Pacific Crest Hike & Bike

Now that Tina is on her final stretch I'll risk telling you the secret of our success and good fortune on these treks -- our mascots "The Turtle" and "The Owl".  :-)

The Owl has been with us for over 15 years!   For the ten years we flew our Cessna 182 around it was on every single flight and, if the kids were with us, they made a ritual of kissing it on the head before we took off --- especially Keith (how's that for embarassing? ;-) .. 

The Owl went with us on every hike and on every significant bike ride -- residing in a special place in Tina's pack.   Then last year  it was with Tina on every step of her Appalachian Trail thru hike and it has always been with her this year too -- as she hiked and as she rode with me on the bike.

Since this year we were going to spend so much time apart we decided we needed a mascot just for me.  Thus, "The Turtle" -- which has now ridden with me from Mexico to Canada and has its own dedicated place in my panniers.  

So that's it!  It's not the bike, the tent, the pack, or the ice axe -- it's the The Turtle and The Owl that are our most important "equipment".  ;-)

Okay, back to our regular programming.  

/David  :-) 

After waiting out the rain for two days in Mammoth Lakes (and new snow on the mountain peaks!), Tina hiked the 35ish miles from Reds Meadow over Island and Donahue passes to reachTuolumne Meadows on the eastern side of Yosemite National Park yesterday afternoon.

We're in a pattern of daily thunderstorms in the mountains -- mostly in the afternoons and evening -- and so she still got some considerable rain Monday night, but she was already in her tent and only had to contend with a few drips here and there.   We've now resealed those particular spots and she reported no drips in tonight's rain.

Tina's now out again and 12 miles into the 76-mile stretch from Tuolumne Meadows to Sonora Pass. 

We're planning to wrap things up at Sonora Pass and call this trip done!   That'll translate to over a 1000 miles of hiking and 2800 miles of biking -- given the increasing unpleasantness of mountain weather conditions and our long "to do" list, we're figuring this might be enough for this round!  :)

All the best, David

After stepping off the VVR ferry yesterday around 9:30am, Tina hiked 30 miles, climbed and crossed Silver Pass, and reached Reds Meadow Resort today at 1pm.   Reds Meadow is a Sierra pack station and "resort" (think small store, small cafe, and some cabins) at the end of the road leading to Devils Postpile National Monument.   I was able to snag her there just before a thunderstorm reached the resort and we skedaddled to the town of Mammoth Lakes -- where we are now holed up for the forecast "weekend o' showers and thunderstorms".

As for the trip, the first day was the toughest with nearly 5000 feet of climbing and periods of rain.   Today was easier and shorter but a race to beat the visible thunderstorm, but all-in-all it was a straighforward jaunt.

Notice in some of the pictures how an overcast sky completely changes the complexion of the mountains.  Weather up there is so much more of a serious threat than it is down low that darkened skies immediately set the mind into a constant state of tactical "what if" planning and preparation.  

In any case, the plan for the moment is that Tina will hit the trail again come Monday morning.  

Meanwhile, I'm going to go wash my hands ... again .. (Tina and I just got back from seeing the new movie "Contagion" .. yow).

/David

Finally here with a tiny fraction of the pictures from Tina's 7-day outing through more of the Sierras!  She'd left from the Onion Valley trailhead near Independence, CA on August 30th and reached Edison Lake (and VVR) about 100 trail miles and 7 days later.  The first couple days had been pretty rough as she suffered with altitude sickness symptoms but the rest went well and she was back to flying by the end of the stretch.  

Towards the end we both realized that this was longest stretch of hiking Tina's ever done without resupply .. so that was a nice bar to move with some lessons learned .. but then it was also the longest she's ever been without a shower and so, umm, maybe we don't want to break that personal "best" .. ?  ;-)

We spent a pleasant day and half at the Vermillion Valley Resort on Lake Edison and then Tina was off again (on the morning of the 8th) trying to reach Mammoth Lakes before the forecast rain and thunderstorms arrived.   All about that in the next post.  :)

/David

TUESDAY 9/6 20:30 PDT:
We both made it to the friendly (but expensive) arms of Vermillion Valley Resort (VVR) in fine shape -- Tina by pontoon boat across Edison Lake and I via 7-hour drive crossing the Sierras over Tioga Pass (i.e., through Yosimite) and then crawling back into them via the long, rough, one lane seasonal road that leads to Edison Lake.   Now we're clean, well fed, and settled into the place's very finest travel trailer -- Big Red.  ;-)      Turns out that they have a slow pay (100kbit/s) satellite internet connection and so I'm using that to post this.   We're taking tomorrow off and so I'll try to do a summary post with pictures then.
MONDAY 9/5 23:00 PDT:
Tina hoofed it 20 miles over Seldon Pass reaching the turnoff trail for the VVR "ferry" (a small pontoon boat) and setting up camp after dark.   She reported that she has no idea of her surroundings -- she's simply camped on a flat spot a couple feet from the trail.  In any case, she's planning to catch the morning ride across the lake to the "resort" while I drive the 6 hours from here (Mammoth Lakes) to get there by road -- a crow fly distance of only 15 miles!!   I'm bringing all her resupply items and we're set to spend two nights in some of their deluxe accomodations .. a trailer referred to as "Big Red" .. LOL .. ;-) .. at least we get a 20% discount because it's now past Labor Day!
MONDAY - 9/5 11:30 PDT:
In spite of hearing considerable bear-foraging noises in the early evening, Tina ultimately slept well at her camp near the Muir Trail Ranch and mile 859 of the PCT and down at 8200 feet -- by far her lowest camp since she's been out.   Now (11:30am) she has already climbed back up over 10,000 feet on her way up to Seldon Pass.   At mile 879 she'll reach the turnoff to the "ferry" to VVR which comes twice a day to transport hikers across Lake Thomas Edison to and from the "resort".   We plan to meet there tomorrow.
SUNDAY - 9/4:
With no pass to climb it was a straightforward day of hiking as Tina moved 19 miles north on the trail to a point a couple miles from the Muir Trail Ranch.   She goes to sleep a bit uneasy tonight after hearing a substantial amount of crashing around in the trees near her ("like trees being torn down") and then sounds of big rocks being moved around.   So she's probably got a bear or a sasquatch as a neighbor tonight!  
SATURDAY - 9/3:
Tina hiked around 13-14 miles to reach Muir Pass, encountering rain and sleet shortly before reaching the top.   There she found a stone hut erected by the Sierra Club to honor John Muir.  She sheltered in that a short bit but there was already a fellow there who looked like he wanted to spend the night there and so Tina pressed on in the rain/sleet and made camp a couple miles later near Wanda Lake.   As expected, the rain stopped as she put up the tent and the clouds eventually cleared for the evening.   The forecasts say that the clear days are over with for awhile and so she'll probably have this afternoon/evening behavior all the way to VVR.  Nevertheless, Tina is really looking forward to tomorrow.   All the southbound hikers have been raving about how beautiful the Evolution Creek area is and she arrives there tomorrow.
FRIDAY - 9/2:
08:00 - GOOD MORNING!  SLEPT WELL BUT TOO LONG.  PACKING UP.
14:45 - STOPPING FOR LUNCH,
15:04 - MATHER NOT TOO BAD.  BIT OF TRICKY SNOW ON THE NORTH SIDE.
19:54 - FINALLY IN MY TENT!  GETTING DRESSED FOR BED.
20:08 - COMING DOWN NORTH SIDE OF MATHER STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL.  VERY DEEP AND SCENIC CANYON.
Tina had a great day in the mountains today.  She made good progress, caught up with some hikers we'd met earlier who started back at Onion Valley about 5 hours before she did, stumbled onto Red Hat -- a fellow 2010 AT thru hiker, and hiked in beautiful surroundings and perfect weather.    On the negative side, Tina just ran out of her water sterilization drops and so she'll be drinking straight from the streams and it's getting pretty clear that she won't have enough food to make it into Mammoth Lakes -- she'll have to head to VVR in 3-4 days.
THURSDAY - 9/1:
07:19 - ICE ON THE OUTSIDE OF MY SLEEPING BAG THIS MORNING!
07:25 - SLEPT WELL.  COYOTE SERENADE AROUND 5:45 AM.
17:27 - SITTING ON TOP OF PINCHOT PASS.  WAS REALLY TOUGH AND NOT BECAUSE I FELT WEAK OR BAD OR ANYTHING.
17:28 - THOUGHT I WAS NEVER GOING TO MAKE IT!
17:34 - OH, AND BY THE WAY, I JUST GOT BUZZED BY A HUMMINGBIRD AT 12,300FT.
WEDNESDAY - 8/31:
06:58 - SLEPT OFF AND ON.  HAD HEADACHE.
07:02 - WENT TO GET BEAR CAN THIS MORNING AND FOUND A TENT SETUP ONLY A FEW YARDS FROM IT. COULD EXPLAIN THE WEIRD NOISES.
16:12 - TAKING A BREAK.  PRETTY BUSHED.  DISAPPOINTED WITH SELF.
16:15 - RAE LAKES VERY BEAUTIFUL
16:22 - PLAN TO GO ON HERE SHORTLY BUT PROBABLY WON'T MAKE IT FAR
TUESDAY - 8/30:
21:12 - STOMACH JUST GROWLED SO LOUD I THOUGHT THERE WAS BEAR OUTSIDE!
21:22 - I FORGOT TO DRY THE TENT OUT.  IT WAS STILL PRETTY WET
21:35 - STRANGE NOISES OUTSIDE.  JUST MARMOTS, RIGHT?

/David

Tina successfully made it up and over Forester Pass (the highest one on the PCT) and then yesterday she headed up and over Kearsarge Pass hiking the 9 miles off trail to reach me and resupply at the Onion Valley trailhead near Independence, CA.  The combination of re-adaptation pains and weather (occasionally raining and/or sleeting each day except the last) slowed her down a bit, but the things went pretty well, considering. 

Bad weather or no, I'm so jealous of what she's experiencing out there!   This time she came in with over 400 photos and almost all of them were fantastic.   For your sake I worked forever trying to pare them down but I gave up somewhere around 20... sigh!    The mountains are certainly a magical place.

After a day of rest, cleaning, and resupply Tina headed back up the trail late this afternoon and made it back up and over Kearsarge and most of the way back out to the PCT.   From where she's at now she's got about 120 miles of hiking to reach Mammoth Lakes.   We're thinking that'll take a week and that's about how much food Tina's carrying unless a bear or marmot takes some of it.   If she runs short she can catch a ferry across a lake at about 90 miles lake to reach Vermillion Valley Resort and that wouldn't be an entirely bad thing. 

I'm still working details, but I'm probably going to go hang out at Mammoth Lakes and doing a fair bit of riding -- maybe changing out tires on the bike and hitting some of the MTB trails on this crazy tandem.  :-}

/David

Going directly from low altitude life to hiking and camping at 11,500 feet turned out to be a bad idea.   Last night Tina didn't get any sleep as she suffered from classic altitude sickness symptoms -- insomnia, headaches, nausea, and shortness of breath.     This morning she found it very difficult to get going.  

Since the altitude profile for the day didn't call for her to gain any altitude, she decided to proceed northward.   But before long ominous clouds arrived complete with thunder ... and then the sprinkling started.   After some communication with me to consider what weather radar was saying, she decided to proceed along attempting to make it to Crabtree Meadow before stopping.

Well enough but then Tina took the worst fall of her entire hiking career.   She tripped and went downslope head first, hitting the right side of her head first with the bear canister thankfully taking the bulk of the remaining impact (as it skittered way).   Tina then continued to roll and slide downhill until ultimately she struck a downed tree.   There she was lucky again in that it was her pack that hit the tree first.

At first her head and neck hurt but that situation improved through the day and so she seems to have gotten away with just abrasions and minor cuts.   Except that also she later realized that her sunglasses had disappeared in the process and by then she was much too far along to go back to look for them.

"Luckily" the cloud cover kept the missing sunglasses from being an issue today but tonight she's making herself an eskimo type slit mask out of duct tape.

A short bit later the heavens then opened up and completely soaked her and much of her equipment.   Things got so bad that she ultimately just stopped along the trail and pitched her tent in the rain.   As expected, that caused the rain to stop and ultimately caused the clouds to clear.   It was 5pm by then so she spent the rest of the day drying out -- finally going in at sunset when the mosquitoes came out.

But by the end of the day, her headache and nausea was gone, she'd met a number of other hikers (who told her some positive developments about her coming Forester Pass traverse), saw her first pack train, and was settled in reading a new book.   And so while it was a terrible day, it ended much better than it started and that's not a bad thing.  :)

As for me, I got my haircut and new tires -- just as planned.  ;-)

/David

Tina's back on the trail again!    Tina rejoined the trail at Cottonwood Pass early this afternoon and is now headed northward once again.  

All today and for most of tomorrow she's having to retrace trail that already covered but then the next day she'll reach new ground as she climbs and crosses Forester Pass.   At 13,153 feet it's the highest pass on the Pacific Crest Trail.   It's also the highest pass on the John Muir Trail which has Mount Whitney as its southern terminus and shares the same track as the PCT for some 160 miles.

Back at ground control, the big news is that I did a couple hours of bicycle maintenance and tomorrow I'm getting a couple new tires put on the truck.  Exciting stuff .. ;-)

All the best!  /David

Five days of driving have brought us to San Diego where we are gearing up for Tina's re-entry to the trail by getting her new prescription sunglasses, etc.

On the way we had a fabulous time retracing our cycling route through Washington and Oregon and then also a good fraction of the portion in California north of Ridgecrest.   Doing that really enhanced the overall trip.

One extra delight along the way was bumping into hikers on the trail.   In the oddest coincidence we met up with Tripp and Sweep again when we stopped by the entry gift shop / restaurant at Crater Lake.   They were there with a couple other hikers we'd met in the past (Murphy and DumpTruck) and a couple more who were new to us.   Of the latter, one of those turned out to be a volunteer at the Wildlands Conservancy I'd spoken and emailed with a couple times on the phone early on in the hike about access to one of their preserves!

While we at Crater Lake we took some "morning" photos to go with the evening photos we'd taken on our first pass through.   We really need to spend a couple days there sometime.   As pointed out in Tripp & Sweep's journal, the colors of the lake change throughout the day and it's a wonderfully dramatic venue for some R&R.   They were even treated to a storm on the lake!   Nice.

Assuming things go well with the prescription sunglasses acquisition today, Tina will get back to the trail late Wednesday or Thursday.  

Until then, David

First, thanks to everyone for all the support!    Our 50-ish mile ride to finish up the "dual riding" portion of our adventure yesterday couldn't have been easier or more pleasant.    We had clear sky morning weather (which, according to the local news, is extremely rare), light winds, our flattest route yet, and a beautiful mix of farm lands, forests, and mountains to ride through -- the perfect setting for a celebratory final "stage" of the cycling portion of our "tour".    It was just a super day in every respect.  

We were only in Canada long enough to properly "count coup" before we turned around to have lunch near the border in Sumas.  Then we cycled on to a U-Haul dealer in Everson, WA where we'd reserved one of their smallest trucks.   Once there we loaded everything up and immediately started driving backwards on the route we'd just cycled up!  By dark we'd driven all the way back to Pateros, WA -- carefully following our cycling route all the way -- and during the whole drive continuing the celebration with conversations like "Oh, I remember *that* ..." ... "Remember when we were almost blown off the road --- wasn't that right here?  ... no, no .. up at this curve".    And so on.   It was great.

Today we continued backtracking our route in the U-Haul truck doing the same thing all over .. getting our bike ride even further etched into our brains, doing a constant compare and contrast between cycling and driving, and so on.   We also added on a bit this time taking the long climbing dog leg to see the crater side of Mount St Helens (pics tomorrow) and other minor explorations like that.   

Tonight we're all the way back to the Oregon/Washington border and tomorrow we pick things up again with the backtracking, and then we'll be at it again Friday until we're all the way back in Ridgecrest, CA where Tina started cycling fulltime. 

That sets up "Phase 3": Tina has decided that she wants to pick her hike up where she left it at Mount Whitney and then head north until she's finished all of California or gets stopped by the first major snow storm.   

The original plan had called for Tina to hike continuously from Mexico to Canada followed with us cycle touring back.    But the extremely dangerous water crossings that resulted from the record snow year pushed us to transition to cycling north back at Whitney.   Meanwhile, the summer was late and cool here in the north and so a good bit of the snow is still on the ground -- thus no hiking south from Canada as an option.   The distance math says that there's just no possibility that she'd be able to complete a thru hike in the usable remains of the year, but there's every liklihood that she can finish off California and so that's what she's shooting for.    We're nevertheless feeling very "successful", tho.    While we didn't and won't thru "hike", we have already now combo thru bike-hiked (bhiked?  hbiked? hi-biked?).    Anyway, we're doing what we can and now we're going back to put more of California in the "hiked" category.

While I'm keeping the bike with me to help me maintain basic fitness while she does that, the realities of doing support through the Sierras have dictated that I fetch our truck from San Diego, where my brother Carl has been keeping it in better than safe-and-sound shape.   I'll use it to meet and resupply Tina every 5-7 days.    In my downtime I'll be preparing for future mischief.  :-}

That's all for now!  /David