Hello My Old Friend

On the trail again, ain’t it good to be on the trail again. But first….. After a pretty good, if not cool nights sleep,  we woke up in an attempt to get an early start on our hiking day. We were out of the lodge by 0730. We walked a mile up old Highway 40 then hit a jeep road behind the boreal ski area.  From there we crossed interstate 80 and followed another jeep road back to the Pacific crest Trail. We have now entered Northern California. We did hit some snow on and off  while walking the jeep roads.

On the Trail Again

Once  we hit the PCT, it  was not too bad for the first few miles. We then hit a very snowy section where we lost the trail and hiked in the snow down to the Peter Grubb hut. This is a hut used in the winter for the back country skiers and in the summer for hikers. It was a cool place and a beautiful day with no snow surrounding the immediate hut area.  We decided this would be a great place for lunch.

Peter Grubb Hut

While eating we were joined by a couple of other through hikers, Stripes and her husband whose name I just can’t remember.  We chatted for a little bit and then they continued on. Shortly after we left, Carol broke through the snow we were walking on, into a small creek below. She got wet up to about her knees. Shortly after that we had a creek to cross. In an act of sympathy for Carol, Charlie rolled on a log and fell into the creek past his knees. Now we will both have wet soggy feet for the rest of the day.

From here on we had large snowbanks followed by short sections of trail and more snowbanks. Eventually this turned into nothing but snow. The snow was not very easy to walk on as you had to watch each step fairly carefully. I postholed up to my crotch in one area.  For those who don’t know, Postholing is when you sink through the upper level of the snow as deep as possible. For some reason, Carol seemed to be amused every time this happened to me. At this point, there was also no sign of the trail. It was time to navigate point-to-point with my GPS.

We Don’t Need No Trail

Sometimes you could see other people’s footsteps, sometimes not, and you didn’t necessarily want to trust that they knew where they were going. It was interesting just trying to find the best line and route through the snow and go in the general direction to get to the next trail point. We made it to the crest of a ridge and then had to descend down towards our destination which was called White Rock Creek. Right before we reached the bridge that crossed the creek, I tripped over some barbed wire and got hooked on my pants legs. A fitting end to the way my day went.

We cross the bridge and were able to find a nice flat and dry camp site. A little over 10 days ago, a hiker reported that the whole area was covered in snow and he had to sleep on the bridge. We were glad to see that this was not the case. After setting up camp, another hiker came by named Jacque. He was from France and decided to camp on the other side of the bridge.  His GPS batteries were low and he asked what time we were leaving as he wanted to hike with us. We told him 0730 to 0800 and he left and went back to his camp. We fired up our stove and had our first cooked meal on the trail, chicken rice with broccoli.

Snow Free Zone

After cleanup, it was time to crawl into our tent and get a good nights sleep. The stats for the day  were 12.2 miles hiked at a pace of 1.9 mph. We gained over 1700 feet in elevation with the High Point today of 8400 feet. We are now camped at 7622 feet  and arrived here at 4:45 PM.  It was a tough day but we made it. We saw a few toads in the beginning and now we are being chorused by the frogs. We met a girl named Anka from Germany as well as Stripes, her husband, and Jacque. We are not the only fools out here. Tomorrow, hopefully we can get through the rest of the snow.