Part 5: A Day in The Sierras

4:15 am

The alarm is going off. I lie on my back looking straight up at the thousands of stars sprayed across the sky. The Milky Way is clear and bright, and inside the centre of the Plough are countless tiny stars. I’m lying in my sleeping bag, cowboy camping, next to 5 other hikers, on a small patch of dry ground in a sea of snow. It feels remote, close to nature, exposed to the beauty and brutality of the high Sierra mountains. Without a tent, I can touch snow, and we have no protection from the wild – in the night I woke up as a mouse scuttled over my sleeping bag. We have to wake up early to make the most of the snow while it is still crisp and holds our weight; after noon it turns to slush and we slip and slide and sink in. Having entered the Sierras relatively early, at the end of May, we spend about half our time walking in snow, which significantly slows us down, wet cold feet at the end of everyday, feeling the squelch of ice water between our toes.

My cowboy camping set up for the night

I’ve been hiking with the same group throughout the high Sierra mountains – Sunscreen from Oregon, Pinecone from California, Lenette from Denmark, Goose from Germany and Lifeguard from everywhere (this girl has at least three passports). For a novice like me, it’s crucial to stick with a group through these mountains, people to climb the high snowy passes with and cross the fast flowing melt water rivers with. Today we are planning to hike up Mather Pass. Mather Pass is known for being most dangerous pass this year. Two hikers have recently been helicopter evacuated when descending the north side. In the last town I met one of these hikers in the hostel, she had slipped down 300 feet of snow and landed on rocks; her face was blackened and blued from the crash. In the Seirras, we would climb over 6 major passes and summit Mount Whitney, climbing most before Mather. I love the passes, feeling the thrill of climbing each, the height and danger present as I carefully place each foot in snowy footholds, crossing a sharply dropping snow field, views of the Sierra valleys all around.

The group at the top of Mount Whitney. I’m in the green puffy with the axe!

Seeing the hikers others stirring, I silently get out of my sleeping bags and start packing up. I always dread having to get out of my sleeping bag in the cold. You then must dash to collect your bear-safe food canisters, stored away from our sleeping area overnight. My bear canister contains four main things – a gallon ziplock bag of oats, a gallon ziplock bag of couscous, a gallon ziplock bag of instant mash potatoes, and a selection of bars. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks. By the end of the Sierras my love of couscous would sadly died (not to be eaten again for a thousand miles), but my love affair with mash would lives. I scurry back to my sleeping bag and wrestle with the canister to open it – it’s bear safe, but when my fingers are numb in the cold it is also Alice safe. 

Bear canisters!

5:00 am

Finally I finish packing up and put on my backpack. Our backpacks are heavy right now, heavier than they ever where in the SoCal section, shoulders burning where the back straps cut in. We have the bear safe food canisters, ice axes and microspikes and food for eight days at a go. We start walking at 5 am, cold snow melt water seeping into my shoes.

We wear our headlamps, red lights glowing across the snow. Light is already starting to creep into the valley as we walk across a gradually rising ice field, with a view of high climbing grey rock forming a wall at the end of the valley ahead of us. I squint, trying to work out where our path will take us. As we get closer we see that there are multiple paths. For the lower third, we can take either a long slow traverse, but with a pile of fallen rocks across parts of the trail, or follow footsteps steeply climbing up the snow. The rest of the pass is split – on the right is a field of scree but on the left is a track of old boot prints in snow that look melted and unsafe. A group are up on the pass now, at the end of the long traverse, moving back and forward trying to work out how to get further. Light now starts to flood into the valley, mountain tops lit up golden red – we needed to start moving before the snow starts to melt. I am wearing all my layers and now am starting to feel overheated.

Walking towards Mather Pass

5:45 am

We decide to take the steep route. Sunscreen, who we nick-named our “snow shepard”, leads the way, with Pinecone, who hates heights, sticking close in second. We slog up the steps, as Sunscreen aggressively kicks his feet into the small steps to make them bigger for us. He gets sick of following the steps and suddenly started moving straight up – breaking a fresh ladder of vertical steps. We follow, slow and careful to get a good foothold before taking each step. After the first section, we decide to take the rock slide route and clamber up the loose rocks field to the right, using our hands. The rocks are loose and the risk of slipping is worse than on snow. Keeping a clear eye on who is below and above, I test the rocks before using them to pull myself up. A few times I hear the sound of loose rocks from a hiker ahead of me, but we made progress without causing any major rockfalls. I look up, a few hundred feet from the top to see a wall of snow right at the top of the pass. Then I see Pinecone clamber over the snowy ledge and disappear. I follow and use my hands pull myself over the edge to the summit. We’ve done the climb, but the scary part is to come.

Traversing the snow on Mather Pass

Me, almost at the top of Forrester Pass

6:55 am

After admiring the view, we look for a path down – and see nothing. Pinecone scrambles up onta a pile of rocks to the right and calls out that he sees the path. There is a path leading down but after 15 meters the path ends and there is just a skid mark that descends vertically down an icy snow slope for 20 meters. We stand queued up on the ledge, unsure of next steps. We decide to glissade the slope. Pinecone goes first, lowering himself off ledge, sinking his ice axe into the snow. A glissade should be a lovely smooth slide through the snow while slightly digging your ice axe into the snow as a break. On Forrester Pass, our first pass, we descended 200ft with beautiful views over snowy lakes, like riding a fun rollercoaster. On Mather Pass, the snow is so icy and hard that Pinecone’s ice axe won’t cut through, so instead of a nice smooth slide, he skids awkwardly and jerkily. Lifeguard says a few times “that doesn’t look fun” – but we tell her this isn’t for fun, but the only way down. I watch each of my friends make the descent, with cries of pain as their bums skate over the rough hard ice. The bumpy steep ride causes bottles to catapult out of backpacks and fly down the hill at comic speed, causing me to laugh as I wait at the top of the slope. Sunscreen tries to play goalkeeper at the bottom, poised to catch the flying bottles. Another hiker decides to start descending (using only poles as a break and no axe) while Lifeguard is trying to stand up, still on the slope, and narrowly misses knocking her down.

Glissading on Mather

Lenette about to glissade on Forrester Pass

When I start sliding, it feels like I am on a cheese grater. It hurts! Lifeguard yells back up at me “just walk when it gets less steep”. I slow myself down, and place my axe next to me to put my microspikes back on. But the slope is too steep and icy and so I suddenly start sliding out of control. I manage to reach and grab the ice axe just in time and start self arresting – axe dug deep into the slope trying to break the fall. Sparks of ice fly into my face, but eventually I slow to a stop as the slope gets shallower. I walk over to my friends, body filled with adrenaline. I feel strangely proud that I was able complete a self arrest. Then Goose points at my hands – numbed by the snow, I hadn’t realized that knuckles had been touching the snow and all the skin had been totally stripped back, and now my hands are red and bleeding. I’ve seen this happen to others who have left skin uncovered – Sunscreen tore all the flesh off the back of his calves coming down Forrester Pass. I now had a renewed sympathy, comparatively my hands were small scrapes. We tape my fingers, stinging pain starting as the numbness from the snow wears off.

8:30 am

For the next few hours, we trudge down the rest of the snow field, before finding a spot for breakfast in the tree line. Several of the group run off into the trees, trowels in hand, relieved to finally have some cover for the first time in the morning. While munching cold oats, we made a plan for the rest of the day – we need to get to the start of the snow at Muir Pass, to be ready for tomorrow, but that is far away. So, to get there in time we agree a spot for lunch that is a good chunk of the way there, and set off. The snow becomes less and less, til we are walking on dirt switch backs, descending down to a lush green valley. Out of the danger of snow, the group splits up and spreads out. A creek gushes alongside me as I walk, cascading over and down rock faces in huge waterfalls. As I walk, I’m overtaken by two hikers in matching tops. “Have you heard,” one of them calls out to me, “there’s a storm coming”.

Lenette crossing under a waterfall

11:00 am

As my adrenaline wears off and the tiredness of the morning catches up with me, I start to feel hungrier and tired. I check my watch and the map, and despite the downhill I am only slowly approaching the lunch spot. I hope that Sunscreen or Pinecone, who are walking at the front, will decide to break early. My watch says 11am, 12pm (normal lunch time), 1pm, 2pm. The trees and trail are beautiful, but there are mosquitoes. Finally at 2:30pm I arrive at the spot to see Pinecone and Sunscreen relaxing like it’s a day at the park. I huffily sit down, making a comment about the mosquitoes. As I get settled, I look around. It is a truly stunning spot, like I am inside a postcard. The creek has widened out into a wide lazy river, grey granite rock faces rise up all around the valley sides, a grey granite pyramid stands in the middle of the river, long green grasses poke through the water and birds fly low trying to catch bugs. I eat my couscous and start to feel much better. The rest of the group arrive, Lenette similarly hangry (if not even more than I had been). It’s safe to say that Sunscreen and Pinecone never again make the mistake of walking too long til lunch. Lenette, Goose and I all wade into the river – I had planned to dive in, but the snow melt water is icy cold. Instead it’s a good chance to wash some mud off my very dirt smeared legs.

Our lunch time meadow spot

3:15 pm

After lunch, we head out again, with a plan to meet in a few miles, so that finding a spot for camp can be done together. It’s going to be uphill the entire rest of the day. Lenette, Pinecone and I walk together playing a game we invented. At the start and end of each section of the PCT (SoCal, the Sierras etc), we go through the alphabet, each taking a letter, and say one thing we love and hate for that letter. Lenette calls “I hate post-holing, I love pikas!” Post-holing is when you put your foot on snow and it cracks, leaving you knee or even waist deep in. Pikas however are tiny, cute, squeaking creatures that sit atop granite piles.

Valley views

We rejoin the others, regrouping at the turn off out of the mountains. This is the route that many PCT hikers are taking, as a key bridge has collapsed and the river is unpassable. A few people had tried to wade across and been knocked over and buffeted about. However, there is a cross-country rock scramble that allows you to avoid crossing the river. We want to take this scramble route, so that we don’t miss some of the key PCT miles in the Sierras. We pause at the junction to make sure everyone is still onboard with our plan, even with the new rumours of a storm. Yes, we all are.

The landscape is so perfect, and I can just imagine a bear wandering through the valley, so I want to walk at the front. I still haven’t seen a bear this and it’s on my PCT bucket list. Sunscreen is the only one of us who has seen a bear, and I’m pretty sure he gets all the best opportunities as he walks first most days. It’s only about 30 minutes before Sunscreen catches up with me and over takes me. I guess my bear spotting days will have to wait.

8:00 pm

It’s getting late to still be hiking, we’re all knackered from the early start and desperate to get to camp. We’ve gained significant elevation since lunch and are now walking through patchy snow. The ground starts looking damp and squishy. If we keep going we’re not going to find a good spot. We arrive at a place where a campsite should be, and it’s scenic with a great view back down the valley, but also pretty boggy. It’s starting to get gloomy now, the sun has sliding behind the mountains. After searching we find three spots for tents in the trees, which Sunscreen, Lifeguard and Goose take. Pinecone, Lenette and I, all avid cowboy campers decide (partially out of necessity) to sleep on a huge rock that overlooks the valley. We are too tired to come off the rock for dinner, so stick up where we are and I enjoy hot instant mash potatoes, while sitting in my sleeping bag. It’s been a late long day and so I snuggle into my sleeping bag, pulling on my down booties (my luxury item for the Sierras), and fall asleep very quickly.

Dinner with friends in the Sierras, on a day when we finished walking at 6pm

Our campsite before climbing Forrester Pass

In the next few weeks in the Sierras, we would complete the rock scramble, crunch through the glittering, untouched snow hills of Muir pass and then complete the ever smaller passes, each with less and less snow. Next we would hike through Yosemite national park, with dramatic rock cliffs, roaring rivers and lush mountain meadows. We would be eased out the Sierras as the snow melted, already missing the thrill, the elevation and the views before it was over, mourning the mountains while simultaneously looking forward to the lighter bags and easier walking of NorCal.

At Muir Hut, at the top of Muir Pass

Waterfalls and rocks in Yosemite National Park