PCT Day 72
July 11 2021
Mile: 766.3 to 774.7 (plus 1.1 mile of Mount Whitney trail) (9.5 miles)
Start: Crabtree Meadows
End: early camping in thunderstorms and hail at Tyndall Creek tentsite
Shannon and I slept in, chilling and enjoying the soft chirps and whistles of the birds flitting in the forest, the soft breeze blowing the boughs of the trees. The occasional loud clap of the open air toilet seat opening and closing across the meadow broke the idyllic silence and we found ourselves waking up to the wonderful symphony of the backcountry bathroom. What lovely sounds to enjoy during a post-wedding breakfast of oatmeal, tea and coffee. I guess you win some and you lose some…
When Shannon left to take care of some business in the bushes since the open air toilet was occupado, he literally stumbled upon an old gravesite of a 17 year old doctor who had perished here in 1946. The grave was delineated by a rock border and a cross made from two tree limbs wrapped in wire situated on a beautiful spit of land at the end of Crabtree Meadows, overlooking the lush valley and woodlands below the promontory. We’d seen a big velvety antlered mule deer a couple nights ago bedding down in the meadow below Crabtree, and the guys tenting down there had said they’d seen him several days in a row. Maybe the buck was a reincarnation of the guy who had died here in 1946 – who knows? We also didn’t understand how you could become a doctor at 17 years old. But maybe back then anybody could become a doctor. Shannon and I paid our respects and packed up quickly, not realizing how close we had been sleeping next to a permanently resting dead guy.
Today our goal was to get over the massive 13,153 foot Forrester Pass, which not only was the tallest point on the whole Pacific Crest Trail but was also about a 12 or 13 mile hike from us. (15,505 foot tall Mount Whitney is technically off of a side trail from the official PCT route). Our quad muscles were definitely still twinging a bit from the oxygen starved 4,000 foot ascent and descent yesterday up Mount Whitney. I guess what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. For me, even the small uphill climbs today were tough and I was having to pause a bit to catch my breath. It could be I was still recovering from a week of food poisoning or my body was still in shock from exercising at such high altitude (most of today we were around 11,000 feet).
As the late morning waned on into the early afternoon, storm clouds formed in the distance and started moving closer. Thick sheets of gray rain streamed down over the far mountains, obscuring them from view. Each time I looked back at the storms, they definitely seemed to be moving closer to us. We wanted to hang out in these gorgeous, wide open BigHorn Meadows that the trail bisected but with the impending thunderstorms coming, it was much too exposed to stop. As we walked briskly across the open sage bush plains, the gale advanced towards us much too quickly for our liking. A couple of hikers ahead of us actually ran with their backpacks on for the treeline as the thunder started booming. We followed suit and hurriedly jogged out of the vast, empty fields to get to somewhere where we weren’t the tallest point in the area.
There were signs that this storm was going to be kind of a bad one because of all the animal activity that was going on. The marmots around us were busy themselves with dragging grasses and seeds into their burrows and scurrying to make arrangements in their shelters before the storm came down. The noisy Stellar Jays and woodpeckers took flight across the Meadows by the dozens, darting purposely into the thick tree branches on the edge of the forest to hide out from the storm. The normally dry desert air was thick and heavy with moisture, stilled eerily in the calm before the storm. When the animals take cover in mass numbers it’s a sign that the weather is going to turn for the worse. We took the hint and moved into the forest as quickly as we could with our 30lb packs.
Almost as soon as we entered the treeline, the bruised sky broke open releasing torrents of cold fat drops of rain. The freezing cold water quickly turned into sleet and then icy marbles of hail that pinged off our hat, hoods and faces and ruddied our exposed skin. Shannon kept laughing at me because as he was hiking behind me, the hail bouncing off my hat and body somehow seemed really comical to him. You’ve got to not take life too seriously even in a life threatening situation. I was a little bit too freaked out as thunder boomed louder and louder, crescendoing into a crazy storm as lightning flashed around us and the hail started coming down thick. The last sheltered campsite was up ahead and about .6 miles away. It was the last campsite below treeline for the next 8 miles north on trail so we freakin’ booked it, running all out through the storm in the woods as lightning crackled and sparked overhead.
Coated in beads of hail and drenched in rain, we arrived at the campsite in the trees where 3 miserable looking hikers were clustered under a pine tree in their rain jackets and shorts waiting out the storm. You could tell from a single glance back at the blackened sky that it was going to be a while until this deluge was over. Instead of shivering and being drenched like these 3 shivering jabronis under the tree, Shannon and I dropped our bags, threw on our rain jackets and immediately set up our tent in record time. The storm looked like it was gonna be a good long one and we really didn’t want to wait it out shivering in the hail and rain. Standing outside under a tree while it poured, hailed and thundered was not only pointless because you couldn’t safely hike the next exposed 8 miles in an electrical storm but it was also a good way to become hypothermic. So like enterprising little hikers, we climbed into our nice dry tent, inflated our sleeping pads, changed into our dry baselayers and snuggled into our warm sleeping bags. As we listened to our tent get pummeled by the rain and hail outside, Shannon and I drifted off into a nice afternoon nap while we waited out the storm.
After a couple hours we opened the tent doors to check out the weather and figure out if it was safe to continue up the mountain pass or not. The next 8 or 9 miles there were absolutely no forests or places to hide from the electrical storms. We were at the last stronghold and so we needed a good couple of hours of storm free weather to make it up and over Forrester Pass.
I looked at the sky to the west where the storm had come out of and there were no signs of blue skies anywhere. It was more thick, dark storm clouds rolling in and rumbling thunder all around. We were definitely going to be here for a while so we made the most of the brief lull in the storm. Under the light rain, I cooked up a Southwestern style beef and masa Alpine Aire dehydrated meal. It was freaking delicious – like one of the best dehydrated meals I’d ever had. I’d bought it back at Triple Crown Outfitters in Kennedy Meadows and it was so worth the money. Shannon and I shared the hot meal under the cold, damp forest and waited out to see if the rain would relent. We gave ourselves a deadline of 5pm at the latest to hike up and over the pass before the light faded. If the storms cleared by 5pm we would hike out; if not, we’d stay here for the night.
About a dozen tents had popped up like mushrooms during our nap in the storm. The cold wet hikers standing under the trees had left, maybe venturing up the trail to risk climbing Forrester Pass in between the small breaks in the storm. Who knows – maybe we’d see them electrocuted on the trail tomorrow. I hoped not.
Shannon I spent the afternoon reading books, journaling, talking and drawing tattoos on each other with ballpoint pens. Shannon did a bunch of push-ups outside the tent and I napped off and on. At 7pm, we cooked dinner in a light drizzle and chowed down on some food while listening to the tiny creek nearby that had in a few hours turned into a whitewater rushing river. We had called the day at 5pm as we weren’t going to have enough breaks in the storm to make it up Forrester Pass with the rains before nightfall. We also didn’t want to be navigating a slick rocky path at night, winding up and down switchbacks and boulder fields after a thick rain made the terrain extremely slippery. There was also an increased risk of rockslides and twisting your ankle in the mountain passes so we decided to let things dry off during the night and we would leave first thing in the morning.
Shannon and I talked to a couple of John Muir Trail hikers and then hit the hay early, tossing our bear canisters far away from our tent. Even though we didn’t get as far as we wanted today, it was better to wait out the electrical storms than risked getting electrocuted and killed out in the rock fields by climbing some stupid pass that would still be there tomorrow morning. We had extra food and were camped next to a stream that had gone from nice and light to a raging torrent so we had plenty of water. Night came soon and we passed out as soon as it got dark preparing for an early morning the next day.
