Mile 745 to 760 (+2 miles from Horseshoe Meadow)

The sound of snow hitting my rain fly woke me in the middle of the coldest night on trail. I was wearing my thermals, jacket, hat, hood and two pairs of sleep socks while wrapped up in my quilt. I was warm enough, but not my usual toasty.

The alarm went off at 5:00 and I tried to change inside my quilt without freezing my butt off. It was a difficult. We were all moving slower and it took us almost an hour to pack up and head out of Horseshoe Meadows.

Today was the day we would finally hit snow. Not something I am necessarily looking forward to, but something that you have to deal with on the trail.  Worse than the snow, however, are the river crossings that we expect to face. With the melt underway, the rivers are overflowing their banks and raging. If there aren’t any trees or rocks to help with the crossing, you will need to wade through the freezing cold water. Some rivers may be able to be crossed in the morning, but not the evening when the snow has had more time to melt. None of us have much river crossing experience, besides what we have read and researched, so we are a little nervous. We all are ready to turn around, however, if we don’t think we can safely make it.

With those thoughts on our mind, we started our day on a 2 mile spur trail to get back to the PCT. Once on the trail, we made progress crossing intermittent snow patches on the trail. As we began to near Cottonwood Pass, however, the snow coverage became complete and the slopes steaper. We stopped at Vipr’s suggestion and put on our crampons and took out our ice axes. We held the ice axes in the uphill hand and a trekking pole in the other as we traversed the slopes.  Except for Vipr and Fun Dip, this was all new to us so we followed their advice.

Navigation turned out to be a challenge all day because for most of it the trail was buried under snow and invisible. We had to us a combination of GPS, following the footsteps of earlier hikers (very few), and guess work on where we thought the trail would go. It was tiring work and progress was very slow as we need to continuously check our position, reposition ourselves, and also get around obstacles such as blow down trees, newly formed seasonal streams, and everything else you can imagine. In addition, the quality of the snow changed throughout the day. Early in the morning, it is still had a hard crust from refreezing over night, but as the sun warmed it, it became slushy and you started to loose your footing and begin sliding, skidding, and potential falling depending on the angel of the slope. Another phenomenon is sun cups. These form in the surface of the snow as it melts over time and look like a continuous field of egg crates with the cup being anywhere from 5 inches to 3 feet deep. Imagine walking over a snowfield of sun cups. Sound fun? I didn’t think so.

We covered ground so slowly that in the 12 hours of walking we only covered 17 miles. If we were in the desert, we would have probably covered 30 miles.

In the desert, endurance was key, but here you need both endurance to keep going for hours and power to continually drive yourself and your overstuffed pack up a steep snow slope, over downed trees, and up the bolders that stick out of the snow. By the end of the day, our energy reserves were depleted and we stumbled into camp next to a raging river that we will need to cross in the morning…We have 7 more days of this until we exit via Kersearge Pass and head into Independence or Bishop to resupply.

There is concern in the group over Bedazzled. In Mojave, we recommend that she buy new shoes since the sides of the shoes have blown out and more importantly there is no more tread. She told us she was going to wear her shoes until they fell apart. Now we are in a 11 day stretch in the Sierra, which is very remote, and she is constantly slipping and has completely fallen over multiple times today. It isn’t only a personal safety issue, it is a group safety issue because we are the ones that will have to deal with any emergencies that happen. We are worried that the further into the Sierra we get the higher the risks and the more catastrophic the consequences are. We have felt a responsiblility to help her survive out here on the trail, but some people are now seeing it as a liability when the stakes are so high.

Tomorrow we will cross the river and then hike 7 miles to the Crabtree Ranger Station. From there we will attempt to summit Mt. Whitney. Wish us luck!