PCT 2018 Thru-Hike: Episode 13- A Few Rough Days

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Tags: UL Hiking Gear,PCT,Pacific Crest Trail,PCT Thru-Hiker,Thru-Hike Gear List,UL Backpacking,Zpacks,Enlightened Equipment,CNOC Outdoors,UL Backpacking Gear,Vargo Bot 700,Hiker Trash,Hiking,Backpacking,Pinhoti Trail,Adventure,Long Distance Hiking,Zpacks Duplex,Zpacks ArcBlast,Sierra Nevada,Sierra

Video Transcription

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often rollin this morning we have about five miles till Selden pass supposed to be a lot easier in the last handful of passes Sullivan Vince over then mainly just so looking forward to getting mammoth because I feel like spent two weeks trying to get to Mammoth so I feel like the turtle is definitely getting better every day here in Sierra as far as like conditions as far as snow I mean I'm looking out and don't really see much of any snow on anything so hopefully sölden is a lot less snow coverage in the last handful of passes it's so beautiful out here this Sierra really are amazing and don't get me wrong insanely hard but definitely rewarding the most rewarding trail that I think that I've been on as far as what you get to see and you get to experience

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Seldon pass little bitty baby pass 11,000 feet is it like right at 11,000 11,000 pretty small compared to what we've done a lot of snowy icy flakes number six

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a lot of water crossings already today it's all that melt unless snow is finally mounting off [Music]

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it is lunchtime today I am having something very special chicken teriyaki I've never had a cooked meal on the trail and because of DJ at the Muir Trail ranch today I have my first cooked meal thanks DJ what uh what do you have over there

classic Jesus she's it Crunchwrap nice well played

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so today ended up being another really amazing day out here on the trail here in the Sierras hard day again but just totally rewarding totally worth it this morning was a little harder you know the previous couple mornings which was weird because the past that we went over was much smaller

technically less snow on the south side of the pass but for some reason I was just really wore out going over it don't know why but the rest of the day was amazing all the different water crossings and today was just nothing but water crossings my feet were wet all day but just absolutely beautiful the Sierras are very hard but very beautiful and bear rewarding definitely one of the coolest places I've ever had even though that I really love it out here I got to be honest I'm ready to get out of the Seekers just hiking in big snow fields and going up over those passes every day is it's hard work and it definitely slows you down I like hiking fast I like hiking bigger days and out here you just you can't do that so we got into camp here pretty early today we are right at the base of silver paths it's about three and a half miles to the top of silver pass which is our last pass before mammoth so the plan is to get up tomorrow morning at about 4 a.m. which is gonna be the earliest day that I've had out here on the trail and probably start hiking about 5:00 we're gonna get up and over the pass and then we're going to be at 10,000 feet for quite a while so our plan was to do it early before the Sun hits it it starts softening up

you know the trick out here is to to go over those passes and go through those snow fields early in the morning whenever that crust is still on top of the snow that way you can just hype right on top of it and then the rest of the day should be pretty easy Salem handful of climbs but our plan is to get into Mammoth tomorrow in the evening roll in get a place to stay get some town food resupply and then we're probably going to Nero out of town the next day so I'm not gonna take a zero in Mammoth but definitely gonna take advantage of a nice hostel or hotel stay in town food want some pizza and beer so bad a shower some laundry resupply and then get back out and head into Yosemite so that's what's going on that's the plan for tomorrow it's about 8 p.m. and I'm gonna go ahead and go to bed so see what tomorrow brings often rolling this morning got up to 4 a.m. started hiking about 5 days already off to a little bit of a heart cert I had a pretty gnarly water crossing as soon as we woke up so feet are already soaking wet and then a pretty big climb up some rock stairs for about 700 feet so we're on our way up silver past right now which is the last pass before we step out of the Sierra again some would argue that it's the last pass of the Sierra because after that it definitely goes down in elevation and it's not as Sierra ish for the rest of this section more rock steps come on people [Applause]

so it's like 6:00 a.m. we got up at 4:00 the Sun hasn't even hit this yet and we're already postholing all over the place and we're on the south side of the pass so yeah good way to take us out of the Sierra and give us a little break nice way to send us off anybody that thinks that snowshoes or crampons or gore-tex boots or anything like that is gonna help you hiking through the Sierra and the snow it's not you could be naked up here you'd be in a full suit of armor you're still gonna post whole you're still gonna catch your leg fall forward and smack your face into the ice like I just did back there and put my hand in a stream so just a little rant hiking up this pass for you aside from that it's a beautiful day

[Laughter]

past number seven [Music]

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well we finally made it down here into mammoth yesterday we got down to the parking lot at the trailhead at about 5:00 p.m.

maybe more like 4:30 I didn't film a whole lot there towards end of the day because we were kind of in a rush to make it down there because there's a trolley that'll actually bring you into mammoth for free so we wanted to make sure that we made that cruise and I got down here we got a room at the motel 6 split a room and we actually met up with vicious we haven't seen vicious in about a week he got off the trail back in Bishop but he came here and he's just been kind of hanging out and we ran back into him we have talked a lot with him and pulled his arm a lot and he is actually gonna be getting back on trail with us today so I'm not gonna take a zero here in Bishop pretty much just took the night off we're gonna leave kinda late so taking a Nero we're gonna hit the trail tonight just go a little bit and then stop but yeah had some pizza last night had some beer relaxed got a few things done we're about to go resupply if some of you have noticed that I've only been hiking with one trekking pole I just realized that I've never said anything about it I actually snapped one of my trekking poles so I was postholing and both of my feet went in up to my knees my pole went in almost all the way in and then I fell forward and I actually snapped my trekking pole in half so that's the reason I've only been hiking with one the good thing was snuggles was not too far away from Mammoth so she actually met me here last night and I had another pair of trekking poles in the back of the van that I picked up and got rid of my other ones so it's really really lucky that she was still in the area she's still kind of cruising around bishop Mammoth this whole area around Yosemite and I was able to trade my poles out

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back on the trail and Roland this morning we left mammoth yesterday that's crews vicious and I vicious decided to come back and join us again we left there at about 4 o'clock 4 p.m. just did a Nero out we hiked like 5 miles made camp she took an easy day and we are currently in Devil's Postpile National Monument which is pretty cool Devil's Postpile should be coming up it's apparently a bunch of really cool basalt columns I've always kind of wanted to see it so I'm gonna take a little side trail check it out I'm do about 20 miles today go over island pass at the end of today which is gonna probably suck we were just really far away from it we're gonna get over Island Pass make camp and then the plan is to do Donahue pass in the morning which is supposed to be one of the last quote-unquote difficult passes that should still have quite a bit of snow on it and then after that we will be in Yosemite Devils Postpile pretty cool definitely worth the little detour off the trail to check it out and you know I get to check another National Monument off the list really neat though took a lot of force to do that especially that that twist love the Park Service

today has been absolutely surprisingly beautiful and pretty smooth we just started hitting snow about three miles from Island Pass decided to stop take a little bit of lunch before we go up and over Island hopefully there's not too much snow it's typically not good to do a pass in the late afternoon because you know that just causes a lot of postholing but so far today I think we've put in about 14 almost 15 miles and no postholing no snow just started so time for some lunch with this fellow here haven't seen Cruz in a while so I don't know if he went ahead and stopped for lunch on the way back nuts and a cookie but not any type of cookie it's a complete cookie these things are awesome found these back in Bishop and it's got like a bunch of protein in it it's got 400 calories in this thing and they're super tasty they're light they're cheap and they're not bad they actually have quite quite a handful of good things and they have fiber to have protein yeah going out on the trail and looking for good lunch I suggest trying to pick some of these up I think it was like two bucks and it's 400 and 420 calories and it weighs 4 ounces so winner Ken Burns

Island Pass which is not much of a pass yeah you don't even really know you're going over it let us know still though well we stopped and made camp right before Donahue pass we went over Island pass right here at the end of the day found a nice little camp spot about two miles from Donahue we'll be crossing the Yosemite National Park boundary which is really cool and then our plan is to get down to Tuolumne Meadows and then we're actually gonna hitch down into Lee vining about an hour two hours resupply on four days to get is all the way to Sonora Pass so you know we didn't want to carry six days of food since we did that last time make it well easier on ourselves so if that is the plan for tomorrow there is a marmot that is kind of creeping around our tent tonight I think he's trying to see if we drop some food or steal some food but he was just kind of screaming outside the tent whistling and spotted him trying to creep up on our camp a couple times which is kind of interesting but today overall was just an absolutely amazing day on the trail you know from six days of just having it handed to us by the Sierra and everyday just being super hard and postholing and tons of snow and having our feet wet all day and going over these massive passes man today was just beautiful absolutely amazing super stunning and hopefully it'll just last like that hopefully it'll keep going that way even island pass was a really decent pass the snow wasn't that bad even though we did it late in the day so hopefully things are starting to turn around the stairs are maybe gonna mellow out a little bit as it goes into Yosemite

yeah just can't say enough about how beautiful today was [Music]