Day 47 – We found the trail!
Originally published on Mason Hikes the PCT 2017.
Mileage: 17
We had another bet last night that said whoever was the latest to being ready to hike beyond 5:30AM would have to buy a milkshake for the rest of the group. I had slept until 5:10 but I really didn’t want to lose, so I ran around and threw everything into my pack as fast as I could. My pack was on by 5:31, but luckily I was about two minutes up trail and Dodger and Hach-P were later than I was. Whew! 😅
From my campsite on, the entire morning was snow. We were able to quickly cover ground because the snow was so firm and we only vaguely follow the trail nowadays, so we were at the base of Mather Pass in no time. It didn’t look too bad, so I threw on my crampons, got out my ice axe, and started ascending.
The wall we were ascending was facing directly East, so the sun had already been on it for about an hour. That time was just enough to make the snow slightly slushy and not as stable to climb with spikes, but we’ve been traveling in snow for days, so we’re fairly comfortable with it. The real problem was the rocks. First of all, they force you to remove your spikes. Second, these rocks were steep, angled, and covered with a lot of sand/small rocks. That combination meant that any step could slide at any time, leaving you (hopefully) dangling by your hands and maybe one foot. For me, that just meant that I adjusted my route planning to stick to large, immovable boulders and took a lot more time with every movement. Others did largely the same thing, but the rocks were enough to induce minor panic attacks in some people on the way up.
When we all finally made it to the top, we had a hiker party with some old and some new friends, relaxing and celebrating the fact that we all made it up. 🎉👍🏼
Our plan coming into today was to go 17 miles, which is a HUGE day for us, so we had to keep moving. Flame and I did our usual skiing down while everyone else walked behind, and we eventually ran into some hikers who were not having fun in the conditions. They told us they were heading back, but that the trail they came up was really scary so we should go a different way. Not ones to scared by trails, we pressed on and followed the tracks in the snow until we got to the PCT. I think they were just worried about falling in the lake from a snowfield, but the trail was completely fine.
We hiked on for a few more miles until the snow path turned into a real trail and we found a lunch spot that we couldn’t pass up.
After that, it was all downhill through snow, rivers, and massive sections of “blow downs”, which I’m pretty sure were actually avalanche casualties. These destroyed sections were incredibly localized, a lot of the uprooted and broken trees ended up in the valley’s lowest point, and most of the remaining trees were missing their uphill branches for the bottom 10-15 feet, which is usually a good sign that you’re in avalanche territory. Oh, and massive chutes above the areas feeding directly into the path of destruction might be a good sign too. It’s absolutely incredible to see the destructive power of these avalanches, which have completely destroyed decades-old trees and thrown them around like rag dolls.
It’s also pretty cool to see the waterfalls and rivers that have replaced the trail in certain sections, though it’s pretty annoying to hike them. At one point, the massive river the trail followed overflowed its banks and continued exactly where we were supposed to be walking. This did mean that the snow was melted or was melting at the lower elevations, so we actually got to hike on the real PCT for a long time today! Exciting!
We hiked some more to get to or campground, which unbeknownst to us was right in downtown Deer Town. As soon as we set up camp, there were deer everywhere. They seemed to be very used to campers being around and were not nearly as shy or skiddish as is evolutionarily beneficial. They hung around for a while, probably looking for hiker food, until we decided to call it a night and made sure that our bear/deer canisters were secured from our new friends.
