Nicholas Tierney - PCT Day 55: The approach to Forester. An approach to losing my goddamn mind.

Date: 2023-06-29
Pct day: 55
Start: Mile 767
End: Mile 778
Distance: 11 miles
Ascent:
Descent:
Start name: Mt Whitney turnoff
End name: camp near Forester Pass Approach
Wake up: 02:00
Start hiking: 03:00
At camp:
In bed:
Where I slept: tent
Shower: no
Best thing:
Worst thing: Ranger Michael scaring the shit out of us; walking over a collapsed snow bridge

Key moments

I actually accidentally deleted this post when I was out in the Sierras. It wasn’t backed up so there was no hope of retrieving. What follows are what I remember as of 15th April 2024.
This was a very hard day
We had a bunch of stream crossings that involved us walking up and down the streams trying to find a good place to cross
We had been doing team debriefs every night, calling them “pulse checks”, where we would discuss where we were at mentally, physically, and spiritually.
It was a good thing to go through, but I was also feeling myself getting to the end of my tether. We were having fundamentally different ideas about pace, about moving quickly. Fancy Pants didn’t seem to realise that I thought we should all have vito power over a crossing. These sort of fundamental disagreements were really something that I thought we had discussed before we formed up.
We would take turns leading the group in the morning as we headed off.
Leading is actually a huge job in the Sierras. You simply don’t have a trail out here.
Like the most trail we saw was in the first two days. But once we got up into the snow line, the most continuous trail I would see at once was like 5 metres of the actually PCT. Then there would be a snow wall about 3 metres tall. And you’d need to look at where you think the trail would go, and then check your phone to see what FarOut would say - this would drain your batter and also your phone wasn’t always accurate.
What this did mean was that we could take shortcuts across the snow, since if there wasn’t a trail, you may as well take the most efficient route
So as the leader you’ve got to make sure you’re taking everyone on the right track, and occasionally there would be a bit of discussion that would descent into somehwat bickering “Are we on the trail?” “Can we cut across this section?”.
I was usually tailing at the back, with Franck being my buddy.
My feet were just in agony. My knees hurt. By back. Just like, fucking everything. Jesus christ everything hurt. I would find myself hanging at the back, with Pulse and Franck, as everyone else would slowly pull away out of line of sight.
I’d feel tears come up and I’d feel like I was back in primary or high school, like I was being left out. I hated this.
This wasn’t how I ever imagined being in such dangerous conditions.
We eventually all stopped for a break.
Pulse and I were having a hard time keeping up.
I think Pulse started to talk about possibly taking more breaks.
Fancy Pants was getting really frustrated by this - he didn’t like that if we took longer, we would have worse conditions later in the day and we’d be even more destroyed.
He totally made sense, and I wish I could have gone faster. But man.
I cracked and told everyone I was tired of being constantly in a rush. I went on a rant about how I was in absolute agony. I was sick of crying every night. Of crying while hiking at the back.
I was having the worst time, in the most beautiful place.
I don’t think anyone knew I was having such a time. I guess you get good at hiding things as you get older. Or something.
We agreed to take more breaks. We’d take a 2 minute break every 15 minutes. I think?
Fancy Pants didn’t like this, but we all agreed to it.
We changed leaders, and eventually it was my turn.
Something funny happened when I changed into leader - I started to move quickly surely, and had some magic pace on me.
I started to wonder, maybe, if Id' just been by myself, or with a smaller group, I wouldn’t be feeling quite so bad.
I began to wonder just how different things would have been if I was hiking with Alex and Luxury and Arjen.
But you can’t change the past.
At some point I slipped over and solidly bent one of my poles. That’s the last time I’d slip my hands through the loops of my poles - my wrist got caught as I fell, and I didn’t like how that could have ended up with me doing something really weird to my wrist.
Fancy Pants realised that he had lost his phone.
As far as things go, losing your phone is pretty bad.
We went back through our memories and worked out he had it out not too far back, and we agreed on meeting up slightly ahead.
He managed to catch up to us, phone in hand. Whew.
We had a chat about crossing the creeks as a group, and decided that we would have a chat before we crossed to see how everyone was feeling. This was good.
We would spend 45 minutes or so walking up and down a stream, checking FarOut comments, trying to find a decent place to cross.
These crossings were pretty intense though. Like, water rushing up my thighs over my hips. Powerful water.
You sure felt alive, though.
We ended up making I think a bad decision crossing over a partially collapsed snow bridge, just before the ascent up to Forester Pass.
There was another crossing we could ahve taken earlier, but it was honestly just kind of hard to know how high the water would have gone.
But seriously though, the collapsed snow bridge was such a bad idea. If it collapsed and one of us went through it would have been a bad time.
Like maybe Game Over Man, Game Over. It was swift rushing water that went down to rocks underneath that.
We each crossed cautiously. I was so conflcited. On one hand, my feet weren’t getting so cold I couldn’t feel them for 20 minutes. On the other hand if it collapsed. Well.
Ut didn’t collapse. Francy Pants was camped out watching the bridge as each of us went over to watch for any sign. It felt like a decent solution.
Pulse was filming as she crossed and stopped in the middle of the snow bridge to turn and look up and down the stream with her action camera.
Everyone all at once started yelling - “KEEP MOVING” “WHAT ARE YOU DOING”, “PULSE!”
We were taking forever to cross over the snow. The suncups were just the worst. Imagine knee to thigh to hip height troughs in the snow that undulate like a chaotic 2d sine wave as far as you can see into the distance.
You can either choose to stand on the high edges, and risk slipping down into the tough and jarring your knee, your hip, rolling an ankle.
Or you can lift your feet up high and step to the troughs.
Walking on the edges is easy when it’s cold.
But it was warm, and the snow was melting. So you’d slide around on this suncup hellscape.
We saw a ranger, and he told us we made a really terribly decision about crossing that collapsed snow bridge. He said he didn’t want to give us a lecture, but would just briefly say that we made bad bet on a high risk situation. He also told us that Forester Pass was going to be pretty intense, and that he didn’t cross it 5 days ago. He couldn’t even get his ice axe into the crossing. And he couldn’t get a good grip on his feet. He said he’d suggest crossing in the afternoon. Which is totally different to what we’d heard from others, who said to cross early morning to get good snow conditions.
We were all pretty shook by this. It was 2 days out from here, or maybe 5 days back. What were we doing here.
We sat down and had a brief debrief on the bad snow bridge crossing. I felt so out of my comfort zone thinking about the risks we’d taken.
Then we proceeded to have quite a long debate/argument about where to camp from here.
We could see that there was maybe a rocky patch up ahead, but it wasn’t clear if there was another patch before forester pass. Fancy Pants wanted to keep going. We said we should go just to where we could see, and camp there. It went back and forth. Eventually Fancy Pants was out voted.
It took us about 1 hour to maybe half a mile through to that patch. The snow was just so very very slow.
We all fell over multiple times.
I sunk down to my hips more than once in some giant suncups.
Pulse fell over and just lay there for a little while again.
But man, you’d look around, and it was just so stunning.
It was a lot.
A lot of bad feelings. A storm brewing in my head.
But a lot of amazing beauty.
The conflict was enough to scramble my brain into an even finer mush than it was
I got a text on my InReach from Alex. They’d made it through Forester Pass with no problems. He said it was serious, but that there was very good boot pack and well developed slots for your ice axe. He said cross early morning. Totally different to what the ranger said. What the hell.
This was a relief.
We weren’t sure which patch to camp at and we found a bigger patch, but had to communicate to the others that we needed water. We also yelled out to Granite Man that we’d be leaving at 3am.
We had a debrief before we headed off to bed before the Forester Pass ascent. We agreed that if one of us wasn’t sure if we could do it, then at least one of us would go back with them. I agreed I’d go back with anyone. Pulse had had some potential family news that maybe sounded serious.
I remember looking at her and telling her I’d go back with her if she was at all concerned about the pass. I remember this moment, making eye contact, making a sincere promise. I would walk back through that 5 days of hell with her. Even though there was not much more that I wanted but to call Katie. To hear her voice.
There was a bunch of conflict in the group, but Pulse and I had gotten along well in the back of the pack. And you just make a bond with some people.
We ended up at some point saying some positive things about the day and Franck said something really sweet that I still think about. He said he was really grateful that I always checked in with everyone. I wanted to make sure people were OK. I wanted to make sure that the decisions we were making sounded good to them. I cared.
It is an intense moment writing this all out again. Man. This was a fucking time.
Dusk settled in, and we looked out over the most ridiculous site. Forester Pass, the tallest pass of the whole sierras on the PCT lay ahead of us. The only other person we’d seen that day was the ranger. This place would normally have at least 50 people here. But instead it was about 9 of us. All to ourselves. Our friends were 15 miles ahead.
I remembered something Granite Man Tom said: “Make a decision based on what you can see”. Solid advice. You can spend too long in life thinking about what could be.
We looked out as dusk was settling in.
My everything hurt.
But man, it was beautiful.
This place is so ridiculous.

Plan from here

Attempt Forester Pass tomorrow

Animals sighted

Gear thoughts

Fucking crampons on fucking trail runners my god.
The arms broke on the the glacier glasses my friend Alana gave me. Losing sunglasses is pretty bad news. But I fixed them in like 5 minutes by taking my repair kit - scissors and some elastic, and turning them into goggles by breaking the other arm off and threading the elastic through the holes where the arms were. Felt like fucking PCT MccGyver. These were even better because I couldn’t lose them. A small win for the day.

Physical condition