- Date: 2023-06-22 - 2023-06-23
- Pct day: 49
- Start: Mile 703
- End: Mile 703
- Distance: 0 miles
- Ascent: NA
- Descent: NA
- Start name: NA
- End name: Kennedy Meadows South
- Wake up: NA
- Start hiking: NA
- At camp: NA
- In bed: NA
- Where I slept: tent
- Shower: yes
- Best thing: Finding a crew for the Sierras
- Worst thing: stress about the sierras; frosted over tent;
Key moments
- The next few days were a bit of an anxious time, trying to work out how to tackle the sierras - trying to find a group of people who want to go in, and who I think I’ll gel with, buying 10 days of food and working out how to pack 10 days of food into a special bear proof canister.
- Basically you can either not pack enough food and be malnourished. Or, you can pack 10 actual days of food and hang the extra food in a bag.
- Ugh anyway just writing this down now is taking me back to the anxiety of working all this out
- On the upside, there was heaps of cool hikers at Grumpys, and there were also “bottomless” pancakes- but each one was about 2Kg and the size of a (very) large steering wheel. I had half for breakfast and half for dinner.
- Somehow my friend Alex finished two. The dude must be seriously under-calouried. I wanted to give him the trail name “Bottomless”, but it didn’t stick.
- Every night at Grumpys there was karaoke, so I enjoyed singing a rendition of the monster mash, among other songs. It was great to see hikers let their hair down a bit.
- There was also one guy (Full House) who literally let his hair down and shaved his head into a bin.
- It was very stressful trying to work out an itinerary for the trip, trying to work out how much food to carry and if my food could even fit in my bag. I have a small 44L internal bag, plus all my warm hiking gear.
- Honestly it was awesome to be among awesome hikers but it was also very stressful just waiting there and spending money on breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
- On the upside I got to tick off “hitching in a cattle trailer” off of my PCT bingo list, hitching from the general store to Grumpy’s. We got about 12 hikers in there, and then another two hikers ran over to get in, and the driver jokingly got out and chased them with an electric cattle prod.
Plan from here
- We had a party of psyched hikers: Serena, Outlaw, Flora, Franck (Owl), Fiona (Cukes), Fancy Pants. We are going to head 20 miles out at meet up together the following day.
- I was not sure at first with the group, but Outlaw, Flora, and Owl were people I had hiked with before, so I felt good about hiking with them. Outlaw also hiked the PCT in years previous so that felt really good to have him along.
- I’m nervous, but so excited to be going into one of the most intense sections of the PCT
Animals sighted
Gear thoughts
- Got some grivel crampons - was very excited by these. No other hikers were going for these intense crampons, but I decided I’d go for crampons over microspikes. My bag was incredibly heavy and ditching weight/space was becoming important.
- I felt really excited about my fancy shmancy crampons, they have wicked front spikes that I think will be really important for any steep traversing.
- Yogi said that you can wear crampons with Topo Ultraventure Pros - they have a rock/boot plate in them. Hopefully that is true.
Physical condition
- Blisters healing up OK
Thoughts and Observations
- There was a lot of things that happened here and I’m writing this after the fact. But some funny/notable memories and moments.
- I got to hang out with Graham for a bit, it was so nice to see him. I borrowed Harry’s ukulele and we played “Follow The Sun”, one of Graham’s favourite songs.
- Most people were skipping the Sierras entirely, working out a way to get from Kennedy Meadows South (KMS), or walking out of the first part of the Sierras into Cottonwood Pass, 3 days out from KMS, then flipping up to Truckee or Chester.
- The closest thing I’ve seen to a fight, and my first negative interaction I witnessed on the trail: an annoying loud drunk American dude was talking loudly and telling everyone random stories and interrupting conversations. He ended up leaning on a German dude talking to everyone and the german dude said: “Hey, please don’t touch me”, and the American dude, (Stumbles, we named him), ignored him, so the German dude started speaking german at him. This seemed to trigger something in the American, and he slapped down his hat on the table and started some rant about “you think I don’t know German, I served in the military” and I forget the rest. He wanted to start a fight. Graham calmed the whole thing down and calmly walked him off, saying: “Of course, you’re absolutely right, yes, yes…” while this dude kept rambling on.
- The weirdest/coolest part of this was that the German dude didn’t flinch /seem bothered during this whole situation. He kept his cool and ignored the dude and wasn’t bothered at all. He sang some great karaoke later.
- Alex’s bag was like 70lbs and we played a fun game of getting other lightweight hikers to try and put his bag on. I was rounding people up like they were at a carnival doing a strongman test.
- I heard a loud banging at one point and looked outside to see a hiker smashing up a bag of fritos (like corn chips but better) with the handle of his ice axe. It looked like the this might have been the first thing this ice axe was used for.
- The washing machine at Grumpy’s has been through a lot. I feel for that machine. So much hiker stank.
- It was really fun to see so many hiker friends appearing out of the woodwork. Like Double Check - he had to bail at Tehacapi and go to hospital for strepthroat. He said he got an injection into his ass and then he felt like a new man after a few hours. What a time.
- It was a bit sad to see Alex and Harry head off into the Sierras, I was just still quite tired and recovering from the desert, they would have been a cool group to go through the Sierras with I reckon.
Some of the bad things
- The sheer stress of trying to organise a crew, the anxiety of not having hiked that much with them, the pain of trying to work out 10 days of food, and worrying about insurance.
- I spent a lot of time not hiking and worrying about hiking, and also the strange lack of internet and phone service meant I didn’t get to talk to Katie much, which sucked, considering I hadn’t spoken to her much before this because weirdly phone reception was super spotty and trying to line up sporadic phone reception with a good time to call Katie is just, well, hard.
Quotes of the day
- The trail is the family
#pct #pct2023 #pctclassof2023
