Tanner’s Audio Log | September 30th

Alright, this is my PCT Audio Log for Friday, September 30th.  About an hour ago I got dropped off back at Highway 58.  Actually, I have a confession to make!  So when the trail hits Highway 58, it goes down and runs along it to the exit where the PCT joins a frontage road on the south for about a mile and a quarter and that exit is where I got picked up last night.  So when Cristin, the trail angel whose family I got to stay with last night, was dropping me off, I made the comment, “I get to walk down this frontage road now.”  So she asked, “Where do you want me to drop you off?  …back at the exit?  …or drive down the frontage road?”  And I didn’t have the resolve to then say I’d just walk the frontage road because I was in the car and all I could think about was all the road-walking that’s ahead of me over the next couple of days!  So I said, “Yeah, it’s probably fine, just drive me down the frontage road.”  I was kind of stressing about it for a bit, thinking about whether I was skipping part of the PCT.  And she asked again, “Are you going to regret this?” And I said, “No, I’ve done so many little detours, that a mile and a quarter of driving down a frontage road instead of walking it will be okay.  And also getting a later start than I had originally planned because it was really nice staying with this trail angel and her family.  I decided it was unnecessary to beat myself up about something like that when I really wouldn’t enjoy the road-walking…and I could actually still see the exit sign from the point where where the actual trail splits off from that frontage road!  So she dropped me off there and (Cayden’s gonna probably give me crap when he hears about it), but I can’t say I regret it!  I’m glad I chose to be dropped off where the actual trail resumes off the road again!

So last night I got picked up around 7 o’clock at Highway 58 by Erik and Cristin, these awesome Tehachapi trail angels!  My mom arranged it because a friend of hers, Angie (that she used to teach in YW when we lived in Oregon and I was only about 4) is friends with Cristin, so that was really great!  They have 3 kids, plus one of their oldest son’s friends is staying with them while a sibling that family adopted has open-heart surgery, I think.  So they are really nice good people!  They are also LDS and they let me just stay in their home there and it was so great!  I had pizza, did my laundry, took a shower, and I was up pretty late just checking out the water source reports and what the next few sections will be like. But I got to sleep in a bed!  Their 5-year-old daughter gave up her room for me and she slept in her parents room!  So yeah, it was really great and they are such a nice family!

I woke up around 7 and Cristin offered to take me back to the trail either before 8, or after she got kids off to school and stuff. I could tell it would be kind of hectic to try to go earlier because the morning routine with all the kids kept her so busy.  And it was actually really nice being around the family environment in the morning, like everyone getting ready for school…I’ve definitely missed that!  It would have been really rushing it to try to get me to the trail earlier so that she could get back in time to help everyone and see them off to school!  It was also nice because then I didn’t have to rush either.  I got to get some e-mails out to Fletcher and Jacob on their missions!  I did more trail research, too!  

I was also facebook-messaging this guy who is a little ways ahead of me and who I think I might catch up to and hike with.  His trail name is “NTN” (I don’t know what that stands for) and I don’t know if he is a section hiker or a southbounder, but he was posting on facebook that he’s in the are and that would be cool to actually have hiking company again, I think.  But we’ll see because he messaged me something like, “I’m not fast, but I am slow!”  …something funny like that!  So I don’t know if we’ll be going the same pace…I do still have my 4-month goal, so I’m not planning on going “slow!”  Just not as fast as the forward southbound group.  

So anyway, that was really fun staying with their family!  The boys really like to cook and so one made pancakes and Cristin made eggs…so I got to have pancakes and eggs, toast, and cereal for breakfast and that was really great!  Plus I have leftover pizza in my backpack for lunch, along with the treats my mom sent me in my resupply box that the family received for me!  So I’m set on food now!  

We ended up leaving their house around 10:45, I think.  And I’m feeling pretty fresh even with the newly heavy (resupplied) pack…the pain of it hasn’t really set in because I’m well rested.  I’m doing good.  I climbed back up a hill a little ways back out of Highway 58.  It’s not as big of a hill as the northbounders have to climb going out of Tehachapi (that I dropped in from last night).

As I was walking, I just saw a bunch of cattle and there was a big bull!  So I was careful not to get too close!  I was letting the bull move all of them along before I got up near them. Now I’m walking through a big wind farm and there are all these big wind turbines!  So it’s cool!  And it’s  really more desert-like again!  I’ve decided I like it better when the terrain is more like true desert.  When I checked in last, I think I was pretty much in awe of the land because of the barren landscape, the kind of nothingness and I think that’s really cool!  What I don’t like as much is when I get back into the scraggly pines and really bushy stuff and rocky terrain…then it feels more like northern California again.  So the drop into Tehachapi was cool, but before that there was quite a bit of what seemed to me to be northern-California-esque walking.  I wasn’t a huge fan.  There were also a bunch of easement markers…so you have public access to the trail as it runs through private land and so the trail kind of got confusing in there and there were warnings to watch out for livestock and stuff.

Oh, so I never really checked in again after my audio log the day before I got to Tehachapi…so the place I ended up camping was just past one of those easement markers, so just barely back on public land.  I was also stumbling into camp really late because I had wanted to set up to get to Tehachapi before dark (which I did, but it was kind of close).  So I heard coyotes that night, which was cool but a little unnerving.  I knew they wouldn’t bother me, but they were a little bit closer than I was comfortable with…I feel more vulnerable now that I’m sleeping on the ground.  But nothing bothered me and I’m not as worried about it down here.  It was super nice getting a good rest again in a comfortable bed last night before getting on the trail again today!

Now, I’ll just see how far I make it today…probably still make the 25 miles…or, actually with my little drive down the frontage road, it will be only 24 miles or so.  It still shouldn’t be too much of a problem, I should still be able to get that before it’s too late.  But if not, reports show there’s a water cache a little bit before that so I have that as an option too!  I was thinking the next day I would just go to Hiker Town and hang out, just have a really mellow day…but Hiker Town doesn’t sound like it is as nice as I first thought.  It’s probably an interesting place and I’m sure I’ll stop there and check it out, maybe eat lunch there, but it sounds strange.  It was identified on a map as the weirdest stops on the PCT and Cayden described it as “the weirdest place ever!” It’s kind of nice having his blog posts to tell me what’s ahead now!  

So I might set up instead to go past Hiker Town…and that way I can get this big roadwalk over with and be closer to Agua Dulce so I can get there on Monday evening instead of Tuesday morning, which would be probably a little better.  If I line it up that way so that I get the roadwalk over with, then I’ll likely get to stay with some trail angels at the end of the roadwalk and then again the next night at Agua Dulce with the Sauffley’s in Hiker Heaven.  So that would be cool and I’ll see if that all pans out!  

I’ll keep you posted…so yep!

Tanner’s Audio Log | September 28th

This is my PCT Audio Log…it is the morning of September 28th and the desert hiking continues, except it’s actually pretty cool now.  As far as the terrain goes, I liked yesterday more than the day before…I think just because it felt more like desert.  I dropped down to Walker Pass and got my water supply which was cool…that was super helpful that I didn’t have to kill a few hours by going into town.  I filled up everything I needed and I washed my face because it felt like there was a LAYER OF GRIME on my face, it felt so dirty!  Then I left probably about a liter…because they’d stashed about 2 gallons and there was about a liter left after I’d filled up!  I’ve been carrying extra!  I just don’t want to run out of water! That would be very bad!

Then I had to climb out of Walker Pass and so I plugged in some Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne audio books for that.  I finished up the second one, so that kept me entertained for a while.  When I got up on the ridge, it turned into more desert-like terrain.  But there were trees…not as many as before though.  There were also a bunch of unpaved roads for jeeps and dirtbikes up there and the trail followed one of them for almost 3 miles.  As I was following that one, I fell down…which sounds funny to say because it really doesn’t happen that often!  But the road got so bermed on some of the corners and edges and so it was like loose sand and gravelly stuff on top of a much harder base of the road.  I wasn’t even expecting it and I totally slipped. I didn’t get hurt or anything, but it was just weird because it almost never happens.  

So I followed that road and I’ve been following along this mountain ridge for a while. It’s cool because every once in awhile I’ll just crest out or be traversing along a certain aspect that allows me to see down into some cities or towns way off in the distance.  It’s especially cool at night seeing all the city lights, or at least I think so!  I understand how people might not like it because (for example in the Sierras) it’s nice when it feels more remote.  But for me, now it’s cool just traversing above civilization again.

I think it was about 22 miles from Walker Pass to Bird Spring Pass (I think that’s what it was called).  There was another huge water cache there and also a map outlining an alternate water source in case the cache was dry.  But there was still a ton of water there…they had a bunch of those big primo water coolers that they have in offices and stuff and then there were smaller gallon-size bottles too that were still full as well. So I topped off water again!  But that was late in the evening when I got there and so I also transitioned so I’d be able to hike with my headlamp.  

Then I kept hiking and that’s when the terrain became even more awesome in my opinion…more different and desert-like.  Right now I’m hiking through an area where all that’s here are mountains and these old dirt-bike roads.  I just passed something abandoned…some kind of structure partially still standing…I don’t know what it was.  I’d like to look it up because it looked like this tower with some type of slide coming down from it, but I didn’t go inspect it.  There was also this old rusty car wreckage, so that was kind of cool!  But yeah, the terrain here is just sand, Joshua trees, sagebrush, and some big boulders!  So I think it’s kind of cool that it’s different and something new instead of just a drier version of northern California like yesterday.  And I see something running off right now…a little rabbit.  Oh and I saw a fox yesterday, too!  At first I thought it was a coyote because it didn’t look very red, but its tail looked like a fox tail!

So after I walked passed that massive water cache, it was about 7:30 PM.  I’d gotten my headlamp all ready to go, but I hadn’t turned it on yet and I saw this car coming down this dirt road.  It was weird because I never see cars up on these old mountain roads that late in the day, so I turned on my headlamp, mostly so they’d see me, I guess.  But I also think I was subconsciously entertaining the idea that maybe they were trail angels and I could get a ride into town!  I think it was just comforting to see people and I wanted them to know I was there.  But I guess it was pretty illogical for me to turn my headlamp on right then because then they came around on the road and pulled over…and it was too dark to see them clearly, but I could tell someone got out of the car and called out to me, “Are you good?”  And I was like, “Oh yeah, sorry!”  I guess it must have looked like I was trying to signal them.  So it was a little awkward…I realized that was kind of a stupid thing for me to do.  So then I self-analyzed why I had turned on my headlamp…I kind of was signalling them, even though I really had no reason to!  Anyway, I wish I had started up a conversation with them because as I thought about it, I realized I’d count that as really the first day of my life that I’ve gone the entire day without any face-to-face human interaction!  It was strange that I saw lots of signs of civilization…when I crossed Walker Pass and there were big trucks and cars passing over, and then I could see down into towns, and I even had service once and called my parents, and I passed lots of roads.  And then even seeing that last car where I got a shout-out, that guy was at least 100 feet or so away when he got out of the car,  and it was too dark to see him, and he was just yelling to make sure I was good.  But really, no face-to-face human interaction and it was definitely weird to feel completely alone all day.  

We’ll see how today goes!  I’ve been following two different shoe-print tracks that look relatively fresh and I can tell they are going the same direction as I am.  One of them I recognize, like I know the shoe tread because they are the same shoes I have…the Altra 3.0’s.  And I feel like I should recognize the other tread, so that’s been bothering me…maybe La Sportiva.  So for awhile I was wondering if it was “Fin” and “Daddy-Longlegs”…I mean I know what shoes they have!  But I also know they’re like a week ahead of me and I don’t know if their tracks would still look that fresh…they probably wouldn’t!  And if they did, then I’d probably also be seeing Cayden’s because I know he was hiking with them.  And I know exactly what his shoe print looks like, but I haven’t seen any of his tracks.  So I’m thinking it might be “Abandon” and “Johnny Tuna” who I know should be ahead of me!  (Unless I passed them if they went into Lake Isabella from Walker Pass to get water, then they could be behind me.)  But I’m pretty sure I’m following their tracks!  And I don’t know how fast they’re moving, so I don’t know if I’m going to catch them or not.  That would be kind of cool to have people to hike with again…especially people I haven’t hiked with yet.  New company on the trail would be nice!  I’ll see if I catch them!  

But for now, I’m just continuing the desert solo hiking, hoping to get like 33-ish miles in today!  So yup!

Tanner’s Audio Log | September 27th

 

This is my PCT Audio Log for September 27th.  It’s more for the 26th…because it’s the morning of the 27th right now.  Yesterday I ended up camping a little bit short of the spring I was trying to get to.  I think I still did 17 miles out of South Kennedy Meadows and it’s kind of cool having the cowboy-camping set-up!  So I’m not in my hammock anymore.  All I have is a sheet of Tyvek and a sleeping pad and a sleeping bag…and I do still have my hammock tarp in case I ever really need shade or rain protection.  

I got up to the top of this ridge and it was getting windy…and I was getting tired and it looked like a pretty cool spot, pretty flat for camping so I decided to set up there for the night.  And I also switched out my little ghetto esbit stove (that I had to piece together using wire mesh in Truckee) for a personal reactor.  So it’s like an MSR Reactor stove, but with just a liter pot…and it boils water SO FAST!  It’s nice now because when I had my hammock, I’d get the stove going and then I’d set everything up…and by then the water would be pretty much ready.  But the boil was just barely a boil.  And this one takes like a minute or so…maybe two minutes…to get a FULL BOIL, like boiling over the top almost, if you have it at the max fill line!  So that’s been pretty nice!  So I got all set up and even though it was windy, I was able to boil water fast and get in bed quickly the night before last.  

Then I just woke up yesterday at about 5 AM because I got to be early enough that I didn’t mind waking up a little early, so that was just the time I naturally woke up.  I really don’t like setting alarms if I can avoid it.  I like being able to wake up whenever I feel like I can or should get going.  So I cranked out the 4 miles down the hill to the water source that I knew from reports would be reliable!  It’s called the Fox Mill Spring and it has a pipe coming out of the ground that feeds water into this trough.  It was still going really well, the trough was overflowing and there was a good steady flow coming out of the pipe.  So I filled up probably five and a half liters there…four liters of clean water that I filtered (because there were a bunch of signs that said something like, “Don’t trust the water!  Not tested for safe drinking!”…basically that it needs to be filtered).  So then I filled up one bladder (the one that I use with my squeeze filter) just with dirty water so I’d have it just in case I needed to filter more.

I started walking from there and I saw two people yesterday!  I saw one guy hiking in from this little…not even really a trailhead…just where the trail crosses this old dirt road by where this campground is. And then when I got to that road, I saw his car and then I saw an old guy cruise by in some sort of buggy…kind of like a John Deere Gator type of thing. And after that I did not see a single other person.

The terrain was kind of reminiscent of Northern California I thought, like just the hills and stuff because it was still quite hilly and there were enough trees that it didn’t feel like true desert yet. Although it was definitely drier.  I don’t understand why the trail dropped as much as it did.  I feel like I ended up doing more elevation than I needed to.  And the trail now doesn’t line up with the trail on my DeLorme map that I use as my main reference (but it does line up on the Half Mile app).  So I’m thinking the DeLorme map is probably outdated and I’m wondering if the trail drops more now to go past more water sources.  Except almost all of them have been dry!  There’s only one water source that wasn’t dry…but I didn’t bother filling up from it because I still have plenty of water (I hadn’t been counting on that one, I knew it would be iffy).  So I filled up as much as I thought I’d need for the day at Fox Mill Spring.  

It did get kind of cool at one point, dropping down where there were Joshua trees and it was flatter with more sagebrush.  I think the desert will be cool in its own way.  Yesterday was just brutal because there was so much elevation and I ended up only doing 31 miles.  I had planned on getting all the way to the water cache I need to get to that my dad and grandpa deposited for me at Walker Pass (where I’m still headed right now).  But that would have been 35 miles.  I had enough water to camp and it was getting late and I was really tired so I ended up doing the same thing as the night before…just camped about 4 miles shy of that.  But the cool part was that after I did the final big climb of the day to this little pass, I could see into what I believe is Inyokern.  So I had a direct view of the town and it was weird feeling so close to civilization again…and it was kind of comforting.  But, I don’t know, at the same time I kind of wished I was in the midst of all those lights and stuff.  It’s weird just looking at it from above, especially after being in so remote an area for so long…the only other town I’ve seen was Lone Pine from the top of Whitney.  I always think it’s kind of cool when you can see over the ridges into big towns or cities.  

But anyway, I had cell service because I had a direct view of that town so I checked on water reports.  What’s nice is that the “fast” southbound crew that I’ve already hiked with is up ahead a ways.  I know almost all of them and Cayden is still with them…I think they’re almost a week ahead.  So I have pretty new, reliable water reports from them…especially from Cayden, it’s helpful!  Like, I knew he had to hitch into Lake Isabella (the town by Walker Pass) so that’s why I had my dad and grandpa stash water at Walker Pass for me after we split at Kennedy Meadows.  So that’s going to be super helpful!  I could hitch in, but I just spent time with my dad and grandpa…and as nice as these towns are, I just end up spending money there.  Also it would be a big time-kill and I’d like to get to Tehachapi sooner than later.  It sounds like my mom made arrangements for me to stay with a trail angel who is actually also LDS, so that should be a pretty great place to stay for the night!  Or if they don’t have room, apparently there’s a free hiker hostel type place that I can go to.  I don’t know much about it though, so it would be great to stay with the trail angel!

But yeah, so I got to call my parents last night and talk to them…and see how my dad is doing after the brutal big section we did together.  Oh I also got to call up my friend Dean, who is going to college now up in British Columbia.  So it’s cool just to catch up with the family and an old friend and check Instagram again.  So last night was pretty nice!

I do kind of like…well, I’m missing the hammock a little…but with how tired I get (I worked myself pretty hard yesterday), I sleep pretty well on the ground.  And the easy set-up of simply throwing everything out on the ground is nice.  I just throw out the Tyvek, throw down my pad and sleeping bag, and then if I have my pack and everything close enough to me, I can basically just be sitting half-out-of-my-sleeping-bag while I cook and everything!  So that’s definitely a plus!

So I’m going to get water today…because I am low on water from yesterday (I wasn’t planning on camping early).  But I was carrying extra so I had enough.  I only have a half liter left now which is fine for the three miles I have left to go.  So yeah, going to get water, get breakfast, and then pushing to where the next water cache is reported to be, which I believe is another 25 or 26 miles past Walker Pass.  So it’ll be right in the 30-mile-day range again today, but less elevation will be nice!  So should be a good day!  Hope it doesn’t get too hot!

Tanner’s Audio Log | September 25th Part II

Part II. Kearsarge Pass to Kennedy Meadows (and Mt. Whitney Climb)

I had spotty service at the top of Kearsarge, so I messaged my dad and grandpa that I was coming down, but I didn’t actually meet up with them until 5 or 6 o’clock!  Then we didn’t get down to the car together until about 6:30!  It was SUPER GOOD to see my dad and grandpa again!  The last time I’d seen my grandpa was at White Pass when they brought me my phone up in Washington (because I was an idiot and left it in my dad’s car after climbing Mt. Rainier)!  And the last time I’d seen my dad was when we climbed Mt. Hood.

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I’d wanted to get there earlier though because I knew I’d want to rest in town.  We ended up going into Independence and then we actually drove over to Lone Pine and got a room at the Best Western motel there.  And then we went out to eat dinner…we just asked one of the guys at the desk where we could get a milkshake and a burger.  And that was pretty good, but then we went back to the motel and I took a shower…or actually I think I took a shower before we went to dinner (I can’t remember what order it happened).  I just remember it was bliss!  A couch to sit on and a bed to lay on and wifi and good food in my stomach!  

So we went to bed and we kind of rethought things…because I think my dad could tell that I wasn’t super anxious to get going fast in the morning!  We had a pretty ambitious original plan to push a 25 to 30-mile day over Forester Pass to get all set-up for Whitney the next day!  So instead we just didn’t set our alarms for the morning…but we did still wake up around 6:30 or so.  We took our time in the morning, organizing things and getting ready to go!  We went to the motel breakfast and then after that was when we really started getting ready faster!  The original plan had been that my grandpa would drop us off at the trailhead and drive down to meet us at Horseshoe Meadows (after my dad and I climbed Whitney) where most of the PCT hikers get off for resupply in Lone Pine. So we decided we could actually just have a more chill day and my grandpa decided to hike with us and also camp with us that night.  I told him he could use my hammock because I wanted to start getting used to sleeping on the ground (because I was preparing to do that in the desert). We didn’t get moving at Kearsarge until the afternoon.  We climbed back up and over Kearsarge Pass, which is cooler than I expected it to be!  Once up at the pass, you can see into the Sierras…all these rocky peaks and cool lakes.  So we ended up hiking back to the PCT and only a few miles farther (because of our late start) to a good place to camp by water.  We got camp all set up and we were all still feeling pretty fresh, just out of town that afternoon.  My grandpa was having a bit of trouble with the altitude, but he’s 73 years old and still keeps on trucking with us!  So that was pretty cool actually camping in the Sierras with him!  A southbound PCT hiker came through while we were in camp…his hiker name was “Abandon” and he wasn’t planning on hiking Whitney, but he seemed like a really nice guy!  He knew about me from hiking with Matt & Ashley, who I started hiking with at the beginning.  So we had our dinner out there and got to bed and it was raining lightly for the first time in forever!  I had fun showing my grandpa how I set up my tarp and hammock.  Then my dad and I set up a little OR (Outdoor Research) pocket shelter to use…basically just a tarp connected to your trekking poles.  

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So the next morning, I think my dad and I started hiking after breakfast, around 8 o’clock.  We said bye to my grandpa who was hiking back out to the car.  We planned on meeting him two nights later.  Our plan that night was to get all the way to Crabtree Meadows and set-up for Whitney.  So we did that and it was a SUPER FUN DAY!  If I think back on it, that was one of my most fun days on the trail so far, I’d say!  Hiking with my dad again!  And we were still in the Sierras as we went up Forester Pass and we were meeting other JMT hikers and it was just super fun.  There were some cool lakes on the way up to Forester.  And once we were up and over Forester, looking at it from the other side, it’s not where you would expect the trail to go over that ridge, it’s just like a little notch!  So we were down there and we looked back up and it was the same kind of thing as Pinchot, where we saw the view of the trail stretching on for a while!  So that was really cool too!  We also saw a guy that we’d seen earlier in the day with horses.  From far away, at first it looked like a line of people, but it was this guy leading his horses over this really steep rocky pass!  So that was super cool…because Forester is a pretty gnarly pass coming down that side! It’s the highest point on the actual PCT…even though most people jump up and hit Whitney (like we did) which is the highest point in the contiguous US.  So my dad and I kept going and there were a couple more little mellow sort-of passes, but not big steep rocky ones…I don’t even think they’re called passes, more like just crests in the trail on the way up to upper Crabtree Meadows, just about 7.5 miles below Whitney.  So that’s where we got all set up to camp.  By the time we got to bed, it must have been almost 9 and raining lightly again, which was weird because the morning before it had cleared up and been nice.  So we were hoping for another good weather window for Whitney.  But we heard it was pretty windy up there and my grandpa Delorme-messaged us that there’d be high winds.

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So we woke up at midnight and by the time we got moving at 1 AM, the moon was up and there was a break in the clouds so we were happy we kind of got our window. We started climbing up and I’m pretty sure it was cold enough that we were still in our fleeces and pants.  The idea was to be to the summit by sunrise!  Then we planned to get back down to camp and pack up and hike the rest of the way out, which we thought would be about 25 miles total to get to Horseshoe Meadows (because you need to detour off the PCT a ways for that again).  So at the time we thought it would be about 24 or 25 more miles.  So we got going up, went past Guitar Lake, and it’s a pretty good climb up to Whitney!  We got up there from camp in about 4 hours, around 5 AM.  We had to stop at one point to put on our gloves and wind-shells because the winds at the top sure enough had some bite and were just hammering us!

So we got up to the little hut on the summit and the doorknob on the outside was broken…so we were trying to get in and these guys finally opened it from the inside.  They were two climbers that had tried…oh I can’t remember what their route was, something on the northeast side or north side or east side.  They had planned on getting up and down Whitney the day before, but they had overestimated themselves or underestimated the route…so they were in the hut in just their belay parkas and shells, but without sleeping bags.  They were also almost out of food and I don’t know what their water situation was, but they were shivering together under this emergency space blanket in this hut!  My dad and I had left most of our gear back at our campsite, but we had brought our stove and cider and oatmeal…or actually I can’t remember if we brought the oatmeal…I know we only ended up making the cider and passed it around.  I was PRETTY COLD!  We’d brought our sleeping bags and pads too, so I rolled out my pad and sleeping bag and put on the down booties that my dad brought me (because I told him my feet were getting cold at night in the Sierras) and tried to stay as warm as possible!  So the two guys were super grateful for the cider we offered them (we’d brought plenty)!  And they said it was just a day-changer for them!

So while we were all in there, we heard a knock at the door and we let this other guy in and shared the cider with him too!  We’d seen a pack stashed at the Whitney portal, but we didn’t know the story behind it.  Then we found out he’d gotten up there about an hour before us and didn’t know he could get into the hut…just this little 10×12 foot room.  So he’d just been huddling behind some rocks trying to get shelter from the wind, which must have just been FREEZING COLD! Then more people started showing up and coming in, waiting for the sunrise like us!  One guy had some way of checking and told us it was 16 degrees with 60 mph winds up there! So it’s the COLDEST I’VE BEEN in a long time!  But in the shelter we had on our down coats…I don’t think I ever put my long johns on, but my down and my gloves and my warm hat and my face tube, as well as hand warmers in my gloves and in my shoes!  So we went out and took our sunrise pictures and videos!  But then we wished the climbers luck and stuff and started heading down!

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It must have taken us 3 or 4 hours to get back down. We stopped along the ridge where we had cell service though!  It was another one of the rare places you can get cell service in the Sierras…the top of Whitney and just a few little notches along the ridge that you climb next to that look down on Lone Pine.  So we got down and back to our camp and I think the brutally cold weather and the lack of sleep just took a toll on both of us!  And you really have to think about it in perspective…what my dad was doing, with no training, just off-the-couch…besides jumping up to hike the PCT, but also at my seasoned pace.  (Because I kind of eased into it when I started, like a 10-mile road walk into Hart’s Pass and then some 17-mile days and then it wasn’t until almost a week in that I started doing 25-mile days.  The bigger mileage wasn’t until southern Washington…or actually we did have one 30-mile day getting into Snoqualmie Pass.)  So I think my dad was really feeling it that day, he was pretty sore!  And after we had packed up, we really got going from camp later than we wanted to, sometime past noon.  I could tell my dad was SO DEMORALIZED knowing we had to go another 25 miles!  So we researched it a little more and realized that the Half-Mile app really wasn’t ideal for us based on the fact that it is designed for northbounders.  So the exit that it had marked for Horseshoe Meadows was the first PCT exit for northbounders and the quickest way for them definitely!  But I realized that about 17 miles from our camp heading southbound was Cottonwood Pass and we could drop into Horseshoe Meadows from there!  I didn’t know exactly how long that trail was.  It turned out to be another 4 miles, so still 21 miles for us since camp…but better than it would have been for us to go to the 23 miles to the other PCT exit and then 2 miles from that exit into Horseshoe Meadows!  It was definitely a better way!  

So we planned on going there and my grandpa would meet us and we’d hike together to camp and have a big steak dinner and salad that my grandpa got…like awesome car-camping food!  But we didn’t get in…because my dad was deep in his pain cave pushing that mileage the second half of the day!  I mean I was pretty exhausted too!  If you think about the elevation gain we did that day just getting up to Whitney, plus the lack of sleep, and the distance, it was clearly one of my biggest days on the PCT!  We figured out that with Whitney, it must have been 36 miles!  So it was PRETTY BRUTAL!  And it was REALLY COLD again that night…we had to stop and bundle up when we had to get our headlamps out.  It had been sunny earlier, we’d had good weather, but there was a cold front AND I was just still chilled from Whitney so I had been hiking in a fleece all day, which is super unusual for me!  I had even tried to hike in my short-sleeved shirt and shorts, but I was just SO COLD!  So we ended up not finding my grandpa’s tent at this car campsite in Horseshoe Meadows until about 11:15 PM.  So we woke my grandpa up…and my dad was JUST DONE!  He had just enough strength to get water and he was just limping around.  We were both just so tired we could barely function!  I just remember it was one of the most tired, just beat conditions I’ve ever seen my Dad!  He made some hot chocolate for himself and he said his mouth had been dry–like cottonmouth–all day, too…he couldn’t get his mouth to stay moist.  So hot chocolate was the only thing that sounded good to him!  So we both had hot chocolate and a few bites of potato salad!  My grandpa got up and was hanging out with us…and I think he was a little bit amused by how beat my dad was.  So when we finally got in bed about 12:30, we’d been up for more than 24 hours and we had no plans of going anywhere fast in the morning!

It wasn’t as restful a night as I had hoped for…I think I was over-exhausted and it was still so cold! But as we were waking up in the morning, my grandpa got up and was SUPER NICE catering to us!  He brought us skillet-toasted English muffins with lots of peanut butter and honey while we stayed in the tent, trying to keep warm.  They tasted so good!   I don’t think I even got out of the tent until 9 o’clock or later when the sun hit us.  When we finally did, my grandpa made us sausage and eggs and I remember we were just sitting there enjoying the warmth and the luxury of sitting still.  

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We didn’t get going that day until about 2 o’clock, when my grandpa saw us off at the trail.  We wanted to do close to 16 miles that day, but like I said before, there were are multiple ways into Horseshoe from the PCT, so we kind of just opted for an alternate route by cutting out farther south onto the PCT.  So we still did all the hiking, I just considered it an alternate…an unofficial PCT alternate like we’ve had a few of before (thinking about Rainier and Hood).  So anyway, we started hiking and my dad’s mouth was super dry and he said his gut was weird all day…and he was experiencing some leftover injuries from the day before, like foot cramps.  But I could tell he was refreshed and feeling a lot better.  Because we got a later start than we wanted to again, we didn’t get into camp until right around 9 PM.  But we didn’t really realize how sparse water would be on that section already!  We had to walk a little over a quarter mile from camp at Death Canyon Creek (because the creek was dry) to get water from this little spring.  That took a little while because I had to fill the Sawyer bladder by hand and then filter it!  Luckily someone had left a little tupperware container that helped with that, but it was still time consuming.  So I got back to camp and my dad had the tent and everything set up and I started cooking.  

We actually carried some Mountain House meals this section because they were bigger meals to share and I was happy about that!  The meals Cayden and I prepared aren’t bad, but it’s just nice to switch it up! So we had lasagna.  The  other thing we made that grandpa asked us to try was a Knorr pasta side, cheesy macaroni with broccoli.  If you look at the instructions, it says to bring water and milk to a boil in a pot and then keep it boiling while you stir it to get it fully cooked.  But my grandpa wanted to see if it would work to do it in one of the Mountain-House-type bags…so he had cleaned one out and sent it with us.  I poured the Knorr meal in there.  My dad was thinking it wouldn’t work because technically you’re supposed to maintain the boil to fully rehydrate it…and especially at our elevation, he was skeptical!  (So we had an extra beef stroganoff meal just in case!)  So my dad had me stir it around a lot and we let it sit in there a long time.  So when we finally opened our meals up, my dad started eating the lasagna and I opened up the Knorr pasta meal in the Mountain House bag…and I just saw cheese water (we had put way too much water in)!  I think where we went wrong was when my dad used the water-reference lines that were on the Mountain House bag (or I think it was actually a Backpackers Pantry meal bag or something).  So it had a line for 1.5 cups, which was the designated amount of water for the meal that had come in the bag…and so my dad filled it to there because the Knorr meal said it required 2 cups.  But as he filled it, it took more than 2 cups to get it to that line!  And my dad said, “This is just weird, let’s just leave it at that!”  So I think what happened though is that the original freeze-dried meal had more volume to it so we ended up putting in way too much water instead of too little.  So it was SUPER SOUPY and when I took a bite of the noodles, which were way down below the cheesy water, they were just ALL MUSHY.  So I was eating it and it was okay because I liked the cheese flavor.  But I wanted my dad to try it to see how it turned out, so when I thought there were just a couple bites left of the pasta (mush), I handed it to him and said, “Here,  you can try a few bites before it’s gone and then I’ll drink the rest of the cheese water!”  (I think I’ve become a lot less picky about food now since being on the PCT because calories are so important to me!)  I think my dad misheard me…because he said he tried to get some noodle bites, but it didn’t really seem like there was much left, so he decided he was just going to go for it and drink the cheesy water.  Oh and grandpa had sent me with these real bacon bits to put in there too, so I had put those in…so there were also some mushy bacon bits floating in the cheesy water.  So my dad started drinking this and I could see through the fabric of the tarp that his head tipped up (because he was wearing his headlamp) and then I watched as it tipped back down…and all of a sudden he was scrambling for the door and as he hurried out and put the meal down, he said, “WATCH OUT, BUDDY!”  He ran out of the tent in his socks, ran over to the nearest rock, and started puking it ALL OUT!  …like all the lasagna he’d had, too!  Since we’d switched out meals, right then I was eating the lasagna and I told him afterwards that it didn’t really phase me after a few seconds…I just kept eating the lasagna while he was puking it up!  But he said he thought it was those floating bacon bits in the cheesy water!  So he was just DONE!  I could tell that he wasn’t going to want to eat anything else, but he knew he’d have to get calories the next morning!  I felt so bad for him!  I think that was part of his bowel problems.  I think his whole body was just having trouble regulating because he’d worked it so hard at such a high elevation, off the couch!  It’s really IMPRESSIVE when I stop to think about it actually!  So he climbed into bed and I cleaned up everything that night so he could just stay in bed.  But he said we might have to make the beef stroganoff for breakfast because he’d need to get calories in him because we needed to do another 26 miles the next day!  He gives me a bad time now because he says that I told him it was only 25! But I’m pretty sure I told him it was 26 and then he must have rounded down to 25 so then I started referencing 25 whenever we talked about it!  But it must have confused him along the way!  And I didn’t tell him until a little ways into that day, “You know it’s actually 26, right?”  And he said afterwards, that last mile was really one of the MOST BRUTAL for him!  

So the next morning, we wanted to get going early so we could actually meet grandpa at a decent time!  But we were slow getting up in the morning because it was REALLY COLD cold again! And I really wanted my dad to get as much sleep as he could after the rough night he’d had.  So I got up and was making breakfast and we ended up using more water than we thought we would!  We had filtered a bunch of water the night before, but had used a lot to make the beef stroganoff and I was making my bag of dry cereal mixed with powdered milk that my mom sent me!  And we also had a packaged creme brulee dessert.  I think my dad had wanted to save something that wasn’t dry to have for breakfast!  So we were kind of passing those around.  I ate most of the cereal and then we ate the creme brulee, and my dad forced down almost the entire beef stroganoff meal.  His mouth was still SUPER DRY, so everything he ate that day had to be forced down and with a lot of water.  I felt really bad for him!  

We started walking that day at around 10 o’clock.  But before we left, I walked back behind the campsite to go to the bathroom and…first of all, right by our campsite earlier we had found a pair of shorts…and then right on the ground on my way to go to the bathroom, I found a pair of Native sunglasses!  So I took those to my dad because I knew that he liked Native and they were actually good road-biking glasses!  So he thought that was cool to find those…like a little gift there!  So we started hiking and my dad was really doing pretty good for the condition he was in and all the pains he was experiencing.  Starting that late, we saw some people that probably worked for the forest service or something, cutting logs on a trail out there.  And the only other people we saw were some hunters…apparently that morning was the opening of the season.  We were carrying a bunch of water because we didn’t know if there would be water between our campsite and South Kennedy!  It turned out there was, which was good too, because we would have gone through all of the water we were carrying and my dad needed it.  But it wasn’t much!  It was the south fork of the current river so you’d think it would have good flowing water, but it was just pretty stagnant, slow moving flow.  We were talking to a hunter there who has been going there since he was a kid and was talking about the “good old days” before it was super crowded. But he did like how they’ve made it a wilderness…apparently there used to be jeep roads everywhere.  

The whole day was pretty cool because we were transitioning out of the Sierras into the desert so it was kind of cool seeing the transition happen quickly.  We ended up hiking into the night again and didn’t get into camp until 9:30.  Six miles out from camp, we stopped to put headlamps and my dad got all bummed out because he thought he left his Snickers bar at the river…he REALLY was looking forward to his Snickers!  So instead, I looked over and saw him with a Mountain Huckleberry flavored GU (energy packet) in his hand and then water in the other and I could tell the pack of GU was almost empty.  He’d just squeezed it into his mouth and was swigging it down with water and then suddenly he just heaved forward as he pulled the water away from his mouth and leaned over and start puking again!!!  His poor stomach was just not having it!  There were certain things that would just set it off!  So he’s like, “I used to love these Huckleberry GU’s!”  …and I said, “You’re not going to like them anymore!”

So anyway, we put our lamps on and we’re hiking in…and like I said, that last mile was brutal for my dad!  He kind of had an idea of how far we’d gone in his head, and how much elevation we’d gained…and I was referencing my Half-Mile app…so he’d ask me, “What’s the damage?”  I’d tell him and it was usually just a little bit more than he’d guessed…a little more elevation gain or mileage to go!  So he started calling it my “Torture” app!  When we got into camp this time my grandpa wasn’t asleep yet, but he was already in the tent.  He’d hiked about 8 miles up!  Then he asked us, “Do you remember seeing a sign hanging over the middle of the trail?”  And I remembered my dad having seen a broken sign posted over the middle of the trail and he’d said, “Oh somebody didn’t like this sign!” But it turned out it was already broken on the side of the trail and my grandpa just put it across the trail so we’d remember something that he could reference where he was!  So I was able to give my grandpa a good laugh telling him my dad’s puke stories…especially from the night before!  My dad was just beat again, though!  I knew I needed a full meal so I made a Knorr pasta side (the right way this time), a Fettucini one.  But my dad just brushed his teeth and went to bed!  The tent was already set up again, which was nice!  So I made myself a meal and some hot chocolate and climbed into bed after them!

So that catches me up to today!  It’s Sunday now and this morning we got up sooner than the day at Horseshoe (I don’t think we were quite as beat..the day before hadn’t been quite as big of a day as the previous one)!  The whole thing was just a big trip for my dad to suffer through and he SUFFERED WELL!  I’d say he’s the best off-the-couch mountaineer and hiker I know!  It was SUPER FUN hiking with him!  So we got up this morning and had more English muffins, but it was windy so my dad and I were sitting in the front of my grandpa’s car, his Lexus.  And my grandpa was using the side that was protected from the wind as his cooking area for the stove, with the back seat door open and the seat folded down!  And then he’d pass more toasted English muffins with peanut butter and honey up to us.  They were SO GOOD, I don’t know what it was about them, but they were just VERY GOOD!  And we were getting catered to again because he made us pancakes after that!  So we had a NICE BIG BREAKFAST!

Then I started organizing my stuff to take today, the stuff I’ll need for the desert.  And then I was leaving some stuff behind to send home with my dad…like my hammock and the stupid bear can that I was DONE with (and isn’t required anymore)!  So I’m happy about that!  

We drove down to the Kennedy Meadows store because my grandpa had been there the day before, but he didn’t know if there would be wifi.  We thought there were showers, but apparently they had to shut them off because they were having water problems.  But there was still a running-water bathroom!  So I signed into the hiker registere there, washed my socks, and filled up some water at the spigot because (it was kind of a crappy little car-camping site) there was no water there either because of water problems…I don’t know if it was drought-related or if the pipes started to freeze or what!  So then he told us there was wifi at this restaurant a few miles away!  So we went there and got ice cream and stuff…I got a chocolate milkshake!  It was pretty crappy wifi, but I was able to get a few texts out and look up some water reports.  I decided that I didn’t want to hitch into Lake Isabella from Walker Pass (which I’m headed to now)…it’s about 50 miles from South Kennedy Meadows.  But there’s only one good water source between here and there!  (So my dad and grandpa actually DeLorme-messaged me already that they went and stashed some water there for me after they left…so I won’t have to detour to get water!)  So we went back to camp after that and we left my grandpa’s car running to charge my phone because I hadn’t really gotten a chance to do that while camping!  So I’ve got at least some charge on it now!  And then we FINALLY made our steak and salad that we had this WHOLE TIME (which on two separate nights we’d been looking forward to but hadn’t gotten to camp early enough to make and eat)!  So I had this big steak and my portion of the potato salad that was left and some Caesar salad.  Then I finished packing up my stuff and then ate most of my dad’s and grandpa’s steak that they couldn’t finish!  

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Then they finally got me going!  My dad was kind of giving me a bad time!  I think he was right…he said he could tell I was kind of waffling around because he thought I was subconsciously delaying the inevitable LEAVING!  I mean it had just been nice hanging out with my dad and grandpa again.  I think it was the first time I’ve hung out with just the two of them camping since I was 10 and it was still just the three of us at the White River fly-fishing trip we do in Colorado!  

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So they saw me off at the trailhead and I’ve been walking through the desert, which seems like an abrupt change from the Sierras!  It was really flat for a long time with sagebrush and crossing a lot of dirt roads and pipe gates for cattle and barbed-wire fences, and right past old shacks and cabins and dried-up water sources!  Now I’m climbing through this valley, without any trees or anything and I’m watching the trail stretch around.  It’s kind of cool, I guess!  

The advice my dad gave me was: “DON’T WISH IT AWAY!”  Because in the desert now, I am feeling like I’m close to the end of my trip!  And I think especially after seeing my dad and grandpa, I’m extra excited to get home and see the rest of my family!  

I’m gonna crank out while still trying to enjoy this last stretch of the trip through the desert!  It sounds like Cayden is a week ahead of me now.  He went through the Sierras pretty fast.  My goal is to finish October 22nd because that will be 4 months from when we started hiking.  Cayden calculated the zero days and stuff and figured out that if he finishes on the 12th, it will have taken him actually 100 full hiking days, I believe, to finish the PCT…factoring out zero days.  So we both have our goals and we’re pushing through to get ‘em!  So yeah, wish me luck!

Tanner’s Audio Log | September 25th PART I. VVR to Kearsarge Pass

Carlen’s Note: Tanner’s Audio Log on September 25th covers 10 eventful days and is nearly an hour and a half in length…so I’m posting it in two parts.

Okay so I didn’t realize quite how long it has been since I’ve done an audio log and so this is 10 days since my last one.  It is Sunday, September 25th and I am now essentially walking through the desert. So I’m going to try to do a Sierra section recap because I haven’t really updated since I’d say like…oh that was probably halfway, or not even halfway through the Sierras.  

So I was walking to the Vermilion Valley Resort (VVR) last time I updated this and I got to the ferry pick up location which was just like some rocks on Lake Thomas Edison.  And I was expecting to have to wait for quite a bit longer than I did because the ferry pick-up was at 9:45 AM and I think I got there an hour early.  But I got there and there was a ferry there and it was leaving as I got there and it was pretty full!  So the ferry was essentially just a little metal boat that could carry up to 4 hikers and their packs at a time.  So I was sitting there with some hikers that just got dropped off and they told me it would be back in 45 minutes.  And that was one of the only places in the Sierras that I got cell service so I called home and stuff…and checked e-mail and instagram and facebook while I waited for this ferry.  And I also cooked what should have been a hot meal.  But I thought I could get away with using half an Esbit, but it didn’t get the water nearly hot enough.  So then I used another whole one, but I still ended up having cold (or lukewarm) cheesy bacon grits.  So I don’t know what was causing that…like elevation or what.  

So I got taken into the VVR by ferry and at this point I wasn’t planning on staying there long, just the day.  And so I get there, pick up my package, and get an ice cream bar right away.  It’s kind of a funny little place.  There’s a cool sign right at the front that says: “First Beer Free and Hikers Please Loiter!” and “In Need of a Dishwasher for Dinner and Will Feed for Your Work!”  So for that reason I did almost get sucked into staying and asking if I could work in the kitchen for lunch.  But they said they had nothing for me to do that early. So ended up just buying some lunch there, charging my phone up, washing my SuperFeet (insoles) off using a real bathroom.  These guys had a slackline set up there…some of the people that worked there, so I went over and went across it like once just to prove to myself I still could…because it’s been awhile!  So that was kind of fun!  

And then I saw “Milkshake” (I don’t know if I ever mentioned him) who I met in Tuolumne.  So “Milkshake” was there and I was a little behind schedule from when I told him I’d be there so I figured he’d be gone by then, but he’d done the working-in-the-kitchen deal for free food and I think he’d stayed there two nights…so he’d zero-ed the day before and just basically worked there, like stopped a few days on the trail just to work.  And so he left there without having spent that much money there…especially for as long as he stayed.  So I was talking to him again and we’d been talking about how fun it would be to hike together because he had a JMT permit, but had also been cherry-picking parts of the PCT.  He basically hiked Washington and then the Northern Oregon section to Crater Lake…because he lives up in Washington…but then skipped down to the Sierras to be there for when his JMT permit had him starting.  He’s a funny guy…like super energetic and he’s the type of guy that seems to me like he’s always had one too many cups of coffee!  And he always has like a little bit of a New York accent when he says stuff like “but” and “ought!”  So he was a fun guy to hike with, but he was trying to leave that morning. He was planning on leaving by 10 AM, but he didn’t end up leaving until almost…well I’m pretty sure I got the ferry out around two-ish, and he didn’t end up leaving until a few minutes before that.  But he was doing a different trail you can hike out! There are two different trails you can hike out…one called the Bear Ridge Trail, which the locals describe as quick and dirty, I think is how they say it!  It’s like a steep climb that’s not scenic at all (like the cable line in WA), just gain all the elevation quickly.  So I think he was just in a hurry to get back on the trail and so that’s why he wasn’t doing the Bear Creek one.  

[Long Pause.] Just thinking…I’m trying to figure out where I’m going.  There’s a little creek here and now I am confused!  Oh here’s the trail and someone spelled “WATER” with an arrow.  I think I’m good for tonight though.  It’s actually pretty cool…I’m going to take a picture of this real quick…they spelled it with big sticks!  Okay, I’m not gonna stop for that because I’ve still got like 3 liters.  I’m carrying extra just in case…because water is now all of a sudden very sparse.  But I’ll get to that…

Back to “Milkshake” and leaving VVR.  So “Milkshake” left and then one other guy and I caught the ferry out because I just wanted to pick up where I left off, like I was fine with doing that.  It might have made sense to hike out, but I don’t know…I was fine with taking the ferry again, it’s what I’d planned on and I wasn’t super interested in hiking extra miles.  Even though I think it might have ended up being shorter.  I don’t know if I ever decided for sure which one was the more efficient way to do it.  Anyway, so I got the ferry out and then I ended up calling home again.  There were a few more things I’d forgotten to say the first time…and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to talk to my mom or anyone for a while.  Oh yeah, and I had to call my dad too to plan for when he met me…(which now I just left him and my grandpa today at Kennedy Meadows).  

So back to the VVR again…(I’ve gotta do these every day so I don’t get sidetracked like this!)…but so I was walking along the trail and it was starting to get dark and I heard someone call my name!  I looked over and saw “Milkshake” had decided to set up camp because he didn’t want to hike into the dark at all!  I was planning on going farther to the next water source, but I decided I’d just camp there with him.  So we were hanging out there, we set up camp, and decided it would be fun to hike together for a while because we wanted to be doing the same pace at least for a little while…like maybe a chill day when we stopped at Muir Trail Ranch (MTR) and then a couple big days to get back on track, like 28 miles…not huge days, but pretty big for the Sierras because the passes there can be pretty brutal and it’s just so pretty that we didn’t want to rush through it.  So we had these big plans for ourselves!

So the next day we were walking along to the creek in our warm clothes.  Then when the sun hit us, we changed out our clothes and filtered more water for the day.  But “Milkshake” had been at the VVR long enough that he had met a bunch of JMT hikers, so he stopped to say hi to them because he’s such a nice, talkative guy!  So he’s stopping and talking with ALL of these people…which was alright, I was fine with it.  We could still make it up to the pass…we were going up to…oh I cannot for the life of me remember the name of this pass!  It’s right before you drop into Muir Ranch.  Anyway, it wasn’t as cool as Silver Pass in my opinion, which we did the day before.  But you do go up past this cool lake and shoot up to this pass before you drop a long ways into Muir Trail Ranch!

We had big plans for the Muir Trail Ranch!  We’d heard they have a restaurant or that they serve food and we thought, “Well this is awesome!  We don’t have a set resupply there, but we’ll go to Muir Trail Ranch, raid the hiker boxes, and eat a good meal!”  The Muir Trail Hiker Boxes are legendary hiker boxes! I got there a little before “Milkshake”…he stopped and was talking to more people at the pass…people he knew from the VVR.  Oh and one guy passed me…a southbounder that was moving FAST, carrying a ton of food because his next resupply wasn’t until Lone Pine…or I can’t remember if it was Lone Pine or South Kennedy.  (Oh, and…I’m awful, I really need to do these logs daily because I can’t remember this guys name!  What was it?  Anyway, if I think of it, I’ll come back to that!)  

But by then we’d been hearing from JMT hikers along the way that Muir Trail Ranch wasn’t quite what we were expecting because actually the restaurant was only for paying guests staying in the cabin…which we weren’t planning on doing!  We were only going to stay for lunch.  I don’t think we could have even stayed if we wanted to because they were all reserved.  So I decided to go there anyway and check out these hiker boxes.  So the only way they let you resupply at Muir Trail Ranch is if you pay $50 for them to “hold” your 5-gallon Home Depot bucket (you can’t even send them boxes, it’s gotta be that bucket)!  So what happens I think is that all these JMT hikers that are paying this much for it figure they better FILL IT UP!  And they end up with a ton of food that they don’t need and that they REALLY don’t want to carry! So there are these organized HIKER BOXES!  …boxes for commercially-packaged food, for home-packaged food (which are mainly the plastic-bag meals that Cayden and I prepared…except they’re all super organized and all sharpie-labeled!), and then some snack boxes, and there’s a whole box just for peanut-butters and jellies, and a whole box for batteries, and also for miscellaneous gear, books, clothing, SO MUCH STUFF!  And there was some GOOD STUFF there!  I always have plenty of meals and just need snacks!  So I got there and grabbed a bunch of snacks to go…a bunch of little Justin’s organic nut butters and a bunch of bars, and there was even some candy!  And then some stuff I just ate right there!  Some of my favorites were the Oreos I ate and the shortbread cookies!  And there were so many tortillas and different flavored tuna packets that I had two different flavored tuna wraps for lunch!  So it was PRETTY AWESOME!  And then “Milkshake” showed up somewhere along there and he knew some people there and we made friends with some more JMT hikers just during our food exchange and feasting!  There was also a charging station to charge our phones!  So there was one girl there that “Milkshake” knew!  (I say girl, but she’s older than me…probably closer to “Milkshake’s” age, like upper 20’s, low 30’s.)  Her trail name was “Maple Frog” and she knew how to do it with the 5-gallon bucket because she had some snack food for the trail and then she used a bunch of the other space to send her goods that she wasn’t going to carry, but that she could eat right there!  So she’s sitting there with Pringles and a soda!  And “Milkshake” and I were just hovering over her  because we figured she was still going to get rid of food…we could tell she had GOOD FOOD!  There was one other lady that I camped next to…they were like a couple…the day before I got to the VVR, and they got there and they dumped SO MUCH GOOD FOOD out…like candies!  I grabbed some Skittles!  “Milkshake” grabbed some Butterfinger Bites!  They had some good Trader Joe’s snacks, too!  So we were thinking, “If this is the food they’re getting rid of, what kind of food did they have to keep and carry?  This is NUTS how much good food they have!”

So anyway there were a lot of people planning to stay at the hot springs there!  And the later we ended up staying, the less appealing the remaining 8 miles sounded to us and the more appealing staying there at the hot springs and eating a bunch of food there sounded…just FEASTING out of the hiker boxes!  We could just eat some of the other good dinners other people had left so we wouldn’t have to carry them, but just have a FEAST NIGHT!  So I looked into mileage and realized we’d probably have to pull some 30-mile days, but I could stay.  (Because at this point, I had plans to meet my dad and grandpa at Kearsarge Pass and I wanted to be there earlier in the day on Monday, if possible noon or so!)  So we made the decision to just stay at the hot springs and set up camp.  There were some park rangers camped out there and we basically just told them everything they wanted to hear.  We also got a bunch of JMT hikers that came up about then and announced we were all going to have a hot springs party and to bring a bunch of food.  So this guy and his dad from San Diego brought their Jet Boil over to the hot springs with one of the fuel canisters someone left in one of the hiker boxes (so they didn’t have to waste one of their own)!  I grabbed some hot chocolates and some home-packaged macaroni and cheese!  Everyone was like, “oh you grabbed a home-packaged meal?!?!”  But it turned out to be REALLY GOOD!  It had sun-dried tomatoes and pepper in it!  And then “Milkshake” and I grabbed this salad…that you use cold water to prepare and let it sit for an hour and a half…so we got that going while we were setting up camp!  And then “Maple Frog” had this lemon cheesecake, just another packaged meal…it wasn’t Mountain House, it was the same brand as the salad and it seemed like a much better camping food brand in my opinion, like gourmet!  (Uh, one second…I need a drink of water!  I’m climbing all of a sudden after going flat for so long!  Woah, the water is nice and sun-warmed!)  Okay, anyway so I ended up having a four-course meal, really!  We made the salad…“Maple Frog” and “Milkshake” and the guys from San Diego and I got all set up up right on the edge of this hot spring.  And the hot springs were pretty cool…it was pretty warm and it was definitely really nice!  I’m glad we stayed there!  So we had this Jet Boil set up there and we were all sitting in the hot springs and we passed the salad around, and then made the Macaroni & Cheese, passed that around, then we made the cheesecake, passed that around. “Maple Frog” left right after the cheesecake and we were still hanging out.  Then we went back to camp, “Milkshake” and I and the guy from San Diego (his dad had gotten up and gone back to camp a little earlier).  At this point it was dark and there was a river we had to cross to get to the hot springs, so we had to wade across it to get back over that to our camp in the dark.  We got back to camp and we went over by the tent of the guys from San Diego and we were like, “Hey we still have some hot chocolate!  Do you want to hang out and use the Jet Boil?”  And so we used their Jet Boil and the last of that hiker box fuel to make hot chocolate for all of us and just hung out and talked.  One guy had this…it wasn’t a guitar…it was like a Ukelele or something he played (I don’t know anything about musical instruments).  So we hung out and those guys asked me what I was going to do when I got to San Diego and if I had plans.  I told them I probably had friends to stay with, but I got their numbers just in case.  So they were really cool…(although I can’t remember their names, which I feel bad about)!  The dad is a fire chief at a fire station in San Diego.  

So “Milkshake” and I had big plans to do 30 miles the next day, up and over Muir Pass all the way into…I think that next valley was Evolution…oh, no Evolution was the one right before Muir Pass!  Anyway, all the way up and over Muir Pass and then almost to Mather Pass, I think was the plan.  But, we got a good morning start, and then ended up slowing down at the Pass, and then we knew we’d be hiking in the dark, and “Milkshake” still knew a lot of people we saw and was still talking to them.  Then he stopped just to get his feet in a creek so I stopped with him to eat there.  And so we were climbing up to Muir…we were almost to the top of Muir and it was almost 4 o’clock, but it was still pretty hot out! And there was this lake right before the climb up to Muir Pass (I can’t remember the name of it anymore) and we were walking right alongside it and it just kind of drops and has a sandy bottom!  So we were like, “This is too good of a lake not to jump in!”  So we jumped in this lake and that slowed us down.  Then we got up to the Muir hut and we thought, “This place is pretty cool!  Let’s cook dinner here and then crank to camp!”  So then we cooked dinner!  And then we still cranked a ways into the dark!  We were even moving pretty fast down there, but it ended up only being maybe a 27-mile day (I can’t remember exactly)…it was like somewhere between 25 and 27 miles.  But we were  like, “It’s okay, I’ll just be just a little bit later to Kearsarge, we’ll make up for it the next day.”  

But “Milkshake” had decided at this point that he’d hike in the morning with me, but it was getting towards the end of his trip because he’s not a “through southbounder”, he’s just exiting at the Whitney Portal, like JMT southbounding.  So he was like, “Then I’m gonna chill out probably!”  

So I had big plans to do this double-pass day…go up over Mather Pass and then down through the valley and up over Pinchot Pass.  Well Mather Pass kinda KICKED MY BUTT!  I think it was the hardest pass.  It wasn’t as gradual as Muir, it seemed like, but it still was climbing for a long time, like REALLY STEEP sections!  For me it was just especially brutal, I don’t know why for sure!  So I got to that and the top of that pass was REALLY COOL!  Oh and I also jumped in a lake again on the way up, I couldn’t resist!  From the top of that pass, I could look down into the next valley and see the trail run through all this flat barren land for a while.  And so I thought, “I’ll be able to move through that pretty quick and as long as I’m up to the top of Pinchot by sunset, I’m good.”  And so I was moving through that valley pretty good and I got up close to the alpine area near the pass so I knew that if I went any farther, I’d run out of places to hang my hammock…this was about two or three miles before the pass.  And I met these two brothers that said they’re southbound PCT hikers traveling north, but they got stopped by the fire that happened more recently than I’d been through in Seiad Valley and so they went down to Walker Pass and then were hiking up through the Sierras and up through northern California and then they were going to flip back down for the desert. So I was talking to them and they said it was kind of steep up to Pinchot and that Glen was a pretty brutal pass too, but that there were good hammock spots on that side, so then I basically decided just to crash before the pass and get up early.  Then I kept walking and met another lady filtering in the creek…I think she was with another guy, but I didn’t meet him, he’d stayed at their camp.  They were doing the same thing as the two brothers…kind of with them.  I think her trail name was “Yip Yip” or something!  And she was really cool too, she gave me a bunch of info about the water situation for the section I’m actually hiking right now between Kennedy and Walker Pass because it’s super dry!  So she told me what the reliable water sources were and so that was really cool.  So I went to the next creek up from them because I wanted to be as close to the pass as possible. Then I messaged my dad, updated him on the situation…that I was going to wake up early and still try to get to Kearsarge by mid-afternoon. And my grandpa was included in the message–a DeLorme inReach message–and so I’m limited (I think I can send and receive up to 40 personalized messages a month)!  And so my grandpa used one of my limited messages to taunt me with his dinner.  He said he was at Smash Burger eating a burger and fries and a chocolate shake.  So I of course messaged back and said that sounded almost as good as my rehydrated chicken alfredo in a plastic bag!  Although I have to say that I put so much olive oil in that alfredo that night that it was QUITE DELICIOUS!  [He laughs then adds] …for a rehydrated meal!  

So anyway, by the time I finally get in bed and get to sleep it’s still 9:30 which was later than I had wanted to!  So I set my alarm for 3:30 AM…to get 6 hours of sleep!  But it was another cold Sierra morning start for me!  It took a while to get up and get moving, get packed, and then change out of my warm clothes, and go to the bathroom before I got started!  And I had also woken up in the middle of the night because the upper joint of my leg, like by my hip, started hurting REALLY BAD!  It felt kind of like the growing pains I used to get as a kid, but WAY WORSE!  So I took an Aleve in the night, like about 1 or 2 o’clock…just a couple hours before I woke up.  So I got going around 5, got up to Pinchot, and the sun hadn’t risen yet, but was starting to so that was cool and the mountains were pretty red and orange!  It was a pretty cool pass too!  (But not as cool as getting over Mather!)  And then I dropped down into the valley, then I had an early lunch at this cool suspension bridge across this one river!  So then I shot across that, and that’s when the trail starts climbing again up towards Glen…like a big climb up a valley and then to some lakes…oh, I can’t remember (I’m doing really bad with names)…I can’t remember the names of these lakes!  But there were so many cool lakes in the Sierras and I just mix all of them up!  Oh, yeah, they’re the Ray Lakes!  And so I went up through there and I was climbing and I saw that I had just three-quarters of a mile left up to the top of Glen and I’m like, “Oh this hasn’t been that bad!”  And I got up and I saw that the last half mile…(I hadn’t really been looking at elevation)…it was just like switchbacks right up this steep rocky scree field!  And at this point I’m already behind schedule for my planned mid-afternoon arrival at Kearsarge, so I’m like, “Whatever!” and I just started climbing that, which kinda killed my pace.  So then I dropped over to the other side and at this point I was just ready to get to Kearsarge, which is a 7 mile detour off the trail.  So I got to that trail junction and I was hiking up to the actual pass, which is still about 5 miles out, I think, from the Onion Valley trailhead where my dad and grandpa were going to park.  So my dad flew into Vegas on Sunday night (today is Monday now) and then my grandpa drove up from Arizona and picked him up at the airport and then they stayed there in Vegas.  Then it sounds like they had a pretty fun time driving through Death Valley and stuff and up to Independence to meet me.  So I got a DeLorme message as I was nearing the top of Kearsarge Pass that they were at the trailhead and were gonna start hiking to meet me!  So I got to the top and met these two guys (who were just hiking in to fish for a few days) and was talking to them about the PCT and stuff…they had a lot of questions and it was cool talking to them.  

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I had been carrying my bear can on top of my pack (because it was required for the Sierras).  But when it was inside my pack with all of my food, it was making my pack just super uncomfortable.  So at the beginning of the Sierras, I switched it up so I was carrying it empty on top.  It got kind of annoying that none of the JMT hikers that saw me deep in the Sierras stopped to use the logic to realize, “Oh it must have not been comfortable because he’s carrying it on top of his pack!”  Because instead they all asked questions or say smart-alec things like, “Oh, it looks like you’re ready for a resupply!”  And I’d usually just laugh it off!  But some would ask, “Are you out of food?!?!”  And I had to explain myself SO MANY TIMES!  The most comical one was this Asian woman who just said “hi” at first, but then did a double-take as I was walking past her, and then she said, “NO FOOD!  HOW ARE YOU GOING TO SURVIVE?”  And I stopped to explain, like all the other times, that it was in my pack!  There was one guy that I actually thanked for being logical because he stopped to think about it enough and then said, “Oh, does your bear can not fit in your pack well with all your food?” And I immediately had more respect for that guy!

Tanner’s Audio Log | September 15th

Okay this is my PCT Audio Log for Thursday, September 15th and it is 7:33 in the morning and I am currently still bundled up in my warm clothes walking down a creek valley in the Sierras because the VVR, or the Vermillion Valley Ranch, or at least the ferry pick-up for it is a few miles downhill and it’s super cold in the mornings here.  I’m going to have to wait for the ferry so I thought I might as well stay in all my warm clothes and just take it easy.  I haven’t even gotten hot or sweaty yet!  

So last time I checked in, I was in Yosemite Valley about to meet up with Will Thomas, who is a friend from church and a trail runner!  He was actually my (and Cayden’s) 11-year-old scout leader so he’s coming out to meet both of us!  Now he’s with Cayden…I think tonight they’re planning on being on the summit of Mt. Whitney for sunset and the full moonrise.  So that will be cool!

I met Will later in the morning on Sunday, September 11th after I recorded my last audio log.  That was the day after the night I spent hiding from rangers in the woods in Yosemite Valley and so he picked up my stuff in Tuolumne, which was SUPER HELPFUL!  And so we put together our day packs and went up to do Half Dome and we ended up having a late start, most people go earlier.  We knew we would have time though…we knew we would move quickly enough.  We got up there and it was nice weather in the valley, but when we climbed up there were some thunderstorms on the horizon.  So we kept debating whether we should do it and people were like, “Woah, you’re going up there?”  And we were like, “We’ll see…”  And finally got up there and there was nothing directly over Half Dome and we were looking at which way the clouds were moving and it looked like most of them would miss us, so we decided to go for it!  This was right at the base of the cables, so we went up the cables and I took the video logs at the top of the cables. Yeah, it was REALLY COOL!  And we actually went up, hung out for a little bit, went back down the cable route, and then Will was looking at his topo map and there was kind of a way where it gradually slopes down the other side and he’s like, “It looks like it doesn’t get that steep!  I wonder if we could go up and over…”  And our curiosity got to us and we went up again and tried going down the other side.  Unfortunately, the topo map was misleading because it does indeed get steeper and steeper and eventually cliffs out!  So we thought we could connect it to another trail, but that didn’t go!  So we climbed all the way back up and then down the cable route again!  But it was fun and it was cool because we would never have known if we hadn’t tried!  Well it’s funny because we were looking at the Yosemite Valley map that they give people entering the park and on the front is a picture of Half Dome from the side that we were trying to climb down and it’s pretty apparent it cliffs!  We just hadn’t even looked at that!  

So we worked our way back down…got down a little after dark after our two times up and down the cable route, and got pizza at this little pizza place in Half Dome Village, so that was really good!  We just split a large pizza and ate all of it!  And then someone at the other table left their pizza…which to me was just insane!  I guess just because I think like a cheap hiker now, so I grabbed those 3 slices of pizza they left for my breakfast the next morning!  

And then we went…there’s like a little shower house there.  I think you’re supposed to pay 5 bucks for a towel, but we had our own camping towels so we kind of poached the showers right before they closed.  We didn’t have a campground there that night, but Will was super tired because he’d been up for I-don’t-even-know-how-many hours, like he had a night flight into Vegas around midnight and drove all the way into Yosemite to meet me without really sleeping and then climbed Half Dome!  So we were looking for a campsite, but all the campgrounds were still full even though it was a Sunday night…it was kind of surprising.  So in Yosemite Valley everything was full…or at least said it was full!  We chose like one campground and drove into it and the first campsite we saw was completely empty, and this was at 10 or 11 o’clock at night now!  So we were like, “Well, let’s just park there because no one’s there and if it’s this late, no one’s probably coming…and if they do, we’ll just move for them!  So Will throws down his bivy and is in bed pretty quickly!  And I’m setting up my hammock and this ranger lady comes along and says they’re doing campsite checks.  She asks, “Do you know the bear locker policy?” …because she saw ours was open with nothing in it!  All of our food was still in Will’s car.  So I said, “Yeah, I’ll move the food over right after I get set up!”  But then she said, “Are you registered at this campsite?”  And I couldn’t think of a good thing to say!  I feel bad because I should have handled this myself, but I was kind of like, “Oh you’ll have to ask Will,” and I motioned in his direction, but he was asleep at that point.  He had fallen asleep pretty quick I guess because she went over and he didn’t fully understand what she said (based on my conversation with him afterwards)…but then she walked back to me and said, “Oh you guys aren’t registered here so you’ll have to move anyway!  I wouldn’t even bother moving the food!”  So I said, “Oh alright.”  And I started packing back up and talked to Will and he’s like, “Yeah, I don’t even know what she was saying!”  And I was like, “Oh, she told me we have to move!” So we got all of our stuff packed back up in the car…we hadn’t really unpacked much…just the food I was putting in the bear can and my hammock and his bivy.  But right then two ranger cars with their lights flashing (like their police-type lights) pulled in and basically asked us the same question that lady ranger did.  Then they asked Will if he’d been drinking, and he was like, “No.”  Then I think they said something like, “Well, you guys can stay here, you just need to go write your name on some board that you have this campsite and then pay in the morning.  So we were like, “Okay, whatever!”  Just a classic ranger situation where they handled it completely inefficiently and made our lives miserable because we had packed everything back up and then we unpacked it again to stay there!  But we walked over and there was no board you could write on, there’s just the one for late arrivals…[Tanner pauses for a long time on the trail where he is presently walking and says: “Oh, wait just one second, someone left a note for someone that I’m reading…okay, it doesn’t really concern me. It was just for someone specific I guess.]  So the board for late arrivals for Camp 4, the campsite where we were, said the name “Castle” was who was supposed to show up.  But we couldn’t write our names down, so we decided we’re just going to go to bed, they’re not going to bother us anymore…they’ve already bothered us twice!  And then we’ll just wake up in the morning…because that ranger station office doesn’t open until 10 AM to pay anyway.  We were not planning on hanging around for that long!  And at that point, we really didn’t care!  I mean the campsite was obviously paid for by someone…and we’re just like, “Screw this!  These rangers are annoying!”  So we just went to bed and woke up the next morning…we were probably out of there by 7 AM.  

We drove up to Tunnel View where…I’m not really used to having warm breakfasts, but Will had some extra and his Jet Boil and so we cooked some warm breakfast!  Oh and I had that leftover pizza from the night before.  So we sat at Tunnel View which gives you a direct view down the valley with like El Cap [El Capitan] as the sun rose over the top of the mountains and the valley and that was AWESOME!  Just hung out there, had kind of a lazy morning, and drove up to Tuolumne, and stopped at a few little viewpoints on the way up!  

I finally got going hiking probably around noon.  And so Will drove his car back around to Reds Meadow, which was going to be my next stop…I think it was like maybe 35 miles from Tuolumne.  So starting at noon, I only ended up doing about 17 miles when I met up with Will again running in from the other side at Reds.  By that time it was dark and we found a place to camp.  He’d hiked in on the PCT, but there’s a spot there where the PCT and the JMT split so he hiked back on the JMT route so he could do a loop and not hike the same stuff twice.  The JMT route was the really scenic one…there are a bunch of really cool alpine lakes.  I think the really famous one is Thousand Islands Lake…(that’s where we had another warm breakfast).  Garnet Lake was my favorite!  It’s got these two mountains, Banner & Ritter, right behind it…like these kind of jagged peaks and that was awesome. Then we hiked through the rest of those lakes back down to Reds Meadow, got there mid-to-late afternoon, and piled into Will’s car.  We checked out the campground situation there…it was 26 bucks for a car campsite!  And there was a hiker camp, but it was supposed to get really cold that night and all the actual bunk houses were like 200 bucks! So we decided we’re not paying for that!  We’ll probably just end up camping at the backpacker camp.  So we were on our way out and we picked up a hitch-hiker that was hiking the JMT from Switzerland because he needed a ride into Mammoth.  So we dropped him off at Mammoth Village.  Then we drove into the main part of the town of Mammoth and right back into the ski resort.  It looked super fun and I definitely want to go back there in the winter!  We ate at Carl’s Jr. and I had two milkshakes along with my burger and fries.  

I called home and made a few different calls and actually was planning with my dad.  It sounds like he and my grandpa are both going to meet me now at Kearsarge!  My Grandpa’s kind of going to be our support vehicle while my Dad climbs Mt. Whitney and then hikes all the way to Kennedy Meadows with me.  So my Grandpa’s going to meet us a couple different places along the way!  So that will be SUPER FUN!  I’m really excited for that!  

Then after Carl’s Jr. we went to the grocery store and I grabbed a thing of peanut butter as a backup snack because I didn’t know how many snacks I’d have at the VVR. And peanut butter is such a good extra calorie boost!  So, peanut butter and some hotties (hand warmers) because my feet have been getting really cold at night.  It’s just super cold here in the Sierras.  I think it might be the way I lay in my hammock so I got those hotties to put in my socks at night.  

Will ended up booking us a hotel room because it was going to get so cold and it was cheaper to get a hotel room than it was to get a bunk room at Reds.  So I also grabbed some Safeway frosted brownies to eat there!  It was REALLY NICE having the hotel room to be able to do laundry, and we had a bed to sleep in!  And we were able to take a real shower without the employees at Yosemite trying to get us out of there so they could shut it down when we did it late at night at Half Dome Village! That was SUPER NICE!  Then we woke up kind of early the next morning and raided the free breakfast there!  I had multiple bowls of cereal and multiple bagels, as well as another one of my Safeway brownies that I was eating the night before!  

Then we…oh now the sun’s starting to hit me and it’s starting to get warm!  So Will drove me back to the trail at Reds where I got started hiking probably around 8 o’clock and he went to go catch Cayden at Kearsarge Pass.  So yeah, I said bye to Will!  It’d been SUPER FUN hiking with him, to have some company and someone to talk to and he’s been SUPER HELPFUL with the rides into town and picking up my stuff for me, and getting the nice hotel room!  

So I started hiking and right now is primetime for the JMT, so I’m really not seeing anymore PCT Northbounders.  I saw a ton of people because of these JMT hikers out…so that was kind of cool, but it has its drawbacks too!  I went to go find a place to go to the bathroom and I hiked a little ways off trail and the first few rocks I flipped over to dig a hole under, I found someone had already left their “business” there, so that was not too pleasant!  But I mean for the most part it’s alright having people you can talk to that might know about the trail farther up and stuff, and just people to talk to!  Oh and I kind of like camping near people…like just the, I don’t know, there’s an added sense of security, even if it’s a false one…camping next to other people.

So I ended up pushing like a 25 or 26-mile day after leaving at about 8 from Reds.  But really by the time I stopped a little ways in because I started in warm clothes again and had to switch out…I wasn’t really moving good until 8:30 or 8:45 AM.  Oh, but there’s a….I don’t want to spoil it or anything, but I guess not everyone sees the video logs [on facebook, but not on the blog], I’ll just say it…there’s a bear leaving Reds Meadow with me essentially.  I got on the trail right after Will dropped me off and started walking and looked up ahead and there was a bear just walking in the same direction down the trail!  So I made a little video log featuring this bear, but as soon as he heard me talking, he ran off!  That was cool!  Yeah, so now I was able to set up camp just a few miles from the VVR Trail turnoff.  So I’ll probably just have a couple more miles to where I’ll be waiting for the ferry.  I’ll make myself some hot food, maybe some cheesy bacon grits for breakfast this morning is what I’ve got!  And then catching the 9:45 AM ferry into VVR and then I’ll be hanging out until the time it takes me back a little after 4 PM.  I’m gonna have a heavy pack for the first time in a while because Will has basically been my support vehicle and then I’ve got a few days of hiking through the Sierras until I meet my Dad and Grandpa Scott and that is going to be SUPER FUN!!!

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All these incredible photos are courtesy of WILL THOMAS!

THANK YOU WILL!

Tanner’s Audio Log | September 11th

Okay so this is my PCT Audio Log for Sunday September 11th and I did a video log yesterday from the top of Cloud’s Rest, but I should probably do a big catch-up audio log right now because I’m in Yosemite Valley.  I’m actually waiting for a shuttle to Half Dome Village where I’m going to meet Will Thomas!  

I guess I should pick up where I left off first.  Walking into North Kennedy Meadows is when I did my last audio log update and so I got a ride in there.  Instead of actively trying to hitch, there was a day hiker who said he could give me a ride so I waited up for him because he was kind of walking down slower.  And then he drove me into Kennedy Meadows where I was expecting to have wifi or something to call my mom and i don’t know…I just thought I’d have wifi to be in touch with the real world again, but I did not.  They offered no such service there.  Although I did have a decent hamburger for dinner and then a bunch of other snacks from the grocery store, like chocolate milk.  I was with Oskar and Keith…or “Daddy Long Legs” and “Fin” are their trail names.  So Oskar found this toaster pastry called a “Honey Bun” that has like 580 calories and is only like 2 bucks or something like that!  So that’s a score for us hikers and it doesn’t weigh much either so it’s like the dollar-to-calorie ratio is optimal!  We stayed the night there, got up a big breakfast!  Oh yeah, so we set up camp in the dark and got up before it got light out because we didn’t pay for a campsite, just found somewhere to set up.  

So then we woke up that morning, had the big breakfast and this lady offered to give us a ride back up to the trail.  She said her friend was with was sleeping in so we got driven all the way back up to the trailhead!  North Kennedy Meadows was actually a ways down from Sonora Pass, like down this long winding road through this valley.  So during that whole ride Keith was explaining to her how to kill her scraggly oak tree in her front yard (that she doesn’t like) without anyone (any of her pesky neighbors that are part of the homeowner’s association) knowing it because she really hates the tree, but her neighbors will flip out I guess and so he was like telling her what she could use to inject into it to kill it!  

And oh, I’m going to have to continue this in a second…oh, nevermind, that’s not my shuttle.

So that was an interesting car ride.  They were plotting the murder of this tree and so Keith was in a good mood that day!  He was telling her about it because he cuts trees for a living. So then, I started hiking a little ways and I’d been carrying my bear can that I picked up in Truckee…full of food in my pack and I had decided that it must have been the source of how bad my shoulders and hips were hurting!  The way it pressed against my back, it just created pressure points so after hiking for just a few minutes, I got cell service and I decided I just was DONE hiking with my bear can like that!  So I called home on speaker phone while I made the switch…I just dumped all the food in my pack and strapped the bear can on the outside.  And I told Oskar and Keith I’d probably just meet them at camp. That was a pretty mellow day.  It was a really cool day at the beginning because we hike up from Sonora Pass and we’re traversing this ridge.  And then we drop down into this valley and climb back up this pass into Yosemite National Park!  It was really weird that day, I saw a horse just standing alone on the trail!  Oh and hiking without that bear can in my pack, but on the outside instead, was A LOT more comfortable!  So I’m very glad I made that switch.   So I saw this horse and I was calling for people nearby, but there was no one! It still had like a bridle on with a rope attached to it, but one end of the rope looked like it was frayed and broken.  So I didn’t want to lead it anywhere just because that would’ve been like more of a hassle for me and I had no idea where it’s owners were so I didn’t want to lead it away.  But I’m pretty sure it came from the direction I was going because I kept seeing hoof prints and I think I saw where the broken rope had been dragged in the dirt. So I finally got to Dorothy Lake where I saw more people and kinda asked…I saw these older people camping right by the lake…and actually a bunch of campers by the lake, but they were the first ones I saw (I didn’t realize how many there would be).  I asked them if they were missing a horse, but they said no.  But then we started talking and they invited me to come sit by their fire where they were boiling water, so I was like okay, it was almost 6 o’clock by then, so I was like I’ll just have an early dinner and then I won’t have to cook when I finally catch Oskar and Keith, I can just go to bed.  So I did that, I was talking to them…there were actually two older couples and it sounds like they’d met each other before, like in the same area and just happened to meet each other again!  And so they were having dinner together…and I did a double dinner because I had extra food and I wanted to drop the weight of my pack and I had their boiling water without wasting any of my esbits, even though I had a bunch of extra of those too!  So I had like beans and mashed potatoes rolled into a burrito, and then they refilled my water too because they were gravity-filtering!  They were super nice!  

And then I took off again and I hiked in the dark for a few hours that night and ended up doing like a 31-mile day to where I caught Keith and Oskar at like 10:30ish and then I just went to bed as quickly as I could.  And then the next morning, I’d gotten in later so I was slower getting up and I told them the same thing, like, “You guys can just take off…I’ll probably catch you tonight!”  But that was a pretty savage day as far as elevation and trail…at least I thought so because we were travelling south through Yosemite, but the valleys don’t really travel due south.  The older guy from dinner the night before had actually been explaining to me that they travel more southwest, so we’re climbing in and out of these canyons and valleys.  It was super cool because there were a few lakes and it was all rock, like everywhere, just a bunch of granite!  But it was pretty tiring and I hiked into the dark a little ways and still did like 29 or 30 miles and I got to one lake, Medburg Lake, and just laid in the cold water for a bit because it was pretty hot that day, too!  And that felt like it restored some of my energy and morale!  But then I kept going and so I ended up just camping at a creek.  I think they [Oskar & Keith] filled up water at that creek and just went a few miles farther to camp.  I decided I just wanted to camp by the water so I solo camped there that night.

Then the next day I had like 13 miles into Yosemite and so I got there in the early afternoon and Keith and Oskar were already gone.  It turns out Cayden left with them…he did the JMT [John Muir Trail] into the valley and then just camped down here and then took a shuttle up to Tuolumne and that’s where he met them.  So I was hanging out at Tuolumne and had a burger and stuff.  This hiker that through-hiked last year had some extra snacks from the backpacking trip he was on and gave me those and that was nice!  And Cayden had just opened and resealed our resupply box and left it at the Tuolumne Post Office/Store for me.  So I picked that up and got all my food sorted out and got my camp set up.  I met another JMT through-hiker, but he did parts of the PCT this year too…his trail name is “Milkshake”!  He’s a super enthusiastic guy, talks really fast, SUPER NICE!  So he was fun to talk to and hang out with.  So then I got more ice cream at the store and then I wanted to charge my phone and stuff and see if I could get better cell reception or wifi and so I started trying to hitch to the Tuolumne Lodge.  It was really close, I was just hitching because I didn’t feel like walking…but the people that ended up picking me up were like, “Well we’re going all the way down out of the park to get gas and then coming back and you can charge your phone in the car and there’s better cell reception down there!”  And so I was like, “Awesome!  I’ll just go with you guys!”  It was two guys from the east coast.  One was like a college-aged kid that I was talking to…he through-hiked the Appalachian Trail earlier this year, so he was super fun to talk to, super nice guy!  He was there with his other friend from the east coast who I think is originally from the Ukraine and he was also hosting his friend from the Ukraine, a lady, and her granddaughter visiting from Israel.  So Patrick, the guy from the east coast said his trail name on the AT was “Pork Roll” …and he and I were kind of left out of some of the conversations in Russian.  But anyway, I got down there, was charging my phone on the way, and got good service down there.  I bought some Milano cookies and a Caesar salad, and oh a couple more of those Honey Buns snacks that are packed with calories for breakfast the next morning, and they drove me back up to camp.

I kind of got a late start in the morning, yesterday morning, because my Half Dome permit for Saturday (yesterday) didn’t go through and so I didn’t have much hope of it going through for today because it’s a lottery system.  So I wasn’t in a huge hurry to get up because I figured I’d just hitch down to the valley and hang out and see if I could get a permit from the ranger.  But then my mom said it did go through for Sunday (today) and texted me the e-mail confirmation!  

So I decided instead yesterday, I’d hike the JMT into the valley which is the other thing I wanted to do while I was here.  So I ended up getting a late start for that though, didn’t leave until 9:30 or 10 AM.  I decided to do Cloud’s Rest on the way, despite the late start, which might not have been smart, but at the same time I don’t really regret it because Cloud’s Rest was REALLY COOL and it goes right above Half-Dome, like above and behind it so you’re looking down at it and into the valley!

I saw a lot of tourists hiking here that day…I’m not used to seeing so many people when I hike!  So finally everyone up there was like, “You have how many miles left to do down into the valley???  You better get going!”  Because I was up there at almost 5 PM and I still had almost 10 miles to do to get into the valley…so I ended up not getting in until after dark!  And on the way down the trail I kept kind of like pestering a bunch of people, like “Hey are you going into Tuolumne Meadows?” And most of them didn’t even know where that was! And then the one guy who did was like, “That’s a long drive away!” And I didn’t realize how long of a drive it was!  Oh and the kicker is I left my camp set up at Tuolumne, figuring I could day-pack down and hitch-hike back…I was pretty arrogant about my hitch-hiking skills, I guess, and how fast I would get there!  I was expecting to get to the valley before dark.  

So I finally found these guys from Belgium who were visiting San Francisco and then rented an RV and were travelling around.  They had gotten the lottery permit for Half Dome that day and were coming down from that hike and they said they needed to find an RV park.  So I was like, there’s the “Lee Vining RV Park” and you’d go right past Tuolumne.  So it was looking like they could give me a ride, but when we finally got down, they were just beat and they said Half Dome was a brutal hike!  (Will Thomas and I are gonna try to do it this afternoon and I’m getting to that…)  So we took the shuttle to Half Dome Village and I went with them to their RV.  They were talking in dutch (I think) and then they turned to me and said, “We’re really sorry, but we’re just going to stay here tonight even if there’s a fine.” So I was like, “Okay, that’s alright.”  

So I went to Half Dome Village and bought like a five-year-old’s dream meal for dinner: a bag of goldfish, chocolate milk, an ice cream bar, and another Honey Bun (they’ve quickly become a favorite of mine)!  And then I asked the lady working at the store there if she had cardboard.  So she gave me some and a sharpie and she said, “Oh Tuolumne shouldn’t be such a hard hitch!  …Oh it is kind of late though!”  I took the shuttle to this Yosemite lodge…(I’m sitting at the shuttle stop now)…and stood with my cardboard hitch sign by the sign that said “Park Exits” and I only got passed by a few cars, but none of them picked me up though!  And I finally was like, “This isn’t going to work out tonight!”  I walked back to the lodge and my phone was almost dead so I was charging it and using the wifi to communicate with my mom and Will.  Will was flying into California to hike with either Cayden or I (hopefully both of us).  I told him I had the Half Dome permit for two people so he said he’d come hike that with me today.  But I thought he was going to park in Mammoth and take the bus here (and he originally was) but once I let him know my situation, he said, “I can just drive there!”  So he has offered to pick up my stuff in Tuolumne, which is SUPER HELPFUL!  I feel bad because he’s driving all the way here now, but he said it’s no big deal and it’s really a LIFE SAVER because I’d be hard-pressed to hitch-hike out of here, get up to Tuolumne, and get the bus back down, and still have time to climb Half Dome…

One second…I’m going to have to pause this while I get on the bus!

Okay, I’m on the bus now.  Hope you can still hear me alright!  

Anyway, so I was at the lodge and I found this German lady, Saskia, who was trying to hitch to a friend’s house after the Burning Man Festival.  She was in the same situation, sort of…like just stuck, couldn’t hitch-hike out that night, but didn’t have anywhere to stay!  She at least had a sleeping bag and sleeping pad and stuff!  I only had, well I had a couple warm layers, but I just had day-hiking gear.  But then I met this Spanish climber staying in camp 4 who had an extra sleeping bag and said I could use it for the night.  So we followed him there.  But there was no extra camp space, so we kind of just walked into the woods…Saskia came with me; she didn’t want to have to just stealth camp alone and she was afraid of the bears too, I guess!  So we hiked into the woods and kind of just rolled our sleeping bags out and spent a not-so-comfortable night out there and then got up early!  Saskia was talking really loudly!  I don’t think she understood that we had to hide from the rangers!  So we woke up early, well not really early actually…it was like 6 AM.  We wanted to be up and moving before rangers were like looking around for us or might see us in the daylight again!  So I got up and went and got a big breakfast at the food court by the lodge and then was charging my phone in the lodge again and using the wifi.   ….Oh and I dropped the guy’s sleeping bag off back at his camp and now I’m on my way to Half Dome Village where I’m going to meet Will and then we’ll climb Half Dome!  Yeah, we’ll see what happens from there!

Cloud’s Rest | Yosemite

 

Tanner’s Audio Log | September 4th

Alright this is my PCT audio log for Sunday, September 4th.  So yesterday I just did the video log in the Desolation Wilderness and that place was super cool, camping at Lake Fontanillis where it was pretty windy, but it was just like these cool lakes surrounded by granite.  Then I hiked up over Dick’s Pass where I took that video log, then kind of down and to the other side and where you go right along the edge of Lake Susie, Heather Lake, and Lake Aloha…those were all really cool.  Aloha Lake is the biggest, but it’s got a bunch of little granite rock islands scattered throughout it that you could just jump between and stuff.  So I had lunch there.  I was going to swim, but it was pretty windy so I didn’t have much of a desire to by the time I got there.

And then from there you drop out of the wilderness down to Echo Lake, which has a bunch of boat and trail access, like nice cabin/houses on it.  So you walk on a trail around that and I saw a bunch of day hikers because it was a Saturday.  And I walked right past the Echo Lake store and then I was hurrying to meet the Bolls at Highway 50 by 3:30 PM and I got there and there was limited service so I was trying to text them.  I finally got a response from Kathy that they were at the trailhead so I guess I didn’t realize that it like parallelled Highway 50 for the next mile and so the actual trailhead, instead of just the little pull-out where it crosses (where I was) was another mile down the trail and that’s where they actually were.  So I walked another mile and Kathy had said she and Emma and Addy (Cayden’s sisters) had started walking in my direction.  But I got to the car where Cayden and Trevor were waiting and hadn’t seen them. And so then Cayden had to go find them because they took a wrong turn.  So we finally got everyone together by like 4:45 PM and piled in the car and went back to the place they got up by Heavenly Ski Resort.  

I took a shower and got cleaned up and kind of snacked on stuff there and then we went to find a place where we could catch the BYU game because they’re BIG BYU FANS…Trevor especially because BYU football, he takes it really seriously.  So it was super fun going to watch it with them.  They were all decked out in their BYU shirts!  I had a BYU baseball cap so I kind of fit in…I had my mom send one with them with my casual clothes that they brought down for me (which were nice to lounge around in)!  So we found out bar and grill type place that would let us all in and that had the channel (because the VRBO we were staying at didn’t have the right channel…which was the only reason we were going out to dinner so that we could watch it)!  So we finally found one and got all settled in and started with appetizers and then had them switch to the right channel when the game was starting at 7:30 PM.  And by the time was actually starting, we were getting our entrees so we ended up not staying for the whole game.  We stayed until halftime though and BYU was winning by then.  And then I was actually in a different room when the game actually ended, but they (Trevor, Cayden, Kathy, Addy, & Emma) finished watching the second half on Trevor’s laptop back at the place we were staying.  And they won by a field goal that a freshman kicked so it was pretty intense and Trevor gets really stressed about BYU football.  So it was a lot of fun!  And the food…we had like spinach-artichoke dip in a bread bowl…I ate probably more of that than anyone else!  And then I was already border-line full when my pizza came, but that was good because it allowed me to like eat it slowly while we watched the game and loitered in this restaurant for longer than was probably polite!  Oh and there were nachos as an appetizer too!  And my chipotle chicken pizza was VERY GOOD!  And then afterwards we went to the little Nestle’s cafe that they have just on one of the streets in South Lake Tahoe and got a cookie ice cream sandwich.  I got two triple chocolate cookies with cookies-n-cream ice cream in the middle so it was basically a massive Oreo with ice cream!  So that was good!  

And then this morning…oh just a second.  [In background to another hiker, “Hey, how’s it going?”].  I’m passing a few other hikers here…  [Tanner: “Hi how’s it going?”  Other hiker: “Good, how far is it from the park?”  Tanner: “Oh, I don’t know for sure, maybe about 4 or 5 miles…maybe not quite that!”  Other hiker: “Ok, thanks, have a good day!”  Tanner: “Yeah, you too!”]

So anyways, we got up this morning and I had a bunch of food for breakfast…like bacon, egg, sausage, banana bread, cereal!  I miss cereal out here on the trail!  …with real milk and just having bowl full after bowl full!  And banana and snacked on more of the cookies and stuff there.  And I got all my stuff together and we went to sacrament meeting at just a local ward, the South Lake Tahoe Ward.  So there were a ton of visitors, it wasn’t just us.  So I was in my PCT clothes, which I still have a button-down shirt and like khaki-colored pants…kind of…that aren’t too dirty after they got washed!  But that was really good…going to church again for the first time in a while!  And it will probably be awhile, going into the Sierras.  I might get a chance to go in the desert or in southern California.  So anyways, but then after that, we stopped on the way up to the trail just so I could grab a new litre-sized water bottle, I got a Smart Water bottle because I’d been using the same one since Bend, Oregon and I finally lost it, so it was probably time I switched it out anyway!  And then I had a hot dog and chocolate milk for lunch, oh and soda and stuff from this little hot dog stand.  Then I finally got back up to Echo Summit where the Bolls dropped me off to keep hiking and we actually picked up a northbounder who was trying to hitch into South Lake Tahoe.  

So now I’m heading south again on the trail and got my new shoes, so that’s nice!  I’m feeling pretty good right now, but just because I’m feeling fresh!  We’ll see after a couple of days though!  Next stop is not really a resupply stop…probably just going to go in and get food there and recharge the phone and camp at North Kennedy Meadows right off of Sonora Pass.  But yeah, I‘ve heard that’s a cool place to stop too!  So probably a couple nights from now I’ll do that!  And then after that is Tuolumne where I’m planning on spending the weekend, hopefully getting a permit for Half-Dome, doing the cable hike and hiking the section of the John Muir Trail that goes into the Yosemite Valley and exploring there!  So yeah, probably got just over a hundred miles until I get there so, a few days, but getting really excited for that!  Yup!

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Tanner’s Audio Log | September 2nd

Okay, this is my PCT Audio Log for September 2^nd.  I didn’t really realize how long it was since my last one in Sierra City.  So I guess I’ll pick up where I left off and I’ll try to be better about doing these daily.

So waiting for that milkshake in Sierra City was a mistake because there were only one or two people working the little deli in the grocery store and they were also manning the grocery store counter.  So I didn’t get my milkshake until almost 11 AM and while I was waiting, I had another ice cream bar…and so by the time I had my milkshake, I did not feel like walking anywhere and I spent more money than I needed to!  “Continental”…I don’t know how he does it…he put away the milkshake, an ice cream bar with me, and then a breakfast burrito that weighed more than 2 pounds, and he still hiked out.  So he took off while I was in the bathroom and then I came out and he was gone and I saw…well, I forgot to mention that the day before, I saw some mountain bikers poaching the PCT so they were trying to be really nice and get off their bikes ahead of time when they saw me because they knew they weren’t supposed to be on the trail.  But I was nice to them and talking to them anyway, like I didn’t really care!  That’s the kind of thing “Continental” rants about, but I don’t really give a crap about.  So I saw them in Sierra City and they said, “Hey we saw you yesterday!  We were the guys on the bikes!”  And I said, “Oh cool!”  And they were telling me how they were headed out now and I asked, “Well which way down the road are you going?”…Because it’s a good like mile-and-a-half walk into Sierra City from the PCT.  And they said they were going west, but they said “We can take you back east, like that’s a quick 5-minute drive!”  So I rode past “Continental” with these mountain biking PCT poachers!  So I was at the trailhead waiting for him when he walked up and he was a little bit like, didn’t know how that had happened and kind of scoffed at hitch-hiking!  But anyway, so then we took off hiking together.  He got ahead pretty quick though—he walks fast!  I was tempted to jump in a little river there, but I decided not to, decided I should keep going because at that point it was almost noon when we started.  So we took off climbing back out of that valley and it was really cool in the evening because we ended up on these ridges with…I think it’s called like “mule weed,”…I’m walking by some more right now…they’re these little plants that are all dried up right now so when the wind blows it’s all like crackly and stuff.  I had service too so I called home for a while and talked while I walked on these really cool ridges with awesome views in all directions while the sun started to set.  Oh I’m just leaving Granite Chief Wilderness right now!

So I had a plan on where I wanted to get to and I didn’t get there until 9:30 PM…to where this little creek was and it was pretty dry, but there was a sign that said, “ALWAYS WATER .03 MILES DOWNSTREAM.”  So I started walking that way and the trail petered out, and what little water there was, was just like a stagnant pool.  And there was no sign of “Continental” and I thought I might as well push to the next spring…I don’t want to camp here if I’m going to have to do a bunch of work filtering from this little stagnant pool with my Sawyer Filter.  I was already hiking in the dark so I ended up not getting to the spring until 10:45 PM.  Continental was there too and he was out cold, just cowboy-camping under this tree.  So I got my water going…the spring was great, didn’t even have to filter…it was called Snowbanks Spring, coming right out of the ground!  So I got some water going, got my hammock set up, and then Continental woke up right as I was rinsing out my pan after eating my cheesy bacon grits for dinner.  And he asked me what time I got in and I told him, and said I was probably going to sleep in the next day.

But at 5:40ish I woke up to the sounds of him getting ready and I told him I was probably going to roll back over and go to sleep, but we kept talking as he packed up and I was just hanging halfway out of my hammock and finally he was like, “What are you doing?  You’re awake now!  You just hike with me!”  And I said, “Yeah, you’re right!”  And so we started hiking and I was trying to keep his pace so we were moving pretty quick and we got to Highway 80 around, I think it was only like 11 AM or so.  I was texting Margie Englert, a family friend that lives in Truckee…she’s actually the sister of our really good family friend Kathy Frame.  And she was super nice…she was trying to coordinate with us.  So I was asking her where the best place for her to pick us up would be and she said they’d gone down to Lake Tahoe for the day so Highway 40 would be better.  So Erin Frame, Kathy Frame’s daughter, and her boyfriend, and Margie’s son Ty were all at the beach and I didn’t want to make them hurry back for me.  So I told her I could hitch in and get lunch and stuff with Continental and meet up with Cayden in town and then we could get in touch and see about getting picked up.  So Continental and I cruised to Old Forty, Donner Pass…which the hiking between Highway 80 and 40 was pretty cool, a lot of cool granite rock and stuff.

So we got there around noon…it took us a while to hitch in though.  Finally a lady that worked at the Sugar Bowl Academy there, like a little ski/school deal right at the Sugar Bowl Ski Resort game us a ride down to town.  Oh, but before she did, we’d been talking to a local long-boarder who was going to compete in a race hosted by RedBull coming up on that road that he long-boards all the time!  So he said he was practicing for that and he said he’d finally bought a helmet because he needed it to compete!  …Which is insane because it’s a super winding road and to think that he was doing that at high speeds without a helmet!  …Like that guy was crazy!  But anyway, so we got down to Truckee and she dropped us off at this place Margie had recommended called, “Burger Me!”  And we met up with Cayden there and got the Ahi Burger, so it was like seared Ahi Tuna instead of an actual burger, and it had Wasabi mayo and Sriracha coleslaw and it was really good!  And…[to another hiker passing by] “Hey how’s it going?  …pretty good!  [A lady’s voice asked, “Is that a diary recording?” and Tanner said, “Yeah!”

So that was really good, got sweet potato fries and a milkshake too!  Then we walked down to the soda fountain and got more ice cream and just hung out there until Margie could come pick us up.  She picked us up around 3 PM…she and Erin…and I didn’t even recognize Erin at first because she was in college or high school the last time I saw her…um…[interrupts himself to say, “Someone dropped their little Tahoe Rim Trail Map!”  That’s too bad!”]  Ok, oh what was I saying?  Oh yeah, so once they recognized us because of our backpacks and because we just look like PCT hikers, they picked us up and asked us if there was anything we were craving at the grocery store!  So they got us some root beer and that night for dinner we had tacos…they were really good!  And Erin made this really good fresh summer salad with mango and it was a great big dinner!  And we took showers and were just hanging out, played some cards with Exton, Erin’s boyfriend, and Ty and Erin and Margie.  And then I crashed in her son Jack’s room…he’s just a year younger than me and usually sleeps on a couch in his room so I slept on the bed that it is hanging from his ceiling…it’s a pretty cool set-up, like a mattress built into the side of the wall up by the ceiling.  So I slept there the first night and Cayden slept on a couch upstairs.

The next morning we all kind of slept in and got a late start getting out to Donner Lake.  So Exton, Erin, Ty , Cayden, and I.  So we just hung out at a dock there.  We tried to get their dog Cooper to jump off the dock.  We pushed him off once and then he was done!  So we hung out there, got some paddleboards from some friends of theirs, and that afternoon we dropped Cayden off at the trail because he wanted to meet his family at Ebbets Pass by Friday afternoon, which is today.  So I’m probably going to meet them all at South Lake Tahoe because I hung out the rest of that day…oh, what did we do the rest of that day?  I think we kind of just hung out!  Played some baseball Bocce ball in the backyard, basically just Booce ball with these baseballs they painted.  Margie made really good BLT’s for dinner with some fresh cantaloupe…the fresh fruit was really good.

The next day was when I went to Bliss Beach with them—with Ty, Exton, Erin, and Margie—which is a cool beach kind of on the west side of Lake Tahoe.  So that was like a whole day trip!  We stopped and got sandwiches at a deli on the way there!  We did a little bit of a hike…they were originally planning on hiking all the way over to Emerald Bay, but we all decided we’d rather just hang out at the beach and jump in the water before it got too cold!  So we hiked a few miles, saw a little bit more of Lake Tahoe, and then went back to the beach where Ty had been hanging out and ate our sandwiches!  There were swarms of bees though, it was insane!  So we kind of walked out into the water to eat our sandwiches so they wouldn’t bother us as much…I think they were yellow-jackets.  So then Ty showed us a trail where we had to traverse along the rocks for a ways, like around this point by the beach, but it leads to a little local cliff-jumping place called Rooster Rock, maybe like 35 feet. So I think Margie and Erin paddled over there while Exton, Ty, and I traversed along the rocks and then we all jumped in and it was super fun!  But no one felt like going along the rocks on the way back so Erin, Ty, and Margie loaded onto one paddleboard and Exton and I were on the other…and Exton and I were doing alright, but the three of them were having trouble on the other paddleboard.  But we eventually got back to the beach after watching them struggle for a while.  We hung out for a little while longer, paddle-boarded around some more, laid in the sand, and then we drove the rest of the way around Lake Tahoe to get back, just so we could see the east side too!  We drove through South Lake Tahoe where we kept joking we were going to run into Obama who gave a speech there earlier that day!  So we drove around that side and back up to Truckee.  Then Margie made this really good pasta with salmon in it for dinner and another salad.  So I really got spoiled food-wise while I was there!  And I met a friend of Ty’s—I can’t remember his name right now—and he’s got a really cool kind of business project he’s working on now with an international mountain guide as one of his business partners, trying to raise awareness via social media for younger generations about problems going on in the world, like environmental stuff.  So he was telling me all about that and he’s going to the Amazon I think, it’s one of his first trips in a couple months here.  So talking to him was fun!  And then he went out for drinks with Ty and Erin and I hung out, just relaxed at their home again!  It was just nice to have such a nice place to relax like that really!

So the next morning, yesterday morning, I was originally going to try to get an earlier start, but I bought a bear can while I was in Truckee, on our way to Bliss Beach, but it was too small, so I had to swap it out for the bigger one, which I couldn’t do until yesterday morning at 10 AM when they opened.  So I kind of spent the morning getting my stuff together so I wouldn’t leave anything behind. And then Exton took me to get the bear can.  And also the alcohol stove wouldn’t work with the Esbits, just setting my titanium pot right on top because it was enough oxygen for alcohol to burn, but not for the Esbit because it cut off too much oxygen and the flame would die whenever I put the pot on there.  So I’d bought like wire mesh on our way back from Bliss to make a little stand for my pot so it could sit above the actual soda-can alcohol stove, but Todd, Margie’s husband, had gotten home late that night so I waited for the morning when he could get his wire cutters for me and so he helped me with that project and it actually works pretty well now!  I’ve got a nice little cooking system that all fits within my stove!  And then he, Exton, and Erin were building a bench that day for them to take home because Todd’s really handy at woodworking and stuff!  It was also Jack’s first day of school, his senior year, so he left that morning!  Oh, and Margie works at the elementary school, so they left in the morning, and then I saw Jack again at lunch right before I left.  So we had a big lunch and I’d been kind of talking with them and watching as they worked on their bench project, and packing up my stuff, and talking to Ty and his friend Alex.  So we had a bunch of peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches for lunch and I was snacking on Oreos too!  Oh, and Erin had bought some ice cream the night before so I had some more for lunch!  And then Exton took me up to the trailhead yesterday afternoon.

So I started hiking again and I hiked right through the Sugarbowl Ski area, like hiked right under a chairlift and then across the ridges behind it, so traversed to Squaw by that evening, I was like walking right through part of Squaw Valley Ski area.  And then I dropped into a valley between Squaw and Alpine Meadows, it was like Five Lakes Creek is where I camped.  There was a local hunter just camping there for the night, too, that I was talking to.  So yeah, I slept really well last night in my hammock again, which is good.  I woke up at like 6:30 AM, and still kind of got a late start…I had talked to my Grandpa the day before who wants to meet me a little farther south on the trail so I was trying to do research last night and this morning just on my half-mile maps to see where he’d be able to meet me that would be a fun place to hike with him for a bit and then go into town.  But yeah, so I got kind of a late start!  Kind of climbed back up to the ridge where I traversed the ski area boundary of Alpine Meadows and I have super pretty views!  Good views of Lake Tahoe too!  And then I kind of started this audio log right where the PCT splits from the Tahoe Rim Trail.  I’m pretty sure that’s for Northbounders though, so I’m pretty sure I’m on the Tahoe Rim Trail right now, descending into a valley a little bit again.  I know I’m going to end up in the Desolation Wilderness today, probably camp at one of the cool lakes there tonight.  Margie was telling me there are some pretty awesome ones!  So yeah, and then I think tomorrow I’ll probably hike up and over Dick’s Pass and go down to one more lake I want to check out along the way, so I might stop and swim tomorrow late morning.  And then I plan on meeting the Boll’s on Echo Summit on Highway 50 tomorrow afternoon.  It sounds like they’ve made plans to go try to find a place to watch the BYU football game at like a casino or something that night so yeah, should be good!  Super excited for the next couple of days!  This has been one of my favorite areas so far!  These ridges that we walk across are just so cool…like views in all directions…and the ski areas and views of Lake Tahoe!  And I’ve heard the Desolation Wilderness is just awesome so I can’t wait to get there later today!  Yup, starting to enter the Sierras.

September 30th – October 3rd

Alright, this is PCT log for September 30^th.  I’m recording this a couple of days late because of a funny story which I’ll share.  So the night of the 29^th, when we camped in that state park that I mentioned in the previous audio log, we found this nice grassy area in the state park and thought, “Oh, this is awesome, I can just set up on the ground here and we can get out really quick in the morning because I don’t mind sleeping on my thin little pad as long as the ground was nice and soft.”  So we set up there and at about 1:30 in the morning, the sprinklers came on and we got soaked!  The reason I haven’t recorded audio logs the last couple of days is because my external charger for my phone, like my big battery, got messed up by the sprinklers so I haven’t had phone battery.  So that was pretty awful.  My sleeping bag is dry now.  The last 2 nights it’s kind of been damp.

So on the 30^th, we started walking from that Silverwood Lake.  About 15 miles in we got to Deep Creek Canyon.  Deep Creek is kind of gross.  There’s a spot you have to cross it and it’s about a waist-deep wade.  So I walked across it and I have some little cuts on my feet and stuff so I had to spend a bunch of time sitting there, drying them out and then I sprayed them down really good with disinfectant just because that creek is so nasty.  But we started walking up the canyon and it was super hot.  I was just roasting the whole way up it.  And you’re in this canyon that just looks the same for almost 20 miles.  So I kept going up the canyon and eventually got to Deep Creek Hot Springs which is a really popular day hike.  People swim in them.  It’s a nice spot.  Even though I knew how nasty the water is, I had to swim.  So I went swimming there for a few minutes and then did the whole dry and disinfect my feet again.  So that took a lot of time.  I was with Daddy Long Legs and Fin.  We were moving pretty quick so we still got about 38 miles in that day which set me up about 13 miles from my exit point to get to Big Bear Lake.  So that’s what was going on then.

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Alright, this is PCT log for October 1^st.  Woohoo, I’m 10 days out from finishing my hike which is CRAZY!  Anyways, I’m still recording these, catching back up because of my phone battery fiasco.  So yesterday we started at our normal time at about 5 and started walking.  We’re kind of on these cool ridges up above Big Bear Lake.  So I knocked out my 13 miles to the turnoff to Big Bear Lake on a trail called Cougar Crest.  That’s where I was planning on meeting the Struemplers in the morning.  So I got down at about 10 a.m.  I had done my 13 miles plus the 2.5 miles to get down into town.  But the Struemplers got delayed a bit because there was a half marathon going on and they had the road closed.  But I met up with them around 11 or so and we went and got a big lunch.  It was really fun.  Then we road like the alpine slide at the little ski resort there in Big Bear.  Then we took a tour of Big Bear Lake on a steamboat.  I didn’t realize that there’s like some really fancy homes, like $10 million houses on this lake.  Like Brittany Spears owns a cabin there.  It was really cool and super fun to hang out with them.

After they had left, I went and met up with Daddy Long Legs and Fin again who had also come into town the same way I did.  Daddy Long Legs’ sister is heading out from here.  We all went and got Indian food and it was like the best Indian food I ever had, it was so good.  So that was really fun too.  Then, we got done around 9:30, and I figured I would go and stay at the hostel because it’s cheap.  So I got there and the hostel was full.  I started looking at other places and like everything is full.  So finally, at like 11 at night, with the help of my parents, we found a bed and breakfast that was pretty close that I stayed at.  I took a shower and stuff.  It will probably be my last shower on the trail.  It was actually really nice because I got there around 11:30 and I was just exhausted and the guy who runs it brings me a plate of herbal tea and cookies and chocolate raisins.  So it was a good way to end the day even though it was late.  So that’s what was going on yesterday.

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Alright, this is PCT log for October 2^nd which is pretty crazy because it means I have one week left on the trail, which is NUTS!  Today, I was in Big Bear in the morning at my bed and breakfast.  Really good homemade bread and peaches and cream and bacon and eggs for breakfast so that was pretty awesome.  I then went to McDonalds and got my 3^rd McFlurry of my stay in Big Bear.  For some reason I was really craving those but I don’t know why.  So I got that then I was kind of trying to figure out how I wanted to get back out to the trail.  I talked to Daddy Long Legs and Fin and they weren’t planning on leaving until the afternoon and I didn’t really want to wait that long for them.  But then he told me there was a bus at 11 and that the stop was a mile and half away from me.  It was 10:40 when he told me this so I ran to the bus station as fast as I could then found out the bus doesn’t run on Sundays.  Then, I just started walking back towards the trail since I was already packed up but eventually someone picked me up and gave me a ride the last mile or so.

So I hopped back up on the trail and I’m just rolling into camp now.  I did about 25 miles which is actually really good since I wasn’t on trail until 12:30.

Other than that, I’ve kind of just been walking on this ridge above Big Bear.  In the morning there was a lot of day hiker traffic.  It’s pretty popular to come up here because it’s like overlooking the city.  I’m kind of right behind this town that’s off to the side of Big Bear.  There’s seriously no where on the trail in Southern California where you that far from a city.

So tomorrow I’ll do a huge descent from where I’m camped right now at around 8700 feet down to around 1600 then the next day I’ll have to climb that all back up into Idyllwild.  So that’s what’s going on right now.

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Alright, this is PCT log for October 3^rd.  I misspoke in my log for yesterday.  Today I am a week out.  That’s exciting.

So today was my biggest day ever.  Pretty awesome.  Done about 41.5 miles so far and I’m just going to keep going until I’m tired.  It was a pretty easy day because I started at almost 9000 feet and I’ve dropped down to about 1600 here so I’ve been kind of at a half jog all day today which has been why I got so many miles before it was too late.

So today I started at around 5 in the morning.  Maybe 200 feet from where I camped I came into some trail magic.  Someone left a couch and a dumpster full of snacks on the trail which is really cool.  I wish I could have gotten pictures of it but it was too dark.  It was super cold this morning.  I think it did go below freezing which I haven’t been in in a while.  So I was wearing my down jacket and everything hiking this morning.  I was still freezing but I couldn’t stop because I knew I would get colder.  Also, I was super tired this morning, I don’t know why.  I was way more tired than usual.  I was falling asleep while I was walking but I really didn’t want to stop because of how cold it was.  Finally, around 7:15, I get up on this ridge and there’s like a sliver of sun so I just laid down on the trail and took a half hour nap.  It was pretty nice.

So I’ve just been descending all day.  I found Cakes a little ways in on my hike this morning.  I walked with her for a couple of hours then she stopped for lunch and I’ll probably never see her again so that’s kind of a bummer.

I had some really nice views of Palm Springs I could see from the trail.  I’m walking towards the I-10 right now.  It’s just a few miles away so I can’t actually go that far or else I’m just going to be right under I-10 which would kind of stink.

I have some more questions to answer so I’ll do those because I guess my normal blogging isn’t exciting enough.  Oh, another thing today, the trail has been really hard to follow because it’s either overgrown or, I guess they’re herding sheep or goats or some small animal through here that’s just been tearing up the trail and leaving a million different trails that are hard to distinguish which one is the PCT so I’ve been staring at my GPS on my phone all day.  Just about an hour or so ago, there was a windfarm that has a water spigot and it’s just a little ways off trail so I went to go and get some water.  There was a security guard there and he was interrogating me because I was wandering around the windfarm offices at almost 8 at night.  So that was kind of funny.

Ok, questions.  Alright, are you hungry?  Yes, I am always very hungry.  My diet right now is that I eat about 15 snack items per day.  I have bags of dried fruit, granola bars, shot blocks, pop tarts, anything like that.  So I eat about 15 of those per day.  Sometimes I’ll also make 2 packs of Carnation breakfast mix and enough dry milk to make a cup and mix all that together and have like a thick chocolate milk that has a lot of calories in it.  So I’ll drink that too.  Then I have my dinner at night which is, if I have water and the energy, I’ll cook myself some noodles or beans and rice.  I have a couple of different meal options.  They’re all pretty good.  But that is never enough food.  I could always eat more.  I never ever end a section with food (leftover).  Because I just eat it all, regardless of how much I bring.  Then I eat a ton of food in town to try to make up calories.  So yeah, pretty much always hungry.

How have you seen the hand of God in your experiences?  Well, a lot of things have gone very well that could have gone very, very bad.  Like, there’s a story from a while ago when we were walking in winter storm conditions in the North Cascades and I dropped my GPS but managed to find it in 3 inches of fresh snow.  Or, the fact that I haven’t gotten hurt on this trip with how much I am walking.  The fact that I haven’t gotten a sprained ankle or anything like that which could really quickly end my trip has been very nice.  I think also the scenery I’ve seen.  They talk in the scriptures about how all the earth is evidence of God and I’ve definitely seen that.

Alright, why did you decide to take this journey?  That’s a big question.  Partially because it’s there and I’ve had this desire to complete it because it exists.  Partially because I get to see some awesome places along the Western US.  Partially because I wanted an away from home experience.  It’s been a great learning opportunity – in a lot of ways actually.  I’ve also gotten to meet some cool people.  Also, because I have the time to do it and I don’t know when else I’ll have 4 months to take out of my life like I have.

Are you too tired to use the Aerobi?  Yes and no, it’s more that I just don’t have time.  Like, if there’s day light than I’m walking so the Aerobi hasn’t seen too much action recently.  Which is kind of a bummer.  I’ll pull it out in San Diego or something.  But yeah, that’s what’s going on right now.