Day 49 – Evolution
Originally published on Mason Hikes the PCT 2017.
Mileage: 16
We camped right next to Evolution Creek last night, but we were still a few miles away from the official crossing. Evolution Creek, a horribly named behemoth of a river, is one of the more difficult river crossings on the PCT due to how wide, fast, and deep it is. It’s so problematic that there is an official alternate route to take when the water is high. Since the water is crazy right now, we opted for that route.
The great thing about camping so close to a creek crossing is that you get to do it first thing in the morning. By 7:00, we were at the crossing, and each person opted to do the crossing his or her own way. My method involved me putting on my damp socks from the snow and rain yesterday and taking off my pants, leaving me with long socks and short underwear. I initially went upstream a bit to see how the crossing was, but it looked far too deep to walk across, so instead I hung out with a mama deer and her fawn, who was really really terrible at hide and seek.
I backtracked to follow the rest of the crew, but my feet were starting to go numb. It was COLD in that water! I did my best to stay out of the river, but my efforts were mostly in vain. We kept trying to find the shallowest option for crossing, but nothing looked particularly good, so I chose a moderately shallow option and went for it.
The current wasn’t strong where we were, so it wasn’t dangerous as much as cold if I got in too deep. I made steady progress in waist deep water and saw what I thought was a shallower area with some rocks, so I headed for that to finish up the crossing. It turns out that I was very wrong and was actually headed for deeper water, which I quickly realized as the water rise from my waist to my chest. I was holding my pack up above my head so it wasn’t getting wet, but everywhere from my armpits down was soaked and freezing. With no support from my hands, I was also slowly being pulled by the current, but luckily I kept my footing and continued to shallower water on the other side. Whew, it was over! (kinda)
Everyone else had seen the armpit-level water on my crossing and chose different options, except Savage, who decided that doing exactly what I did sounded fun. She did the exact same thing, only my armpit-level water was more like neck-level water for her, so she actually lost her footing and had to swim across with her pack on her back. 😬 She made it though!
Everyone else found the magical belly button-deep crossing and wasn’t nearly as wet as us, but we were all pretty miserably cold. We took off the wet clothes to let them dry, but I needed to warm up, so I did what I always do nowadays: I hiked. I figured that I might as well make it to Muir Trail Ranch while drying, so I started the long descent with Flame. We were absolutely cruising through the miles, finishing the 7ish miles in two hours.
We were really far ahead of the rest, so we made a quick sign to point them in the right direction and settled down to relax.
Muir Trail Ranch is a homey little place, but they treat hikers very well. They had well organized hiker boxes (they weren’t as great as during normal years though), a charging station, a tiny little store (no food or drink), and water from a spigot. I replenished what I needed (toilet paper! Thank god!) and set up my electronics to charge while I played with the plethora of pups hanging out around the ranch.
When everyone got there, we discussed logistics and decided that some members of the group didn’t think they could go up and over the pass tonight, so we would walk four more miles and call it a day before doing the pass tomorrow. With that, Flame was off and probably running up to the campsite. I stayed for a little while longer to talk to some other hikers who were surprisingly upset with MTR for their lack of amenities. One wrote “‘Great hiker boxes and home cooked food!’ I should have known better…” which seemed pretty harsh and unappreciative towards a place that doesn’t owe anything to the hiker community but still provides these services for us.
Our uphill was rough, but Flame and I made it pretty quickly and set up camp. The rest caught up and told us they had acquired fishing gear, so we were camping a mile up trail by a lake. It sounded nice to me and I can always go for a swim, so I packed up my stuff and moved on.
We got to the lake and I took a nice bath while the boys fished, and then we played a fun game of “throw the pinecone in the bear canister” for a while.
We didn’t catch any fish, but we were much closer to the pass, so I had no complaints. Camping at 10,000+ feet is fun!
