Chapter 11: PCT Week 9: “Enter, The High Sierras”

Chapter 11: Week 9: “Enter, The High Sierras”
Days 57-63: 5/1-5/7/22
Total Trail Miles: 86.70
Total GPS Recorded Miles: 112.02
Cumulative Trail Miles: 788.90
From: Kennedy Meadows South to Bishop

 

Day 57 // May 1, 2022 // Trail Miles: 14.30 / GPS Recorded Miles: 14.38 / Cumulative Trail Miles: 716.50

~Destination // First Day in the Sierras to MM 716.50~

On the road again, and technically, we really were on the road in the back of a pickup heading to trail. “Tuzi”, a hiker who worked at Grumpy Bear’s was taking us: Basecamp, Optimist, and myself. It was our first start in the Sierras, and we knew we’d be climbing but first we still had a few miles of flat, sandy terrain to hike through as a final farewell to the lowlands.

At the trailhead, we hopped out of the pickup bed. Dust bellowed up around our trail runners and off through the air. Maybe it would settle somewhere up along the trail? Perhaps we’d walk on the same dusty soil we’d just stepped on but blown hundreds of miles away. Everything felt new, and exciting. The Sierras, finally.

Optimist went on ahead, but we passed him while he stopped to speak with a day hiker. We were in no rush. Truth be told, we wanted to soak in the fact that we were there after hiking over 700 miles. We reached a trail register in a parking lot where weekend campers were dispersed in various states of glamping. For a moment I envied them and their luxuries. The trail register signaled the start of our climbing, and to me, the Sierras.

The woods greeted us with shade and cool breezes. We hiked along a small creek flowing back down towards the register and campers. We had our sights set on a campsite just by a creek around 14 miles from where we’d started. Day hikers continued to stop and have brief exchanges with us, but we couldn’t afford to speak with everyone we made eye contact with. If we did, we wouldn’t have made many miles at all, so we kept our heads low when passing others, or kept headphones in. For lunch we picked a grand old tree pouring out shade. Optimist embraced his French roots with a meal of cheese and chocolate and contemplated a taking a nap in the coolness.

Uphill strips and overgrown sections evolved into an open meadow bordered by tall peaks. We were completely immersed. It was just a small taste of what we knew the Sierras would feel like. Around 13 miles we could see the river we wanted to camp near, and our spirits lifted. Our day was nearly done, and we were already worn out from heat, heavy packs, and consistent climbing. There were two hikers atop a rock outcropping in the meadow who were headed towards KMS. SoBo I wondered? No. One of them was injured with their knee wrapped and it sounded like they were done with their hike. We felt blessed to still be healthy and uninjured, able to tackle everything ahead of us.

When we reached the campsite, Optimist was with us, and two other hikers joined shortly after. We’d seen them briefly at KMS but didn’t really know them. Their names were Yukon and Crush, AT finishers. After moving blood-soaked toilet paper left there presumably by another PCT hiker (hopefully not terribly injured), we made camp under the trees lining the river shore and started to prepare dinner. Crush was a tall, lean hiker with longer hair who ate his dinner with a stick because he didn’t want to walk 50 feet to get a spork from his bag. Yukon, a stockier “Good Ol Boy” from Alabama, put on a set of clown-colored, thermal-looking layers made of a material we’d never seen (come to find out it was Farpointe gear). He had a set regimen of protein powder he used, and a massive bag of dehydrated potatoes. They were true hiker trash, and we loved it. While we knew they hiked faster than us, we still enjoyed the time we spent getting to know them, and a peaceful campsite where hordes of finches swarmed for their evening dinner.

That night, life was great. The sun set just behind the mountains in the distance, the finches swarmed and circled creating ever-changing designs in the sky, and the weather was cool. During the late evening after sunset, we felt the ground beneath us start to shake. A small earthquake was pulsing through the Earth below us, but it was minor, almost soothing in a way. As if rocking us to sleep, we closed our eyes again as if nothing had happened.

 

 

Day 58 // May 2, 2022 // Trail Miles: 14.30 / GPS Recorded Miles: 14.65 / Cumulative Trail Miles: 730.80

~ Destination // Somewhere in the Sierras at MM 730.80~

Our immediate goal was to hike the miles away until we reached Crabtree Meadows, also known as the campground and ranger station for Mt. Whitney access. It’s not the normal Whitney approach, but it is the PCT hiker approach.

Crush and Yukon left camp first, followed by the two of us. Optimist stayed behind, slept in a bit, and no doubt had his morning poop. He usually did. We leap-frogged with Crush and Yukon for a while on the morning’s climb, but they inevitably blazed on ahead after we all met at an open-meadow water source. They really were fast, even though they took time to enjoy the experience. Our packs were heavy, and it significantly slowed down our pace. We attributed much of that to the 1-2 lb. bear cans required through the Sierra section, food, and 4 lb. sleeping bags. It was draining our energy with each step.

At some point during the morning, we met another hiker named Jeromy from Canada. He seemed interesting and lugged an expensive DSL camera around with him. I was curious what his story was. Later, we ran into two other hikers, “Candy Salad Moonbeam” and “Old Lady” who seemed to be hiking together. They both had sweet dispositions, and wonderfully unique trail names.

By mile 14, we were thirsty and exhausted. I was struggling under the pack’s weight but could tell Basecamp was truly “sucking the hind tit”. While we could have likely squeezed in a few more miles before dark, despite our packs, we decided to camp near a tranquil brook with an inviting campsite rather than hoofing it uphill just to dry camp.

Once camp was set up, Optimist hiked in. We hadn’t seen him since breaking camp that morning. While our tents were beneath massive boulders that looked like the perfect place for a mountain lion ambush, we didn’t care and just wanted to soak in the delicious site we had to ourselves. We’d passed up several great campsites on the trail, all in an effort to get more miles per day. However, this time a beautiful campsite was our reward for a well-hiked day. It was blissful. The sound of insects and a flowing breeze lulled us to sleep in our cozy tent that protected us from everything like a steel fortress pressed against the world.

 

 

Day 59 // May 3, 2022 // Trail Miles: 20.00 / GPS Recorded Miles: 20.46 / Cumulative Trail Miles: 750.80

~Destination // Chicken Spring Lake~

Chicken Spring Lake would be the first alpine lake we’d come across in the Sierras, and we wanted to make it our backyard that night. As always, Optimist slept in, and we got an earlier start. He was cowboy camping at that. I could only imagine how difficult it must have been to wake up early cowboy camping- it’s colder without the added heat ‘bubble’ of a tent, and you didn’t have to worry about the extra time required to break one down either, so why not sleep in a bit longer until the sun rose and started to warm you up? Basecamp and I were devoted tent users.

Throughout the morning we met some of the same hikers we had the day before: Moonbeam, Old Lady, and Jeromy. We exchanged “good mornings” with each of them and embraced another day of climbing. There was a new face as well, “Cookie Monster” from Germany. He’d earned that name due to the fact that he was always handing out cookies. It made perfect sense.

At one point Jeromy stopped and took a few photos of us with his DSLR. They were our first photos on trail taken with a professional camera. It was a shame we’d just gotten through a tough conversation (on what I can’t recall, but likely about hiking paces and our schedule) and weren’t much in the mood for photos. We returned the sentiment to Moonbeam and Old Lady as they stood on a grandiose rock outcropping that jutted into the horizon, only the photos were from our Iphone 13 Pro Max, which we loved. They may not have been as good as a DSLR, but the picture/video quality was still 4k, and they weighed a fraction of the weight a Canon or Nikon did. We were both glad we had them versus a heavier rig for our first hike, especially since we were carrying so much gear with us through the high mountains.

Somewhere along the way I took my first poop in the Sierras and first nap of the trail during lunch. It was a big day of firsts. With 5 or so miles to go to Chicken Spring Lake, we began to notice snow along the trail and surrounding forests. It was splotchy at best, but soon began to blanket the floor. Peaks off in the distance were snowcapped, and yet we were sweating buckets. 5 miles flew by quickly as the terrain captured our attention.

Chicken Spring Lake was largely frozen except for a sliver of shore near our campsite. One old scraggly tree allowed for a food bag hang, while the surrounding boulders were our windbreaks. It was cozy, but I’m not sure why I opted to hang the food bag at an elevation above 11,000 feet. Perhaps it was to protect it from hungry critters. We pitched a few hundred feet away from Cookie Monster, Moonbeam, and Old Lady for privacy, but we all shared the beauty of the lake as our home that night. Moonbeam took a dip in the frigid waters while Basecamp and I were just fine going no deeper than our fingertips. While it had been a day of firsts, I wasn’t about to take my first swim of the trail in a frozen lake with its icy cold embrace.

 

 

Day 60 // May 4, 2022 // Trail Miles: 15.50 / GPS Recorded Miles: 16.29 / Cumulative Trail Miles: 766.30

~Destination // Crabtree Meadows~

“Oh, the places you’ll go.”  ~Dr. Seuss

Where we wanted to go was the summit of Mt. Whitney, but first we had to wake up and make it to Crabtree Meadows, the PCT campground and access to Whitney.  Optimist had arrived late the night before and slept in once again. Great basin bristlecone pines, also known as “Ancient Pines”, lined the trail on both sides for most of the day, directing us like runway lights directing a plane at landing.

To my knowledge, we never had eyes on Whitney throughout the day, but massive, snowcapped peaks still lined the backdrop. We’d be heading into those same peaks soon enough. They symbolized complete immersion and isolation from the “cotton world”.

The High Sierras have some of the longest stretches of trail without town access, and even when you reach a spot to resupply in a town, you have to climb over a pass twice to get there and back (ie. Kearsarge, Bishop, and Mammoth Passes, in order, going NoBo). During the summer, the Sierras have additional resorts for food resupply, but not at the beginning of May when snow makes vehicle travel to supply those resorts near impossible.

A few water crossings broke up the pace of dry trail, but nothing too risky. At around 1 to 2 miles from Crabtree Meadows, we hit snow. It was surprisingly deep, up to our thighs in some spots. I’m around 5’11” and Basecamp is 5’4″. There were two other hikers there with us: Moonbeam and Old Lady. It just so happened that the snow was on a steep north-facing downhill that would normally accommodate two or three switchbacks. We didn’t see switchbacks, but there was a path straight down and through the rocks, the worst possible route to take. Old Lady was shorter than Basecamp and had little snow experience up to that point.

We decided to go straight down the boot pack despite our better judgement, but Old Lady remained up top hesitant to go down the same way. So, what happened? Moonbeam stuck her spikes on and switch-backed up the entire climb to Old Lady; the same climb she’d just gone down. She was a true hero in that moment.

All four of us made it to Crabtree safely. Our friends and tramily members were there excited to see us and catch up on the last few days since leaving Kennedy Meadows. It was our first reunion in the high country. After finding a campsite and pitching our tent, we sat down and game-planned about tackling Whitney early the next morning. Hikers discussed 1:00 AM assaults, 3:00 AM, and some wanted to start when the sun was up. We wanted to reach the top of Whitney at sunrise, but still get a reasonable amount of sleep, so we declared 3:00 AM as our departure time. Cuppa, Crush, and Yukon chose the same.

We didn’t stay up late with our friends, but rather the opposite. Inhaling the heartiest dinners our bear cans could provide, we turned off our bug-shaped tent lights for the night and curled into our bags. Twilight was still fading in the background.

 

 

Day 61 // May 5, 2022 // Trail Miles: 4.0 / GPS Recorded Miles: 19.72 / Cumulative Trail Miles: 770.30

~Destination // Mt. Whitney and Forester Setup~

1:30AM. “Bing. Beep. &@$$&@$” Basecamp’s alarm sounded off in the morning darkness.

“Good Lord, just another hour, please.” I said.

“Babe, we have to get up if we want to start with them.” Basecamp groggily replied.

Alas, it wasn’t to be. The mother awaited.

Mt. Whitney is the highest peak in the lower 48 states. Standing proudly at 14,505 feet, she towers over the Crabtree Meadows campground as the “mother of mountains” in the contiguous United States.

Being a married couple who enjoys a warm pot of coffee, it takes us anywhere from 2-3 hours some days to wake, cuddle, eat, pack, and leave camp. Luckily, there was no packing necessary since we’d be hiking back to Crabtree and packing later. We were slack-packing up Whitney.

Squelching the angry phone alarm, we crawled out of our warm bags at 1:30 AM, brewed a lukewarm pot of instant coffee, grabbed a few protein bars, and headed out of the tent with our headlamps lighting up the meadow. Cuppa, Yukon, and Crush met us at 3:00 AM just by the creek crossing. We had 15 miles ahead of us with several thousand feet of vertical gain, but we were pumped.

With light packs and skin cooled by the mist, we moved quickly up switchbacks to the approach. Snowfields shone pale in the moonlit landscape. Shuffling by an alpine lake, a rockfall triggered in the black some 100 feet above us where no hiker or trail existed. Perhaps it was an animal? Tiny streaks of light spit in the distance as hikers looked in all directions for trail with their lights.

Dawn cut through the night as headlamps on the mountainside faded to dark figures walking up a dimly lit path. The sky swelled with hues of pink and red. Massive jagged protrusions and slicked-over traverses riddled the trail. We’d been known as the slower, steady couple with our heavy packs, but we glided up Whitney as our bodies recalled those fourteeners we’d scaled while living in Colorado. Fueled by this feeling, we were practically skipping uphill in some sections. It was amazing to me how quickly our bodies recalled living at elevation even though we’d been hiking much lower over the last 700 miles.

Just feet from the summit and short of breath from hours of climbing, a golden sun peered around craggy spines gilding the mountainside like a touch from Midas himself. It was like the mountain was revealing her treasure to use after a long journey in search of it.

At the top, there it was- a hut…shelter from the frostbitten winds and blistering cold. Build-A-Bear and Yukon were behind us. As we approached the hut, we could hear familiar voices. Cuppa and Crush, who’d hiked ahead of us, were there with Jedi.

In all his glory, Cuppa was atop a 4-foot snow mattress in his sleeping bag brewing Yorkshire tea. He looked in our direction and asked, “Would you like a cuppa tea?”

What on Earth!?

“Yes, please!” Basecamp and I both replied.

As we warmed in the hut filled with snowdrift, Crush let us know it was his birthday.

“Dude! Happy Birthday!” Basecamp exclaimed.

What a thing to do to celebrate a Birthday! Jedi sat in the corner of the hut with a leg cramp and a laugh, wrapped in a sleeping bag burrito. While standing in that small space crammed with hikers and snow, it was impossible not to smile and be thankful. It’s moments like that which forever imprint on you. Summits and views are phenomenal, but you remember the people and the moments with those people foremost. In that moment, there’s no place we’d have rather been than on top of a fourteener freezing our posteriors off with those people. The air was thin, but our hearts were full.

A wise climber once told us that, “The mountain allows you to summit,” which implies you won’t complete every climb you start.

This time, the mother of mountains had allowed us to summit safely.

Descending Whitney and returning to camp, we couldn’t help but be grateful even with the soreness in our bones. Despite all the physical and mental pain we’d been in for the last 766 miles, in that moment those pains seemed trivial. After experiencing nature in its most magnificent form with our friends, the smiles and the anticipation of things to come quieted all else.

Thank you Whitney for your views, your experience, the struggles you allowed us to overcome, and the memories you gave us with the people we called family.

Once we reached Crabtree Meadows again, we sat with a cluster of other hikers in a circle reminiscing over the beauty of our morning and getting in some welcomed laughs. At one point, Cuppa walked off and left his foam sitting pad there on the ground. It blew away. Jedi hopped up and caught it, but then drove Cuppa’s ice axe through the heart of it.

Jedi’s comment on the matter was, “I made him the mat anyway. He won’t mind.”

And of course, Cuppa just laughed at it all. The people really do make the experience.

After packing and starting out, we only made it 4 miles on the actual PCT. It was just enough slogging through sloshy, steep forested trail to set us up for climbing the next day. Forester Pass was next. Azul, Jedi, Deuces, and Optimist camped there that night. Before going to sleep, Basecamp discussed our plan with everyone to leave at 4:00 AM. Hopefully it would give us enough time to climb and descend Forester before the snow began to thaw.

 

 

Day 62 // May 6, 2022 // Trail Miles: 15.80 / GPS Recorded Miles: 15.52 / Cumulative Trail Miles: 786.10

~Destination // Forester Pass~

622 vertical feet in 0.9 switch-backing miles. That’s Forester Pass. Rising to 13,120’, it’s the highest point on the PCT. From a distance, you’d never peg it as the actual pass. It’s surrounded by other, more ‘gentle’ saddles. But you’d be remiss. It’s a glacial notch carved out of pure stone. An ice wall often accumulates at the top making summit attempts difficult and hazardous.

We camped the night before at Wallace Creek, 9 miles from Forester, so we had to sleep hard and wake early if we wanted to walk on and not ‘in’ the snow. Azul packed and headed out with us while Optimist, Jedi, and Deuces slept in. Deuces caught up later. Through icy creeks and snowfields, the elevation began to climb. The reflection from other hikers’ tents and bags blipped in the night as we walked by with our headlamps.

Dawn broke with a pallet of pastels in the sky. A massive, ovular cloud perched in the sky above distant peaks. The last few miles to the pass carried us along frozen fields of ice and snow, but not everything was frozen. We could hear water running underneath us, a deadly game to play, walking over water along snow bridges.

2 miles to go. 1 mile to go. Where was it though? There were several dips and saddles in front of the mountains ahead of us, but which one was it? As we approached the area on our map just before the climb, we were utterly shocked by what we saw.

“THAT is the pass?”, I exclaimed, “My God!”

It was a tiny crevice splitting two razor-sharp mountains. It was menacing.

As we hit the approach, another crew (Robert, now named “Airdrop”, and his group) caught up to us and hiked ahead as we snacked for the intense climb. It looked straight up and our bodies needed fuel. We made slow progress uphill, but it allowed enough time for me to notice a small yellow flower growing through the rock. Spring and thaw were already there.

Approaching the top, we noticed the snow wall had waned enough to allow us a safe summit despite crossing an ill-placed snowy traverse. It was just before the top, built up, and right above a perilous fall. Despite our best judgement, we side-stepped across it on our hands and feet, without spikes, but managed, nonetheless. We truly had guardian angels watching over us.

And we were there, atop the pass that’d seemed impossible to climb just a mile back. Despite heavy breathing from the exertion and altitude, we all howled with excitement at the top. Days of anticipation were replaced with the feeling of victory that rushed over us. Elated, we were standing on the highest point the PCT could throw at us, and we felt unstoppable. It was all downhill from there, right?

We summited from the south face at 9:00AM. The north face, and our descent, was covered in snow. Soft Snow. It looked like a frozen tundra, but it was melting under our feet. Boondoggle was the first hiker to go down. We’d first met him back in the wind farms of Tehachapi, and now he was here carving a path for the rest of us. He started his glissade down.

The first few seconds were fine, but then his rear sunk in. And again. Then he had to use his pole and ice axe to push off just to gain momentum. It didn’t look like a fun glissade. What made the thought of glissading down even worse for me was the fact that I had shorts on. There were pants in my pack, at the bottom, and I was in no mood to dig down for them.

One by one, hikers half glissaded and half pushed themselves down the first of two large downhills from Forester. Basecamp went, and I followed. It was cold, but not terrible. The process took no more than 10 minutes. Reaching a flat spot, everyone adjusted their gear and started for the second of the two downhills.

It was a massacre. Hikers tripped, dipped, sank, and plunged through hundreds of feet of sky-blue snow. We couldn’t “walk on white” because there was no white to walk on. The second large downhill and glissade was longer; at least 500 vertical feet. Again, I started down after Basecamp, but this snow was different. It was half snow, half ice. Billions of sharp fingers stuck up from the surface. I knew in that moment the glissade down would be painful for me. There wasn’t a good spot to even take off my pack and dig for pants at that point for fear of sinking in or losing gear to the swallowing snow. I went down in my shorts several hundred agonizing feet over 20 minutes. Hands sank in. The occasional foot sank in. The back of my thighs and both cheeks screamed in pain from sustained cold, and what felt like hundreds of tiny scrapes. Tiny flecks of red blood popped against the blue snow. By the time I reached the bottom, I couldn’t even feel my backside. Bless it all! But it had been my choice.

The descent from the High Point of the PCT had left its mark, both in achievement, in beauty, and in pain. Several miles more awaited us, all snow covered, but not as soft, and not as deep. They were snowfields. Beyond several alpine lakes, trees began to shade the trail. However, the lower we got, the more flooded the trail became. No more sloshy mess, but a seemingly endless route of submerged trail waited to soak us to the bone.

And it did. The day drug on with hours of route finding, and cursing. Basecamp and I were separate from everyone else and fed off of one another’s misery that day. The one bright side ahead of us, was that we’d planned to camp with Azul and Deuces several miles ahead near the Bishop Pass trail split. It seemed further away than our tolerance would permit, so when we began to see dry stretches of dirt under giant sequoia trees, our resolve weakened. I could feel myself looking for campsites to pitch in.

“Should we just camp around here?” I asked Basecamp.

“I don’t know.” She replied, “We told Azul and Deuces we’d camp with them tonight up by the split. We could try and Garmin-message Azul maybe.”

Before we finished our conversation, a shout came from our immediate left.

“We’ve been waiting forever for you!” Deuces shouted.

Thank God. Azul and Deuces felt the same way as we had and didn’t want to pass up such stunning campsites by a river, no doubt. That night the four of us sat around a fire, riverside, and simply enjoyed the world surrounding us after the day’s accomplishments. The sequoias protected us from the dangers that laid in wait; sentinels protecting our camp.

 

 

Day 63 // May 7, 2022 // Trail Miles: 2.80 / GPS Recorded Miles: 11.00 / Cumulative Trail Miles: 788.90

~Destination // Kearsarge Pass and Bishop~

It was time to make it to town. We’d had a small care package mailed to us from Rab, and we’d also had Basecamp’s sister, Amber, send us a resupply box sent as well, both to Independence instead of Bishop. That meant we needed to get to Independence first, and then hitch to Bishop, but before any of that we still needed to climb up and over Kearsarge Pass.

Deuces and Azul left before us, so Basecamp and I headed into the woods together. Next to Optimist, we were often some of the last ones out of camp. It was around 2 miles up through forest before we hit tree line. The overnight temperature had dipped below freezing, so the flooded trail up to the pass was partially frozen over, making for slow miles with possible chipped-tooth scares, or worse. On top of the frigid temps and terrain, a storm began to blow in.

Huge dark clouds were blowing in on ferocious winds. Basecamp was frustrated to her core. It was the weight of her pack combined with increasing winds knocking her around. On several occasions up Kearsarge I offered to take some of her gear and carry it, even pulling out the tent poles from her pack once, but she wouldn’t have it. Stubborn as she was, she insisted on carry the whole lot up the pass despite how she felt.

The winds swirled and rapped faster and louder. It was strong enough to knock me off my footing, and practically push her off trail. Just outside of a small, patchy treed area, we could see the switchbacks leading to the top just by a microscopic sign that took to be the “Kearsarge Pass” sign.

We reached the top, but not without difficulty. Gloves and jackets went on and came off as we balanced our temperature between the exertion of climbing, and the frigidity of the wind. At the summit, the wind grew strongest of all, like invisible hands slapping, punching, and shoving us. And then it happened. Basecamp flew down into a rock just at the top and caught herself. She avoided hitting her head or sustaining any major injury, but her tooth…her tooth had hit the rock, and chipped. It wasn’t life or death, but it was enough to ruin the moment.

On the way down, we caught up with Azul sitting down to put on her microspikes. The route below appeared snow-covered, so we pulled out our spikes as well before risking the ridge and switch-backing trail laden with gusty traps. The route was often unclear, and all covered in white. It took a hours to earn miles despite heading downhill with three sets of eyes searching for trail and bootpack.

At just a mile from the bottom, we came across two middle-aged day hikers, two of many on that particular stretch of trail because most of the snow had melted off and it was the weekend. In a poetic way, I snuck in a question about a hitch into Independence before the post office closed, paying careful mind to emphasize just how little time we had to get there (we thought about an hour). They agreed to give us a lift if we were down at their van when they made it back.

We also had a trail angel coming to pick us up, but that was strictly to the town of Bishop, so we figured that Azul and Deuces could go with her if the two guys would take us into Independence, and we’d somehow make it to Bishop afterwards.

It worked out. Deuces and Azul stayed in the parking lot and waited for a black Jeep to pull up while the two guys drove us to Independence. They were two friends, Pascal and Mike, on a small vacation in a custom-built van. There was a tiny refrigerator in the back and I wondered if there was cold beer inside. We exchanged info when they dropped us off at the post office and thanked them profusely. Unfortunately, the Post Office was closed.

We’d need to get back the next day, somehow. Bless small towns and their hours. Luckily, the fellas had given us a round of beers that my gut had told me was in the cooler, so we sat on the curb and discretely drank them hoping we could text Deuces or Azul to see if their ride could pick us up. As luck would have it, she could, and they did.

When the black Jeep pulled up, we crammed in with four backpacks, two hikers, two dogs, and the driver. Bishop awaited, and well-earned days of rest. In that moment, not even the recent setbacks could break our spirits.

 

 

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