PCT Day 82
July 21, 2021
Mile: 803.6 to 820.4 (16.8 total miles)
Start: Stealth camping in random field near Sawmill Pass Trail
Finish: Island tent site at lower Palisades Lake surrounded by waterfalls and rivers
Very concerned this morning, Shannon said he heard something nuzzling our overly full bear canisters tucked away in some rocks during the night. Signs posted by park rangers on the trail warned hikers about an aggressive momma bear and her enterprising bear cubs that had been recently stealing food in some cases straight out of the hands of hikers. All I heard during the night was a mouse or something small running around outside our tent.
When I went to check on our food canisters in the brisk morning air, they were thankfully untouched by the paws of the local bear population but surprisingly were coated in a bit of frost and ice. It was a little sobering to see evidence of winter weather not far off in the mountains, even during the middle of summer. I chipped away the thick ice glaze on my fuel canister in my hands and melted the frost on my bear canister with my breath until I was able to loosen the lid. The air was especially chilly this morning and we determinedly shoveled down lukewarm oatmeal and tea for breakfast as clouds of our breath billowed out. After some self-positivity talks of “Be bold, start out cold,” and jumping around a bit, we left camp at 7am and hiked out in shorts and light sun shirts.
Thankfully the grinding trek up to 12,122 foot Pinchot Pass warmed us up not only from dodging boulders and working out our quads in a nice morning leg swole sesh but also from the pale sun rising and the light dancing off the faces of the mountains reflecting glorious heat back up at us. Large yellow bellied marmots darted unabashedly amongst the rocks, their big furry bellies swaying like that weird jello salad they serve at Midwestern potlucks. There were so many dang marmots up here waddling around, scurrying as they chowed down on grasses and alpine flowers that it looked like a pig pen at feeding time. At one point I actually almost stepped on a marmie but didn’t even know it until Shannon told me afterwards. Good thing I didn’t get bit! These tubby marmots are getting so fat on summer flowers and seeds that as they waddle over the trail that their large butts and tummies chase after them when they try to run away. I totally related to the marmots getting chased by their jiggly booties after having just spent a week in town feasting on yummy food. This hiking stuff was hopefully going to shave off some of the pounds we gained celebrating in town so we didn’t end up looking just like these chubby marmots.
After the clear cut views of Forester Pass and knowing exactly where we were heading from miles away, Pinchot Pass was a bit less straightforward in terms of navigation. Every time we thought we had reached the little notch in the jagged mountains where we’d make the high alpine crossing, the trail continued to wiggle its way through boulder fields and scree slopes with turn after turn making it hard to spot where we were supposed to be going. Eventually we knew we’d make it to the top but it was an exercise in patience navigating today and we took it as we usually do – one step at a time.
Earlier this morning as we had left camp, an overly talkative John Muir Trail (JMT) hiker tried to make friends with us, but we turned up the hiking speed and left him behind. I was a grumpy hiker this morning for some reason and definitely not in the mood to talk to anyone and make friends. It was still super cold, still kind of dark and we had a lot of miles to go (only 1400 miles left haha) to be chit chatting with someone out on vacation hiking only 200 miles. For some reason Shannon’s toe hurt this morning but after a bit of hiking, his ole knobby toe warmed up and he was able to hike up the pass no problem.
We were able to pass quite a few hikers on the trek to the top and by focusing hard on sticking to the ragged trail we made good time. Close to the top of Pinchot Pass, we ran into some more overly excited and idealistic JMT hikers, a couple of whom tried to cheer us on as we were almost at the top of the pass. These two young guys coming down from the pass attempted to pump us up by smiling and shouting, “Hey, you’re almost to the top!” I looked at them flatly and sighed in complete Debbie Downer fashion, “It’s too early for that. No thank you.” They looked slightly deflated as I moved on. They then attempted to pump Shannon up with the same encouragement which also fell flat. Cheerleading on the trail earlier than 9am is not our cup of tea.
At the top we regrouped and laughed at how negative we were to those poor JMT hikers whose dreams we shattered. We hoped that the nice views atop Pinchot Pass would change our attitudes for the better. Our negativity transformed to anxiety when all of a sudden at the vantage point of the pass we saw smoke about 10 miles off in the distance. We got a little bit concerned about how thick and gray the smoke was and were unsure if it was from the ongoing Yosemite wildfires 150 miles north of us. It seemed strange how dark and dense the smoke was because it was too close to us to be coming from the Yosemite National Park wildfires. It didn’t really make sense, especially since there hadn’t been a breeze this morning.
None of the JMT hikers seemed to even notice the smoke in the valley next to the trail when we asked if they knew anything about any local wildfires. After talking to about 15 people, we were finally able to get some info from a local couple who were out for a few days backpacking. The local couple told us that the thick smoke was from a small fire in the next valley that started a few days ago from a lightning storm. Luckily the fire was small enough and far enough away from the PCT, so the couple said that we didn’t have to worry too much about it. Hopefully that will hold true! I don’t have much experience with wildfires, yet this fire would be the 5th or 6th one we’ve seen on the PCT since we left the Mexican border. We found out later how quickly wildfires out here spread and apparently they can grow by tens of thousands of acres (45+ square miles) in a single day and have absolutely done so in the last. I guess it was warranted that we were concerned about a fire only 10 miles from where we were.
The local backpacking couple also told us about a miserable and terrifying experience they recently had in the passing thunderstorms. We had heard about the incoming bad weather and decided to stay in town for another day to avoid dodging hail and lightning from our tent. The couple told us how they were caught in the storm out in the mountains and it was one of the scariest experiences of their lives. Apparently the lightning and thunder were so crazy that they had to jump into their tent and essentially pray that they’d make it through the storms. The lightning drew so close to them that the husband told his wife to get in the “lightning” position crouching with only a single point of contact to the ground while they were in the tent because the possibility of being electrocuted was very real. The girl asked her husband if he was scared, and her husband (who appeared to be a very rugged outdoorsy guy) shook his head and admitted that he was extremely scared of how close the storm was. As they crouched in their tent, the lightning flashing all around them, it started hailing like crazy. The couple said that by the time the storm ended, their tent was buried in 5 inches of icy hailstones. They also heard a huge rumbling that initially they thought was just more lightning but it went on constantly for another 3 or 4 minutes. On top of everything else, the rumbling turned out to be a rock slide on the cliffs behind them but somehow the rocks missed their tent and they somehow luckily survived to see another day. Yikes!!! What a sh*tshow of a backpacking trip these poor locals went through.
After saying goodbye to the couple and wishing them nothing but nice sunny weather the rest of their trip, we continued on hiking. We saw a ton of lakes today which were gorgeous after coming out of the water starved deserts of Southern California. At one of the lakes there were about 6 or 7 hikers of all genders skinny dipping right next to the trail without a care in the world. Shannon’s jaw dropped and he almost fell on his face while staring at the naked people. I definitely teased him about almost eating sh*t and ending our hike early from getting injured because he was too busy ogling the naked girls swimming. In addition to deadly thunderstorms, bear attacks, wildfires and rockslides, it seems like we need to add another hazard to our list of “Things that could end our PCT hike”: backcountry buttnaked water nymphs. Ha! Now that would be a story…
A couple lakes past the naked people pond, we stopped for an epic early lunch at a beautiful little lagoon surrounded by pines and mountain peaks. We had followed a faint trail to a large shade tree and a secret campsite tucked away on the north side of the lake. All around the campsite were flakes of obsidian which is a sharp, black volcanic glass (aka Dragonglass from Game of Thrones used to kill White Walkers) that local Native Americans used to make their tools and arrowheads hundreds or thousands of years ago. It was so freakin’ cool! We were eating lunch in a living museum and you actually had to be careful where you set your hands on the ground because of all of the obsidian shards everywhere. It was stunning to be eating in a place rich in natural beauty, archeological significance and cultural importance.
At lunch, Shannon was being a little bit of a brat and kept sticking his freezing cold hands on my neck to get a reaction out of me. When he ran off to go take a number two in the trees, I took an old trick out of a book that I learned from the Appalachian Trail from notoriously famous (or infamous in his later years) Trail Angel Baltimore Jack (R.I.P. you sarcastic crazy man). Baltimore Jack was a famous Appalachian Trail personality who had hiked the AT dozens of times, had never actually been to Baltimore and in his later years turned out to be a crazy party animal. A few years ago, Baltimore Jack was playing all sorts of tricks and being obnoxious at one of the Appalachian Trail celebrations. Several hikers decided it was time to put Baltimore Jack in his place, especially after he dressed up a live goat in fishnet tights and put it in someone’s tent where it ate a bunch of their hiking gear and pooped everywhere. The hikers heard about a roadkill groundhog in the road nearby and when Baltimore Jack was out drinking somewhere, they dumped out his backpack, stuffed the stiff dead groundhog corpse into the bottom and covered it up with his gear. Baltimore Jack wasn’t too clean and kind of a slob sometimes so he didn’t notice for several days that his backpack was heavier and stinkier than normal. When he finally noticed the dead groundhog in his pack, he agreed it was good revenge for the goat in the tent trick.
Well, I took a tamer version of the dead groundhog trick out of Baltimore Jack’s book and while Shannon was occupied, I pulled out some of his gear and stuck in a large rock in Shannon’s backpack, covering it up with his tent and clothes before he returned. The only difference is that Shannon is kind of a neat freak and when he returned from the backcountry bathroom, he wasn’t too happy when he dug through his clothes and found a giant rock in his backpack. “At least it was just a rock and not a dead groundhog!” I told Shannon. He got the picture and stopped putting his freezing cold hands on my neck and generally being a brat. It would have been an interesting hike if he had put on his pack with a 10 lb. rock! Oh well.
After lunch, we walked past more handwritten signs from the park rangers warning hikers to watch out for bears. Apparently last week a black bear had actually taken someone’s food sitting right next to them as they were cooking which was kind of scary. I’m not sure what I would do if a 300 lb black bear with 6-inch-long claws grabbed my food right out of my hands but I think I would most likely just let him have it and get the heck out of there as fast as I could.
The trail was flat and fast this afternoon but Shannon’s big toe was hurting a bit so we hiked on as best we could. In the woods we saw two very skinny deer grazing on dried leaves and an angry chipmunk chirped loudly at us from his rocky home. We hiked fast up to the 12,093-foot-tall dramatic Mather Pass, named for Stephen Mather who was the first director of the U.S. National Park system. This high mountain crossing was a very obvious pass to navigate as opposed to Pinchot Pass this morning where you just kind of guessed which way the trail snaked and hoped for the best. Ivory, fiery red and golden Columbine flowers colored the trail side in living flames.
On the north side of Mather Pass, we entered into beautiful alpine lake country filled with scarlet and yellow Indian paintbrush, golden Black Eyed Susans and tons of whistling marmots everywhere. I peered down from the trail to a lakeside beach, admiring the shock of bright blue water when I saw something tawny and large moving quickly. A huge velvety antlered mule deer tore down the shoreline, running as though his life depended on it and cut in just below the trail onto cliffs right where Shannon was hiking. I ran up to Shannon and he pointed out right where the buck dashed across the trail in front of him and clambered up the steep canyon walls above us like it was no big deal. The buck stared at us briefly before purposefully strutting up into the rocky peaks where he probably was going to bed down for the night.
As the shadows grew long, we marveled in the colors of the mountains and water slipping away from late afternoon into twilight. We passed by a couple SOBO JMTers (southbound John Muir Trail hikers) who had camped high up in the cliffs near Palisades Lake and got some advice from them on some sweet places to camp. At the northern end of the lake, we strode across the shallow river outlet getting our feet wet and scrambled up to a private island where we had ourselves our own luxury campsite. Large mountain trout jumped from the lake to swallow insects and we swam briefly amongst the clear, crisp water just before the sun set early over the tall mountain cliffs. Evening breezes swept through the canyon and our campsite drying out our wet shorts and socks hanging on a makeshift clothesline made from the nearby manzanita and juniper bushes. It was an absolutely gorgeous place camping out on Palisades Lake, hemmed in on all sides by mountains, waterfalls and jumping trout. We finished dinner on the warm rocks, admiring the sprinkle of stars coming out, barely visible tonight in the rolling clouds and the shining light of the near full moon. Bear canisters were stashed away in some nearby rocks and we hopped into our warm sleeping bags, listening to the murmuring of the lapping water on the rock island and the occasional fish splashing under the night sky.
