Today was a special day--interesting trail and an abundance of trail magic. Yesterday as hiked into and camped in alpine area unlike any other we have seen to this point. It has that "Sound of Music" feel. There are even tufts of small white flowers--could they be Edleweiss (sp)? The vegatation here gives the mountains a velvety look in the distance with granite outcroppings that ring the mountain summits like the hairline of a monk. Our campsite was was near the top of treeline where the substrate had chaged to volcanic gravel.
We had a fairly short distance to go today--8 or 9 miles--to get to Sonora Pass. The trail across the pass was mostly above treeline and consisted of a footbed volcanic or granite gravel. At one point it had the appearance of walking a rime trail in a big gravel bowl. In a normal snow year, this is apparently one of the hairier passes that many have to take an alternate trail around, but (of the snow remaining), we only had one difficult snow field which I rock scrambled around and Dwight glissaded down.
On the way off the pass we met a buff looking 21 year old guy named Frank that was a couple of days away from entering the San Jose Police Academy. He was having problems with the elevation and was moving a bit slowly and was ending his weekend hike earlier than planned. Besides elevation sickness, his sleeping bag wouldn't zip and animals had gotten into his food bag--so it just wasn't his weekend. We hiked for a while together and told him about our thru hike. Although he took an altenate trail down to the highway crossing, he waited for us at the road side then gave us a ride to Kennedy Meadows Resort and Pack Station where we had a planned resupply (trail magic #1).
This was the second "Kennedy Meadows" of the trail--the other being at the south end of the high Sierras. This place is a pack station (similar to Red Meadows). They have a number of charming cabins built in the 30's or 40's, a restaurant/office/grocery store, saloon and the neatest horse facilites I've ever seen. Although no cabins were available, they rented us a room over the store for $35. The second floor of the restaurant/office/grocery store is like an old boarding house with small rooms and shared bathrooms. It is generally used for seasonal employees, but they will rent out extra rooms from time to time. It was actually very quiet and we seemed to have most of the floor to ourselves. Also, the showers had great preassure and they let us use their laundry facility for $1.
We ate lunch just after we got there. Later in the day we went to the grocery to resupply and after getting all our groceries, the clerk asked if we had looked in the hiker box. Turns out a guy who'd abandoned his hike due to the fire in S Lake Tahoe (which did not impact the PCT), left all his food for other hikers. We were able to to put back 95% of the food from the store and resupply out of his box. (Trail magic #2) Also, a young fellow named Flow Easy who thru-hiked in 2006 came by with stove fuel, duck tape and fresh fruit. (Trail magic #3)
We also had dinner in the restaurant and have found out about an employee there who might be able to give us a ride back to the trail in the a.m. So has been a good day.
No comments:
Post a Comment