PCT 2018 Thru-Hike: Episode 11- Blizzards, Bailouts, and Beaches

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PCT Gear List Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaQqPbu1Fa0

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Tags: UL Hiking Gear,PCT,Pacific Crest Trail,PCT Thru-Hike,Thru-Hike Gear List,UL Backpacking,Zpacks,Enlightened Equipment,CNOC Outdoors,UL Backpakcing Gear,Vargo Bot 700,Hiker Trash,Hiking,Backpacking,Pinhoti Trail,Adventure,Long Distance Hiking,Zpacks Duplex,Zpacks Arc Blast,Sierra,Sierra Nevada,Bishop,Yosemite National Park,Big Sur

Video Transcription

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left bishop this morning with these two cats Tang and vicious so we wrote out yet again without Fox and we just came up and over Kearsarge coming back down into the valley back into the Sierras and we should be hitting the trail the official trail here pretty soon and we're gonna try to go over what is it Glen Glen pass tonight this afternoon yeah in about thirty minutes so that should be interesting since we've been off the trail it got quite a bit of snow it looks like maybe two to four inches maybe four inches so the trail is definitely a little bit harder because it's a little slushy and there's some clouds in the sky so not really sure what's gonna happen in the next couple days but these are still nice trails still good

we are postholing like crazy trying to get up one pass it's a kind of snow well it keeps coming and going [Music]

Goren's pass how all the time getting up here and looks like it's gonna be however time getting down there's just nothing but postholing snow fields few injures battle scars micro spikes and ice axe it is on the way down [Music]

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didn't do a whole lot of filming last night or a lot of filming this wine cuz we went over Glen pass yesterday and kicked our ass [Music]

and then you know make things more interesting last night also kicked our ass ended up having an ice storm and then a snowstorm and I think an ice storm and another snowstorm so

yesterday was interesting was nine miles out of Kearsarge and then we made it once we got back to the trail that nine miles we only made it 4.5 miles to the campsite the rat now a trail aches going over going past it's just absolutely nuts nothing but post hoe in sliding breaking through I broke into a stream a couple times foot completely soaked

I had my waterproof socks that I had been waiting on for a while that I got in Bishop and they worked great yesterday and then we got to camp last night and we made a fire so everybody could warm up and dry their stuff out and I was drying the outside of my socks off with the fire and one of them caught fire and melted so now I have no waterproof socks again so that was a big waste of time so morale is a little bit low between me and those two cats and a couple other people that are out here but I'm gonna keep trudging on hopefully this this stuff lifts a little bit and we need a little bit of sunshine today so we have a couple more passes to go over and if it keeps getting worse we should always bail out points and there's all those places we can go again there's a couple more spots we can go into Bishop but for now just keep trudging through and hopefully it gets better [Music]

got cotton like a whiteout blizzard and it's not just to clear up any time soon so run try to get out of the Sierras on another side trail called sawmill sawmill and yeah it's cold so it's about a 12 mile hike out to a trailhead that we don't really know but it's not me it kind of white out and soon really worth it so what happened yesterday well we got to the trail junction that we thought we were gonna take out to get back into Bishop and we got caught in a huge snowstorm a whiteout snowstorm and we couldn't see where the trail was and we couldn't see where to go and it started getting a little scary temp started dropping quite a bit so we actually hiked about 0.8 back to this spot here a big tent spot and it was pretty much a bottleneck it's about four miles from Pinchot pass so everybody that was in the area yesterday pretty much bottlenecked in this tent spot I think that we had eleven people here last night everyone was wet everyone was cold we made a fire tried to dry things out try to keep morale high and waited out the storm it's snowed till pretty late in the day yesterday I think we got here and set up camp at about 2:00 p.m. and then everybody went to bed at about 8 9 so we sit here for a long time towards the end of the day yesterday though the Sun did come out we were able to dry a few things out I mean it did a pretty good job of melting a lot of the snow that dropped I had to take a guess on the trail I'd say that about 2 to 3 inches of snow dropped it was a lot it was fast so everyone's headed out and we are finally going to try to go over a Pinchot pass and then after that is Mather pass if it looks too sketchy or if the weather starts rolling and again there's a couple more side trails that we can take to get out of the Sierras and get back into Bishop the last couple days have been rough real rough going over Glenn past and just having it handed to his postholing all day and then yesterday the day started out great it was beautiful outside as soon as we started getting up in elevation we just got socked in and couldn't go anywhere we only put in nine miles yesterday nine miles all day long so see what's in store for today [Music]

there's ten of us and we've decided to turn back and try the sawmill path trail again there's another huge storm cloud moving in and we're going nowhere fast the next trail to get out is there's no information about it no way to know where it ends up how many miles it is how much elevation it goes up over and it's not marked so we decided to turn back about 1.8 miles and take a 12 mile side trail out of this here [Music]

well sawmill fast you know not part of the PCT or anything but decent bailout point I guess [Applause]

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and there was much rejoicing ya betta so back on the trail we've been off the trail for six days now what happened was the weather got really really bad up here in the Sierra we were trying to go over Pinchot pass and we tried for about two days got caught in a whiteout snow storm tried to make it over Pinchot pass last week and it just wasn't happening so 10 of us bailed out and we went into Bishop we got down into Bishop took the night off

relaxed got food there was 10 of us but really only four of us kind of held together it was me vicious tang and Cruz we all got down into town we got a hotel room and we pretty much sit around and try to decide what to do whether we were gonna get off the trail for a little bit and let the snow calm down and the weather calm down or whether we were gonna flip up there was a lot of people flipping up north so then they could hike south or flipping up north

hiking north and then coming back to do the Sierra and I just really didn't want to do that so what we decided to do was snuggles came and picked us up we loaded up in the van and vicious Cruz snuggles and I took off for a mini road trip and Tang took off to go to San Francisco now the plan was for us all to meet up after we took about five days off the trail back in Bishop and we're all gonna head back in Tang got to San Francisco and her foot had been bothering her and she actually found out that she had a break in her foot she had a stress fracture it was pretty bad and doctors told her sixth

eight weeks she's off the trail so Tang unfortunately got off the trail she doesn't know if she's gonna be back she flew back home to New Hampshire and she's gonna get mended up now as far as vicious and Cruz and I we jumped in our van with Suttles because she came to the rescue and we decided to go in a little road trip we took off and pretty much hit a few BLM camping areas then we hit Yosemite now the PCT goes through Yosemite but we're not gonna get to see a whole lot of it at least the really good stuff so we decided to drive to the valley we did some hiking we hiked up to Glacier Point checked out El Cap down a little touristy thing hung out at museums the gift shops the visitor center and then we decided to actually head west to highway 1 or the PCH so we turned the PCT for the PCH and we drove down to Big Sur took us a couple days we had a couple stops we relaxed a hotel we stayed on some BLM land and camped for free and then we went down to Big Sur for the day and hung out on the beach and got a total different change in scenery

after that we headed back up to Yosemite and checked it out a little bit more got to see some stuff that we didn't get to see the first time cuz of the weather so we got that Grande tunnel view of Yosemite that unfortunately again on the PCT you don't get and yesterday we rolled back into Bishop spent the day hanging out bishop eating food and last night we stayed at Keo hot springs which is just outside of Bishop last night vicious decided that he was done with the PCT so not only is Tang off of the trail but so is vicious this just has some plans to go north and kind of wait out the spring a little bit and then he he said he might jump back on the trail in the summer or he might just go do something completely different

so today Cruz and I took off solo and we hiked the insane 13 mile sawtooth past trail all the way back to the PCT I think that we ended up climbing like 7,000 feet and 13 miles to get back to the trail so we are now officially back on the PCT slash John Muir Trail we are about three miles from Pinchot pass and a lot of snow as melted so the plan worked the weather died down so looking good it's pretty sunshiny earlier a little bit of rain but not bad so in the morning we are going to wake up and we are finally going to get over Pinchot pass and hopefully matter pass if we're lucky the Sierras will play nice the weather will play nice and the next stop is Mammoth [Music]

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