many breaks. I hiked with Honeybuzz, Quake, and Unload as we bullied our way through miles of continuous snow (often bushwhacking and navigating by GPS when we lost the trail), clouds of mosquitoes, 3,500 feet of elevation gain, and […]
In a stroke of magnificent timing I arrived at the Tuolumne Meadows store and post office about one hour before it opened for the season this morning. Soon I was eating bananas and ice cream with about ten other hikers out front, celebrating our arrival at Yosemite, and, by the time I’d fetched three resupply […]
I drifted into another group of hikers and walked with four young guys over Donohue Pass (11,000 feet) today. It was a very tiring 20 miles, more than half on snow, with 3,500 feet of elevation gain, constantly watching thunderstorms roll past in adjacent valleys, but quite satisfying even though we didn’t reach the summit […]
I took the wrong trail out of camp this morning and ended up a mile and a half down a steep set of switchbacks before I realized they were leading the wrong direction, thus wasting an hour. Oops. Much of the rest of the day was spent playing a tiring game of hide and seek […]
A late start since I had to wait for the morning ferry out of VVR, but I returned to the trail by 10 am with a new crew of hikers, and spent the rest of the day walking with Crasher, Flash, and Noodles Romanov. We climbed 3,000 feet to Silver Pass, which was snow-covered but […]
After 13 days of the most intense hiking I have ever done, 175 miles through the toughest terrain on the PCT (with a side trip to climb Mt Whitney), I made it to Vermilion Valley this morning in time to catch the ferry across Lake Edison, and spent the rest of the day gorging on […]
The biggest excitement today was not Selden Pass (which required the usual 3,000 foot climb, awesome vistas, and a few miles of continuous snow; nothing new) but a series of creek crossings in late afternoon, after dropping back below 10,000 feet, near the end of a 20-mile day. Bear Creek was the worst. I was […]
The typical Sierra routine: I got up at 5:30, slogged up a 3,000 foot climb, lost the trail, and walked over rotten snow for 10 straight miles above treeline before dropping into another lush valley to camp by a river. It’s been pretty much the same every day this week, and today was no exception. […]
Some say that Mather Pass is the most dangerous section of trail on the entire PCT; deep inside a remote part of Kings Canyon National Park, Mather links two Sierra peaks with a thin, cornice-topped knife ridge, more than 12,000 feet high, and extremely steep-sided. It certainly depends on weather and snow conditions, but I […]
I rose at 4:30 am this morning and backtracked five miles of trail through icy snow and two frigid creek crossings, up 2,000 feet, searching for my missing binoculars. No luck. Either another hiker picked them up, or… I don’t know. In any case my Leicas are gone, and I spent the rest of the […]
This week, the mantra is “a pass a day,” and today’s climb was called Glen Pass. Although not quite as high or steep as yesterday’s effort, Glen definitely took a lot of hard work. The trail was buried in snow for most of the day, and traction spikes and ice axe once again came into […]