Day 44 – Friday, July 7

PCT mile 750.8 Chicken Spring Lake to PCT mile 767.0 Crabtree Meadows 
Day Total: 16.2 Miles

We're in the Sierras now. Holy moley!

Immediately after hiking up from our campsite at Chicken Spring Lake we were rewarded with unbelievably gorgeous views of huge, snowy, granite mountains. We'd read that we'd feel like we were in the Sierras after Cottonwood Pass, and that proved to be true.

We crossed into Sequoia National Park this morning, where the rules change about food storage because of bears. From this point forward and for the next several hundred miles, we're required to have the bear canister that we picked up in Kennedy Meadows.

Apparently Sierras bears are pretty smart.

After a couple miles of up, we had a long, gradual descent through beautiful big trees, down to the Rock Creek ranger station where we ate lunch. After peanut butter and honey sandwiches, we crossed a gushing creek, walking through swampy grasses with our feet soaked.

This year is one of the all-time highest snow years in the Sierra, meaning we'll be walking through lots of snow on the high passes and having to navigate raging creeks full of snowmelt. There are years when PCT hikers hardly walk on snow and have to worry about finding drinking water in the Sierra. This is not one of those years.

In the afternoon we heard thunder, but the trail was in the woods so we kept walking. When it started to hail a little we took shelter for half an hour until the storm passed.

We saw our first marmots! We'd been warned that marmots love backpacking food, so we're going to be vigilant about protecting our food through this section.

Marmots are fun and Stephen and I are keeping score of who's seen the most. So far, he's leading, but there's a lot more marm habitat to walk through.

We came across a group of hikers we've leapfrogged with for the last 300 miles just past Whitney Creek. They had already summited Whitney. They told us there wasn't much snow left on the trail and how long it took them to get up. They had a great time at the summit and we got even more excited.

We camped at Crabtree Meadows, about a mile east of the PCT on the side trail up to Whitney. We found Woodchuck, Rooster, Shade Baby and Happy Baby were already set up there too, as well as a group of five PCT hikers from Germany that we'd seen several times in the last week. We're all going to the highest point in the contiguous US tomorrow!