PCT: Day 51

June 10th, 2016

Miles Hiked: 14 + 8

Total Miles: 

Start Location: Mile 775

End Location: Onion Valley Camp

End Location GPS: 36.79931, -118.19741

Last night was the coldest night on trail. My breath was frosty and thick in the midnight hours when I went to the bathroom and my down sleeping bag kept me toasty and warm most of the night.

The morning was spent going up and over Forester Pass. We were glad we waited until the morning to make the traversal, as the snow was hard and easy to walk on with mocrospikes attached to our shoes. 

The summer switchbacks were snow covered up to a point halfway up the shoot, so we navigated our own route up the snow bank to reach the first snow-free switchbacks. About 70 feet from the pass we encountered an ice bridge across a gap in the rocks. A slip from this traversal would not have had a happy outcome. We got out our ice axes as a precaution and made quick time going across the bridge. Once we were both across safely I sighed a deep breath of relief. We walked two more switchbacks up to the crest and were then standing on top of the highest point of the PCT.  As we gazed north, snow covered slopes lead the way to an expansive Kings Canyon- a valley filled with pine trees and swollen rivers and creeks from the quickly melting snow.

We made our descent down, down and down. We stopped for a break and I soon discovered I had a bloody nose. Thick globs of bloody mucouse poured out of my right nostril at an alarming rate, and it nearly took 20 minutes for it to stop, exhausting my remaining supply of toilet paper. Somehow I managed to get blood on the inside of my hat and forehead- it was like Tyson had clobbered me in the face with a deveatationg uppercut to my shnoz. 

The rest of the day was spent going through the densely forested valley and then climbing back up to a meadow where we intersected the Kearsarge Pass trail that would take us 7.6 miles to Onion Valley Campground and the road out to town. 

I chatted up a man day hiking named Roy and he offered to take us into town when he was done hiking. He told us to wait by his black Subaru in the parking lot- so that’s what we did. Roy didn’t come back until 8:30, nearly dark, and it was starting to get cold. We were thankful for the ride. 

We had Roy drop us off in Lone Pine, our familiar Owens Valley stomping grounds, and we planned on staying at the hostel. To our dismay the Hostel was closed, it was 9:30 PM at this point. We went to the hotel we stayed at befor but there was no vacancy. In fact, Lone Pine High School seniors had their graduation earlier in the afternoon and all accomodations were packed like sardines. 

Walking the nighttime streets of Lone Pine without a place to stay made me really feel homeless for the first time on trail. We got a tip that there was a city park a few blocks down and headed there. We found a secretive spot just near the tree line and laid there and slept for the night, underneath the pockets of sparkling stars and the stiff wind that rustled the leaves like a person cramming their fingers into the bottom of a greasy bag of potato chips.