Day 54 – June 10th – Zero Day in Independence, CA

Bucket here – So after 11 days without a shower or laundry, Sage and I were very happy to get to this little town to get cleaned up!  Getting here required a 2000 ft. climb over 7.5 miles to Kearsage Pass, then 5 mile decent to Onion Valley Road trailhead, then 20 mile hitch to this town.  We’ll need to do this same exercise in reverse to get back on the PCT.  So 25 miles of non-PCT hiking for resupply and cleanup!  Joy sent us a resupply box to this motel, so we have food covered for 5-6 days.

A lot has happened in the past 11 days.  We’ve basically had no cell service during this time as well, so little chance to update Joy on what was going on – except through Garmin satellite tracking and minimal messages.

Our short visit to Kennedy Meadows was a big disappointment.  This is the point you leave the dessert (after 700 miles of hiking) and enter the Sierras.  First, there were probably a 100 hikers there.  Some had been there for 3-5 days.  I did not see the attraction. There were 2 outdoor showers that were always in use.  There was a single washer setting outside that was also always in use.  There was no dryer, so people draped their clothes everywhere for drying.  We had 2 packages there to pick up which we requested at 2:00 pm, but didn’t get until 10:00 pm that night.  Fortunately we got the packages (new pair of shoes for me and other supplies for Sierras). We also got our electronics recharged late that night – which is also critical!

The outfitter there was literally a shipping container made into a store – which was packed with people.  Kendra was able to buy new shoes there and we also bought 6 days worth of food and rented bear canisters (which are required for the next 300 miles on the trail).  So we made it out of there the next day by 11:30.   Unfortunately, we quickly realized that we did not have enough food to last 7 days – so we had to ration our food.  Which was not good to be calorie deficient while hiking some of the biggest mountains in the country!

On June 7th (Day 51) we got up at  3:00 am and hit the trail by 4:00 am to night hike up to Mt. Whitney – the highest mountain in the 48 states.  We summited Mt. Whitney around 9:30  am (a 3500 ft climb over 7.5 miles), then hiked back to the ranger station, gathered all our gear, and hiked back to the PCT.

The next day we hiked to Forester Pass – the highest elevation mountain actually on the PCT (Mt. Whitney is actually not on the PCT – it’s a 15 mile round trip to summit it).  After we reached the summit, the north side of the mountain had some snow coverage that covered the trail.  There was no one around at that time and Sage and I lost the trail.  We ended up coming down the side of a mountain hundreds of feet.  We could see the trail on the other side of a lake there, but we had to boulder hike for probably a quarter a mile along the side of the lake to get back to the trail (this is with backpacks on!).  It took us 2.5 hours to get back on trail.  So that was quite an adventure!  We’re fortunate neither of us got injured or it would have required a helicopter rescue.

We have been camping the past few nights at over 11,000 ft. which was been very cold (below freezing).  So we’ve been layering up at night in our sleeping bags to stay warm.

But the scenery has been absolutely amazing the past week – we take photos, but I’m not sure they do justice to how spectacular the sites are out here in the Sierras!

That’s it for now.  We’ve downloaded a bunch of photos today, so they are out there for viewing.  

Thanks again to everyone who is following our journey here and providing comments – we sincerely appreciate it!