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| Selden Pass! |
June 14th, about 7pm. I just came over
Silver Pass. I'm actually walking in one of the areas that LINT and I
in 2009 glissaded down into and, there's no snow. It's so remarkable
how different it is. It is one of those really really rare years. But
anyways, the sun is getting lower, and I've had a pretty good day
actually. I slept in and in 2 miles I hit the 1/3 mark of the PCT.
Annnddd, I don't know. The evenings are my favorite time to hike,
especially if you get to go over passes because you either get above
tree line or are in sparsely treed areas and you have these views
that just last. Massive granite mountains that are still all around
you. There's water everywhere. I'm constantly jumping over streams.
Like right now I'm hopping on rocks to get across a stream. The
sunlight is low and makes shadows and contrast and...everything is
golden. It's my favorite place in time pretty much. Lake of the Lone
Indian is off to my left. I believe Mark {my brother} has gone
fishing there. Ya know, a good day. I think a lot of it has to do
with sleeping in a little bit really. I had an extra hour of
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| Super low Bear Creek crossing. |
sleep.
Didn't leave until about 7:15 and I'm actually doing pretty good on
miles today for the Sierra at least, for what it's worth. I've had to
go up basically the equivalent of three passes today already. Not as
big a change as my other three pass day, but if I go as far as I hope
too, I have to go up again. I'm going down now. So, I'm a bit hungry
actually. I'm a bit worried about my weight and if I'm only 1/3 of
the way done, what it means for the rest of the trip and how much
I've already lost. Hopefully I can keep this up. I've vacillated so
much over the last few days, whether I want to continue on or not.
The thunderstorms tried to come in today a little bit. They stayed on
the east side of the Sierras, I could kind of see them cropping up
more to the south. I wish they were more around me so they would
block the sun, because my watch said it was 80 degrees today. Which
when you're at high altitude and it's 80, it's hot. It just kind of
bakes. Enough to melt my candy bars, how about that hot? Granted they
are in a black backpack. It's just I love being in the mountains in
the evening with low light and big masses of rock and trees,
especially being high, so you get the views. It's just been a good
day. So part A of June 14th.
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| Selden Pass 180 degree panorama, north is left. |
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| A few miles after the VVR trail junction. |
June 14th, Day 21. Made it to mile
895.5 for a total of 38.5 miles for the day. I stopped at point
0325950E 4156150N. I camped pretty much right next to the Duck Lake
pass and trail turn off. So I was close to Mammoth, but not quite to
Reds Meadow. You can go over Duck Lake Pass and drop into the ski
area and take the bus into town. Which would have been my first
technically easy out had I wanted to leave the trail. Lets see,
yesterday was a pretty good day actually. I slept in until
about...well I got going at about 7:30am, which is about an hour
later than most normal times, but I think that actually improved my
overall speed and mental clarity and happiness throughout the day. So
I got about 7 hours of sleep instead of the 6 that's normal. I did 2
pass and 2 extra other climbs. Lets see, I started off down by the
Muir Ranch trail turnoff, probably about 1.5 miles before that. It
was pretty flat for a little bit, then climb, climb, climb, climb,
climb, climb, climb, climb, climb, up to Selden Pass. Just before
getting to the pass itself, I met a woman named
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| Descending from Silver Pass. |
Silky, who I was
chatting with, who's a JMT'er, and said that she was hiking with a
few other folks, and they came down, it was actually Joe Anderson
from Casa De Luna, a trail angel down in southern California, who is
hiking back to kind of go through all the thru-hikers again and
experience the JMT. So that was cool, he was really excited to meet
me. He knew about me and said that Scott Williamson was hiking again
this year and also said that he had hiked with Scott Williamson last
year and told him that he'd really like someone to beat his record,
whether because he wanted someone to just do it or he wants some
motivation to try harder or I don't know what, but that's he told me.
So that was a little bit of a boost. Silky was pretty cool actually.
I'd like to go hike with her, I'd be fun. She's going the wrong way
though, toooo bad. On top of Selden, the mosquitoes started getting
bad. I had to deet up for the first time. But it was nice and
beautiful, zero snow pretty much. Easy walk down, down, down, down.
Then you hit Bear Creek crossing which wasn't bad at all. A little
cold, but what do you expect, its pretty much all snow melt still. I
got going again, and had to climb up to Silver Pass, which is just
another long approach. But beautiful once you get up and out of the
trees and it opens up a bit more. The worst part of it is actually
that you hit the actual pass then you have to go up higher up this
little shoulder because the pass itself cliffs out. It was pretty, I
hit that around shoot, I skipped a whole
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| On top of Silver Pass! |
bunch.... After Bear Creek,
you have to go up over this ridge, probably a climb of 1,500-2,000 ft
and then drop down into the VVR Valley, Lake Edison, Vermilion Valley
Ranch. That was in the afternoon, then you have to do the climb up to
Silver Pass. It was steep at first then it grades to be a bit better.
I hit silver at about 6 o'clock, maybe 7 o'clock maybe..it's when I
did the other recording at. It was beautiful up there. The perfect
time to hit passes is the late evening. I plummeted off the back side
and made it to Tule Hole kind of around 7:30 {had to be later}, the
sun was just giving alpenglow to the tops of the peaks around me, as
I did the switchbacks up up up up. The sun was down by the time I got
to Virginia lake and was winding through the little isthmus. I met a
bunch, about 6-7 thru-hikers camped out a little way past Virginia
lake and chatted with them for about 10 minutes. And then I kept
going. Just plodding along. My goal was 900 but I only made it to
895.5, but by that time it was already 10:45pm and there was no real
reason to keep going. When today I don't actually have to make a
bunch of miles. I have to make 38 again, which would put me on top of
Donahue
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| Wet (snow melt) and callused feet..the horror so far. |
pass, and basically leave me at I believe 8-10 miles to get
to Tuolumne, which is fine. If I get up early enough and leave at 6,
I should be there right around when the store opens, which means I
can get my package. If not, then I'll have to wait around until 9
when the post office opens on Saturday. Last night, I don't know,
yesterday, I ate my normal stuff and planned it out, but I was just
super hungry. For dinner I had an extra dinner because I was arriving
a day early, so I had two boxes of Mac N Cheese. And I didn't feel
super stuffed after I ate them, which is a hell of a lot of food. I
mean damn, I saw my pot full, and had to take a little break between
eating it all, probably for a couple minutes, because I was like
"ohhh too much cheesiness". This morning I really wasn't
even hungry for breakfast, which granted, was fine six hours later. I
ate my breakfast and my stomach felt all weird, probably because it
was super stuffed still. But we're going to pass Reds Meadow,
actually should be approaching mile 900 right about now, lets see
what the GPS says...the GPS says, we are ohh about 1/4 mile away from
mile 900. That's my goal, that'll be good, get that out of the way. I
did the math
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| Sunset from Tule Hole. |
actually yesterday again, to see whether, or to see what
the actual average is for the current record per day is, and I was
pleasantly surprised to find out that it was 41.2 miles a day, which
I had always thought it was 42. So that means, me being at roughly at
43 miles a day, I'm still a good ways above the record. Especially
considering that I'm in the Sierras. So if I can continue on just
with the pace, ya know 43, 44, hopefully 45 pace, I will do just
fine. I did the math also, that If I kept a 44 mile a day pace or
that's my average, that I would finish in 60.5 days. If I do 44.5 or
even 45 a day I'll break the 60 day mark. I'll have to make up some
miles, but that's a definite possibility. We'll see how far I get
today. Hopefully the blow downs will stop at Deer Creek like one of
the guys said and I'll have to stop vaulting over these damn downed
trees that are EVERYWHERE.
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| Nearing the top of Silver Pass. |
