Daily Miles: 17
Total Miles: 64
Last night was surprisingly warm. We figured that since we were camping around 11,200 feet, that it would be a cool night. But it was far from it. It was a night for minimal clothes and legs sticking out from the sleeping quilt.
We got started around 6:00am and had about a mile to our first water source which was the outlet for Chicken Spring Lake. It was a very picturesque alpine lake set in a rock cliff bowl.
Right around there, we passed by Cottonwood Pass. Besides being a memorable campsite in 2016 when we got snowed on, today it felt like a switch was flipped once we passed this point. We started to see lots of hikers who were either entering or exiting via Cottonwood Pass. In the first two hours, we saw three times the number of hikers we saw over our first three days combined. We had enjoyed the relative quiet of the trail in our first few days, but it is also nice to meet other hikers.
We were lucky that today had nice water sources well spaced apart. In reality, we never needed to carry more than two liters of water, but Day 1 is still fresh in our minds so some of us were often carrying an extra liter.
At lunchtime we came to a great creek, where we could wash our feet (which were very dirty from a very sandy trail), do laundry and fill up with clear, cold water. At our lunch spot, there was a woman who was doing the JMT (she was taking an on trail zero day). We talked with her a bit and it turns out that she owns the Mt Williamson Motel in Independence, which is a very hiker friendly establishment. We had stayed there one night in 2014 when it was the original owners. LauraLynn used her InReach to contact her husband who is running things while she’s on the trail. She asked him to set aside two rooms for us, so we should be all set when we get to town in two days.
After lunch we had a mile of nice walking and then we started a really steep climb. Definitely the steepest grade we have had on the trip so far. We saw our first pack animals of the trip as we started the climb. The horses were just led by a cowboy who was walking in front.
Right before starting the climb, we came to our first creek that was actually wide enough to rock hop. The previous days, most of our water sources have been springs or small streams. Seems that we have now gotten into the part of the Sierras where there are legit creeks/rivers.
As we were climbing, we noticed the sky start to fill up with clouds. At first it was quite nice, because they blocked the intensity of the sun. At some point the clouds turned grey, and we started to hear thunder. When it started to rain, we decided to put up a hammock tarp that all three of us could sit under to wait out the rain.
It started to rain pretty hard and we got some lightning and more thunder. Once the rain came, the temperature dropped a lot. We had our rain jackets on under the tarp, but we still got really cold. After about 1.5 hours, the rain finally stopped and we could see that there were bits of blue sky.
We were pretty stiff and cold, but we were really grateful for the rest of our steep climb, because it warmed us back up. The blue skies kept expanding and it turned into a really nice evening of walking.
We camped at the junction where the PCT and JMT meet. Right before we found a campsite, we got a really clear view of Mount Whitney, which is the southern end of the JMT. We came across Drama Queen in his tent in the same area. He was planning to wake up at 1:30am to summit Mount Whitney tomorrow. It was nice to see him, since we had expected him to be at Crabtree Meadows.
We didn’t get into camp until 7:20pm due to our rain delay. So, by the time we set up camp, washed up and ate dinner, it was getting dark. Our campsite was at the edge of a meadow and near a creek, so we could tell it was going to be a cold and moist night. We have our hammock tarps up to help with condensation, and we have all of our clothing layers on due to the cold. We hope the cold temps will give us a good night of sleep.
Ending location: 36.551830,-118.359074
Very nice to have you back! Missed you. Best health wishes!
Hi Dave – Thanks for your wishes! Great to be back out in the mountains 🙂