Which Way Is North?

PCT Mile 712.7 to PCT Mile 730.8 Death Canyon Creek Day Total:  18.1 Miles We woke up in a beautiful green forest of tall, old trees, a  landscape different from anything we'd seen so far. The trail passed into a green meadow looking out to big mountains and we  ate breakfast at the south fork of the Kern river, a spot so beautiful it looked like a postcard. Our campsite buddies from last night, Moe and Toe, were fly fishing.   The trail took us mostly upward, passing a lot of streams. I love water and had missed streaks for the past month. Hearing thunder we chilled in the tent for an hour in the afternoon instead of going higher. After the skies cleared, we reached 10,000 feet and saw small remnants of snow. Snow! And big trees. It was smoky and getting worse as the day went on. Although we couldn't see much of the mountains because of the smoke at times there were pretty views of upcoming snowy peaks. In the late afternoon we had l...

PCT Mile 702.2 Kennedy Meadows to PCT Mile 712.7 Day Total:  10.4 Miles Packing up takes a lot longer with all of these new additions to our packs. It was like Tetris trying to fit six days of food into the bear canister, fitting the bear canister into Stephen's pack, and then fitting some of the things Stephen usually carries into my pack. All very frustrating. We ended up eating breakfast at the general store and spending all day on the porch waiting for it to cool down. Turns out we're not quite in the mountains yet. Soon.  Hanging out on the porch we met more hikers and talked about the high snow levels in the mountains, our excitement about hiking Mount Whitney, where we plan to resupply through this section, and our collective disdain for the desert.  I found (most of) a PCT guidebook in the hiker box that I hadn't seen before. (Side note: many places in trail towns, like the general store, have boxes where hikers can leave food and gear th...

PCT Mile 702.2 Kennedy Meadows Zero Day We got up in time to catch the 7:45 a.m. ride to Grumpy Bear Restaurant , three miles down the road, for their famous hiker breakfast. For $9.95, you get a big plate of eggs, potatoes, and bacon plus all-you-can eat pancakes. The catch is that the pancakes are HUGE.  Nobody can eat more than one. Nobody at our table even finished their single pancake. Well played, Grumpy Bear.  From the restaurant, we walked over to the home of a new outfitter in town, a famous PCT hiker named Yogi , who sells anything you could need for the Sierras out of her home. She writes a PCT handbook, updated every year, that we among thousands of others use to plan our hike. It was exciting to meet her! Unfortunately they were sold out of the things we were looking for, so we were told to return in the afternoon after a FedEx delivery.  Back at the general store, we sat on the porch in our rain gear while we di...

PCT Mile 680.8 Chimney Creek to PCT Mile 702.2 Kennedy Meadows  Day Total: 21.6 Miles We found a river today! Such an amazing sight. We waded in the South Kern river and washed miles and miles of dirt off our bodies in the cold water. But before that, we had an even more amazing sight. We climbed for six miles this morning up to 8,000 feet and came over a ridge to a view of the snow-covered Sierras stretched across the horizon. We screamed with excitement. The mountains! That's where we're going!!! The desert ends soon!!! From there, it was eight mostly downhill miles with very little shade to the river. I was pretty overheated by the time we got to the river, and wading in the cold water fixed that ever so quickly. I'm beyond excited to get up into the mountains and to have access to cold water like this. We hiked 4.4 more miles up and down over rolling desert hills up to the road crossing for the Kennedy Meadows General Store. The general store is a landmark ...

PCT Mile 651.3 Walker Pass Campground to PCT Mile 680.8, Chimney Creek  Miles Today: 29.6 Miles Today is the third day in a row we've hiked our longest day yet! Woooohooo! We packed up pretty slowly this morning, making use of the pit toilets before starting to hike a little before 7:30 a.m. There were four other PCT hikers leaving the campground this morning, more than we'd seen in nearly 100 miles since leaving Tehachapi.  We started out of the pass and made our way up up and up. We found some shade an hour in and worked on our food bag. Out of Tehachapi we had as much food as we've carried and it was our mission to make the contents dwindle. After breakfast we continued going up and running into more hikers. In the next couple of miles we passed more hikers than any other single day of the trail. Some were folks we had seen before –-before our trip into LA even – and others we hadn't. Near the top we found some shade behind a rock outcropping a...

PCT Mile 623.5 to PCT Mile 651.3, Walker Pass Campground Day Total: 27.8 Miles We reached an amazing water cache with some special trail magic at Bird Spring Pass dirt road after a couple hours of hiking this morning. We sat in the shade for a while and enjoyed some Pop Tarts from the cooler. There was also a solar charger ,which we used to charge our phones. We also chugged water, in preparation for the long, dry stretch ahead.  After the water cache we had a big climb, almost 2,000 feet over three miles. The trail was pretty gradual, following long switchbacks to the top of the ridge. We could see long views of the desert to the south. Over the top of the ridge, we got a far off, hazy view of the Sierras, and could just barely make out Mount Whitney. Whitney is the tallest mountain in the continental U.S., and we'll attempt to hike it as a side-trip in a couple weeks.  Just as quickly as we got to the top, the trail descended back to the heat below...

PCT Mile 596.5 to PCT Mile 623.5 Day Total: 27.0 miles Last night was the best night of sleep I've had on the trail. I was exhausted last night. Plus it was windy and the leaves on the trees above us created the perfect white noise for sleeping.  We had about a mile of climbing up from the pass and then four more meandering up miles to Robin Bird Spring where we got water. We filtered enough to hike 14 miles to a road crossing where we knew some past PCT hikers maintained a large water cache.  Water caches are fantastic, but the Pacific Crest Trail Association strongly recommends not relying on them because you would be in a tough spot if they run out of water. So I'm always a little wary of water caches, but thankfully this one had more than a hundred gallons.  We decided to cook dinner (mashed potatoes and a bag of taco rice) at the water cache so we wouldn't have to carry extra water for dinner. It was also a pretty hot and exposed section of trail, so...

PCT Mile 572.9 to 596.5 Day Total: 23.6 Miles We started the day with the same wind that tossed us around the night before. I wore my rain pants and Kelly wore her rain jacket to stay comfortable for the first half hour of hiking. We made it a good way longer than an hour before we needed to stop for breakfast. I suppose we still had some residual food stores from our day in town. We ran into 3G and OT Panda when we stopped for breakfast and they warned us of the fire ants . We scoped out the ground for a good place to sit and got into our Snickers and honey buns. The warning about fire ants was warranted – I got a nasty bite while I was applying sunscreen and then another a few steps down the trail. Our next destination was Golden Oaks Spring. We met back up with 3G and OT Panda at water and had a nice break. Water was a concern for the stretch between Tehachapi and Kennedy Meadows, so we made a point to drink  until we couldn't take another sip when we were at a wa...