June 13, Day 55: 793.5-811.3
Miles Hiked: 17.8
Gratitude of the Day: I’m thankful for my tent today, the mosquitoes are out in full force here in the Sierra, even a small 5 minute break you get swarmed. Tonight my tent is a refuge.
Pinchot Pass
I woke up today at Rae Lakes and it was a lazy morning. Maverick was already up flying fishing and I joined Dunk and Baewatch for breakfast on the granite slab. Today was a very indecisive day for the group. Some wanted to stay and spend a good portion of the day at the lake lounging and swimming, then do a 20 mile day the next day to get over Pinchot and Mather pass, others wanted to get over Pinchot pass as to not have to do two passes in one day… I was in the later group. As always with thru hiking, the adage of hike your hike applies. So I had a late start to the day but I was packed and hiking out of camp at 9:30 am. The morning consisted of downhill passing one magnificently blue lake after another. By 12:30 I was at this amazing suspension bridge over Woods Creek where I intended to eat lunch, but nature had other plans, I would see my first bear on trail right at the bridge. There were several hikers already there eating lunch and I’m sure the bear was just sniffing around to see what was good. Several of us hikers shooed the bear away but I decided to walk a little further before breaking out the stove and eating salami. As it happens I walked across the suspension bridge and right past mile 800!
Then it was lunch at the famous “water slide” on trail, this flat granite waterfall that looks like it could be fun but it’s very dangerous, so look but don’t touch.
After lunch it would be a 7 mile incredibly long slog to crest over Pinchot Pass at 12,122 feet. Multiple small creek crossing that would require me to rock hop to keep my shoes and socks from getting soaked. I’d like to say I succeeded, but eventually one of the rocks was not so secure and bloop… both of my feet were soaked… damn! Luckily today was a sunny day and this happened fairly early in the afternoon so my shoes and socks could dry out as I hiked. Finally at 5:30pm I reached the top of Pinchot Pass and looked down into the next valley below, again pristine blue lakes awaited me.
My goal after getting over Pinchot pass was to make to the valley below the lakes for two reasons, one to set me up for Mather Pass tomorrow and two to stay a little warmer at a lower elevation. So I skipped amazing camp spots at these lakes to achieve these goals. As it happens right before camp there was another two stream crossings. The first one a mile from camp had some fairy large boulders to hop from one to the next, with the last one being kind of a small leap, I jumped to that Boulder and…“plop”! Oh shit! My phone came out of my backpack front pocket, landed on the boulder I had just hopped to and then slid down and went into the water…. Shit! Luckily the water was not deep and where it had gone in was a little rushing pool, I dropped my pack in the boulder and reached my hand in about elbow deep just hoping that it had stayed in that pool, after about 20 seconds of reaching about I retrieved my phone from the stream and all was in working order…whew!
The next stream crossing right before camp went effortlessly and I collected some water for dinner at camp. Unfortunately when I got to camp 5 minutes later the mosquitoes were out in full force, it was like a cloud of them. So I quickly emptied my backpack and grabbed my tent, set it up as fast as I could and started throwing everything in. I would retreat to my tent for the night and eat dinner in my tent, getting out to filter my water and to set my bear can away from my tent for the night. I’m ahead of the group by about 10 miles but I’m camped around other hikers I know. So tomorrow will be up and over Mather Pass and hopefully the mosquitoes will stay at bay.
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