7/1 to 7/7: Kennedy Meadows to Crabtree Meadows

Finally made it to the Sierras!

From Thirsty Games to Hunger Games

I left Kennedy Meadows on July 1st around 11:00 AM. The next big trail point was Mount Whitney, which I was super excited to summit. I was also extremely nervous that my shin would become inflamed again and I would have to bail before I got to Crabtree Meadows, which is the “base camp” for Whitney. My plan was to walk very slow and take short steps—a shorter gait can help with itbs and shin splints. I was determined to keep my mileage between 10 and 14 miles a day and stay on top of my stretches. While I did experience some discomfort in my shin, it never got worse and started to feel much better as I made my way north.

As I moved forward, the terrain started changing in big ways. The desert chaparral was quickly disappearing and the number and variety of pines was increasing. Pointed and jagged granite features became more and more apparent along the ridges. Overall, as the trail meanders north through the Sierras it goes through a series of mountain passes and valleys. As I came over my first big pass, Olancha Pass, big grass filled valleys came into view and I could see my first snow-capped peaks in the distance. I started to feel a tentative optimism that would erupt as joy when some of the views gave me butterflies.

Transitioning into the Sierras from the high desert. 

That's snow back yonder!

Or maybe the butterflies were the persistent hunger pains I started feeling. The climbs were getting bigger and my average elevation was now double what it was in the desert. Along with the bigger climbs and elevation, my appetite was growing monstrously. This was potentially problematic since I was eating more than I had planned for. Food resupply is a big challenge in the Sierras, since towns are not easily accessible. In the desert, towns are easily accessible and there are many road crossings, so you rarely have to carry more than five days’ worth of food. But once you get into the Sierras, the PCT does not cross any roads between Kennedy Meadows (south) and Tuolumne Meadows, which is over 200 miles. While there are opportunities to resupply, this often requires taking substantial detours off the PCT to get to a road from where you have to hitch to one of the towns located on 395. Complicating things further is the bear canister requirement from the Sequoia National Park boundary to Sonora Pass, which is almost 300 miles. Proper food storage is crucial for the safety of hikers and the bear population. Black bears are, for the most part, terrified of people. But if the bears start to associate people with food, they will come around more often and the chances for bad encounters increase. The two main effective ways of storing food are either hanging food in bag designed to keep bears (and other critters out) such as an Ursack or storing the food in a bear canister. Parks in the Sierras go for requiring the latter. I imagine there are two reasons for this. First, not everyone knows how to properly hang food. Second, maybe bear canisters reduce hiker impact on the wilderness since bear hangs usually require going off trail to find a tree and then throwing and tying rope around branches on that tree. As I would later discover, there are tons of people hiking in the Sierras, so that would be a lot of tromping and roping off trail. Of course, you never put your bear canister in your tent and should store it at least a 100 feet from your campsite.  You still have to go off trail, so I'm not sure if that is an advantage over allowing hangs. Regardless, the problem is that you need a lot of calories in the Sierras but are constrained by the capacity of the bear canisters.

The large version of the bear canister holds approximately 900 cubic inches of stuff. Since you need to carry a lot of food, a prerequisite to successfully packing a bear canister is being really good at Tetris, and fortunately I played a lot growing up. My plan was to carry enough food to get from Kennedy Meadows (mile 702) to Vermillion Valley Resort (mile 878), which is about 176 miles. If I averaged 13 miles a day that was about 14 days’ worth of food that I would need to carry. However, the trail is much more strenuous in the Sierras, and the difficulty is compounded by the higher altitude. All of this means burning more calories. Aside from filling the bear canister with Crisco and living off of that for two weeks, there was no way I was going to get 14 days of food in the bear canister. So I decided to pack about 4 days’ worth of food in my Ursack and do a bear hang until I got to the Sequoia border. The problem was that 3 days after leaving Kennedy Meadows I was eating a lot more than I anticipated, and after taking inventory and adjusting my rations, I realized that I was about three days’ worth of food short of making it to VVR. I didn’t want to force myself into increasing my mileage since my shin was still iffy. So at some point I was going to have to get off trail for a resupply. My first option was a side trail to Horseshoe Meadows from where I would have to hitch 22 miles to the town of Lone Pine. The trail to Horseshoe Meadows was about 15 miles north from where I was, so I would be able to get there by the next day, July 4th. I decided that this was the best option that required the smallest detour. The drawbacks were carrying more weight and the potential difficulty of hitching on the 4th.

Who knew you can find abstract expressionist art in the Sierras!

It turned out that the hitch to Lone Pine from Horseshoe Meadows was the easiest hitch thus far on the hike. As soon as I came off the spur trail and hit the road a small RV stopped to pick me up. It was a young person from Germany, named Mike, who had rented an RV to explore the west coast for a few weeks. Mike had just dropped off two hikers returning from Lone Pine and was heading back down. What luck! It is about 22 miles from Horseshoe Meadow to Lone Pine with about a 6000 ft. decent. All of this is on a road that winds down a very, very exposed ridge overlooking Owens Valley. Traveling in a car after hiking can be a bit nerve wracking, and this was hair raising to say the least. But, as usual, I kept telling myself that the driver has made it along this far in life and probably knows what they are doing. When we got down to the valley, Mike and I got a bit lost and turned down the wrong road, but it ended up being the best kind of getting lost. The road we stumbled on winded through a rock formation called the Alabama Hills, which is an odd name given that we were in California. Unlike the jagged Sierra ridges and peaks, the rock formations in the Alabama Hills are a recursive series of smooth, rounded oblong rocks. Given the unique rugged nature of the terrain, many Western movies have been filmed in this area.

Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, California

Once we found our way to Lone Pine, Mike dropped me off at the Mount Whitney Restaurant, which was fortuitously open. It was about 3:30 PM. I promptly went inside and ordered a beer, burger, onion rings, and two scoops of chocolate ice cream. It was late afternoon on the 4th, and there was no way that I was going to get back to the trail, so I got a room at the Dow Villa. It was about 5:30 PM. Since it was getting late and the 4th of July, I decided I would try to find an open convenience store and grab a snack. The first thing I saw when I got outside was a BBQ joint across the street. So I promptly walked across the street and ordered a rack of ribs. Apparently my hiker hunger was back in full force—I even snacked some more later that night. The next day I resupplied and had a relatively easy hitch back to Horseshoe Meadows and was able to get back to the PCT and hike a few miles. The day after that I officially made it into Sequoia National Park. I was hoping to make it to Crabtree Meadows by the next day, and from where I hoped to hike to the top of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States and would be my first time hiking over 14,000 feet. The anticipation was building.

Social Expectations

House of Marmot. Crabtree Meadows.

Aside from the terrain, I notice other changes from the desert. For one, my health—my legs were feeling stronger and had improved a lot since the desert. Second, unlike the desert, there was water everywhere, so despite having to carry more food, I had to carry much less water between sources. However, the biggest change from the desert was the people. People were suddenly everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of people in the desert, but most everyone is heading north and there were many days when I did not see a single person or only a few. Moreover, in the desert, almost every person I encountered was another PCT hiker. But now I was running into a lot of day hikers and weekend warriors. Most striking was the contrast in the social expectations of PCT hikers and many non-PCT hikers. Let me explain. PCT hikers are open and friendly in a way that might be considered too much or odd for the frontcountry (i.e. out of the wilderness, off the trail). Almost every PCT hiker says “Hi! How are you?” and will enthusiastically listen to your answer. And often when PCTers find themselves taking a break, camping, getting water, eating, etc. in the same place, they usually have a conversation about a variety of things: their life in the “real world”, trail stories, crazy people on or off the trail, etc. Also, for the most part, it is acceptable to ask a complete stranger on the trail where they are coming from that day, where they plan on camping, etc. In contrast, when we’re in the frontcountry, most of us keep to ourselves as we go about our days in our communities. There are socially acceptable places for strangers to interact, e.g. coffeeshops, bars, other gatherings, but even in these contexts people often are still relatively reserved. And it is definitely unacceptable to ask a complete stranger where they are coming from that day and where they plan on sleeping! But spending a long time in the backcountry or going on a thru hike is a catalyst for bonding. There is something nice about this. On the first day of my hike I met and learned a lot about five people I had never met before in my life. Moreover, we had conversations about morality, religion, love, relationships, and other more personal topics. This rarely happens in everyday life. While many day hikers and weekend warriors were very nice and kind and even open, I noticed that many of them were very reserved and not as open as PCT hikers. I got the feeling that many of them were still operating with frontcountry expectations for social encounters, and I think this made many interactions with them awkward.

A Question About For Profit Guided Hikes

I felt this contrast most strongly when I ran into a tour group hiking through the Sierras. This was a guided hike that followed most of the JMT and was run by a private company. I was told that because the hike was organized by a private company, they could not hike into Yosemite Valley. I suppose that Yosemite will not issue permits for hikes organized by private companies. However, the group apparently had permits to operate in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Right away I had mixed feelings about this company and other for-profit guided hikes in the Sierras. In general, I’m not sure how I feel about for-profit organizations operating in public national parks, especially in the backcountry. Clearly there are some exceptions. For example, in Yosemite Valley (which really isn’t the backcountry anyway) there is a demand for food and beverage, and I do *not* think that there should be federally run restaurants meeting that demand. These services can be provided by a private, for profit company, but it should be in a designated area of the park. And of course there are some educational programs that teach people skills they need for the backcountry, such as Ned Tibbits’ Mountain Education Inc., but this is a non-profit organization. This is a complicated issue, but even setting it aside, I had other concerns about this group and similar tour groups. A part of effective environmental stewardship is keeping groups of backpackers small, which minimizes impact on the wilderness. But this was a group of over 9 people, including the two guides. Moreover, a clear Leave No Trace Principle is to be considerate of other visitors. There are many things that go into being considerate, and some examples might include giving faster hikers or ascending hikers the right-of-way, not clogging up the trail, leaving enough room at campsites for other backpackers, etc. By virtue of the fact that this group was so large and was composed of people with experience that ranged from none to some, they clogged up the trail on the passes and crowded campsites (some of this I saw for myself, some if this I heard from other hikers). For example, one day after putting in a grueling 14 miles I was exhausted, sore, and ready to camp. But I had to hike an extra mile at the end of that long day because this group had taken up more than 80% of a designated campsite (the rest was taken up by unrelated backpackers). More upsetting was when I saw more than one member of the group washing their clothes in a creek. At the very least the guides have a responsibility to inform the group of leave no trace principles and to correct violations.

But I also found that the tour group made backcountry socializing needlessly awkward. For example, it often seemed that the interactions between people (full grown adults!) in the group and other people on the trail, including myself, were being chaperoned by the guides. And on one occasion two of the hikers introduced themselves to me and asked questions about hiking the PCT. We were having a great conversation when one of the tour guides furtively informed the two hikers that dinner was being served. Not only was it awkward that notification of dinner had to be so secretive, but dinner on the trail is often a chance to meet and bond with new people. These folks were on the trail and certainly experiencing beautiful things, but it seems like their overall experience was being constrained by the fact that the hike was guided. So, if you have considered doing one of these guided tours and you want my unsolicited opinion, I think these tours are probably not worth the money (this assuming that the trails are passable and safe; if you are trying to acquire new skills such as snow travel, then by all means take a course) and possibly not environmentally responsible. I mean, it’s true, many people who go on these guided tours don’t have to cook or get their own water or deal with many logistical challenges, but that’s all part of the fun and is what takes you from a generic facebook vacation to a substantial life experience. If you are healthy and have half a brain, just do the work and planning yourself. This way you are not tied to a group of strangers and the itinerary of potentially control-freak guides. You will be in charge of your hiking adventure, which will make it much, much more special. And it doesn’t matter if you are not from the US—I met unsupported PCT and JMT hikers from Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Switzerland, the UK, Korea, China, Australia, and I’m quite sure that there were plenty more nationalities on the trail. Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone—that is part of the wilderness experience and something you can accomplish before you even get to the trailhead.

Wild?

So what is wild about the PCT anyway? This is something I had been struggling with a lot. And, to be perfectly honest, to that point on the trail I’m not sure how often I managed to fully appreciate the wildness that is supposed to come with the wilderness. For example, the night before I hiked to Horseshoe Meadows I camped around mile 734. At this point I was definitely in the Sierras. I was above 10K feet, there were pines and firs everywhere, giant granite rock piles and peaks, and the best part was that I could walk over to the edge of the ridge and look down 6000 feet into Owens Valley. As I was doing my evening stretches, a deer came right into my campsite. It stood there staring at me and I at it for a good five minutes. It was very beautiful, but then it struck me: I was missing something—something about it still felt contrived, like I was watching a stage prop or in a theme park. I was not appreciating the wildness of the encounter. What is it to be ‘wild’? I imagine that part of the story is as follows: some (terrestrial) area or thing is wild insofar as it is free from the intentional or unintentional causal influence of human activities, where the influence is obvious or direct. The last qualification is important because one could argue that my encounter with the deer was the effect of human activity—humans declared that the Sierras would be a national park and preserved as such, which allowed the deer to live and one day come into my camp. But that isn’t quite right because my encounter with the deer was different in an important way from encounters with domesticated animals or an encounter I might have with a dolphin at SeaWorld. The difference is that the story about how I might come to encounter a dolphin at SeaWorld would obviously involve the intentional activity of humans—namely, humans putting the dolphin in captivity, keeping it in a facility that was constructed by humans, feeding it, training it, etc. But the story about how I came to encounter the deer in my camp doesn’t obviously involve the intentional activity of any human—namely, no person captured the deer and put in the Sierras—for all I know I was the first person that deer ever encountered, nobody feeds that deer, likely nobody cares for the deer if it gets sick, etc.  Yet there was still something about my encounter that felt artificial to me. I couldn’t quite pin it down. Overall, while I’ve been on the trail, it has been difficult to shake the feeling of civilization or society. All I can think is that very often the Pacific Crest Trail has felt like some city sidewalk that took a wrong turn somewhere. Part of what has engendered this feeling has been all of the towns I have gone through, all of the roads I crossed, and all of the stress of hiking. Unfortunately, even in the backcountry I have felt the stress and pressure of sticking to a schedule, running errands, doing chores, etc. Often everyone is running like mad to make miles for the day, get to the next water source, or make it town before Sunday so they can go to the post office. This feeling was exacerbated as I got closer to Mount Whitney and the trail became more crowded. At least in the desert there were times when I could feel the wildness through the feelings of vulnerability that came with being alone and isolated, especially when camping alone. I hope that I can have this experience in the Sierras at some point.

From mile 736. Owens Valley in the background.

I made it to Crabtree Meadows on the 7th around 1:00 PM. The plan was to rest for the day before the Whitney Summit, 7.5 miles off a side trail. A sunrise summit would be awesome, and is what most people went for. But PCT hikers were not allowed to camp anywhere between the Crabtree Ranger Station and the summit (including the summit). The sunrise at the summit occurred before 5:00 AM. I still wasn’t feeling confident about my shin, so if I was going to make a sunrise summit, I would have to leave at midnight. That didn’t seem worth it to me, so I decided to try and go for a sunset summit.

More deadwood art.