Daily Miles: 16
Total Miles: 113
Bigger day today with two passes and some weather. We got a ride up to the trailhead from a lady who lives near the motel where we stayed. She picked us up at 6 a.m., so we were on the trail around 6:30 from the Onion Valley Trailhead.
We ended up having two zeroes in Independence to give Mace some more time to recoup from what was going on with his guts. I think we all felt a little stir-crazy being at the motel for a couple of days. Beardoh went to the park in Independence for a few hours to read and meditate, and SweetPea did her own walkabout around town.
The morning’s hike up Kearsarge Pass was really nice. The sky was clear, but the air was cool. Not too many people were on the climb at that early hour. Once we got to the pass, it was actually cold, and we put on our wind shirts.
On the walk back to the PCT, we stopped at Bullfrog Lake. The wind started blowing quite hard, and it started to rain, so we put up a tarp. A ranger stopped by and chatted with us for a few minutes. Interestingly, she did not ask to see a permit—but she did make sure we were not planning to camp at the lake. For some reason, it is off-limits to camping.
After Kearsarge Pass, we made our way back to the PCT and began the walk to Glen Pass.
As we got close to Glen Pass, thunder started. It was sporadic and not accompanied by much rain. Temps were cool enough that we put on our rain jackets.
At the top of the pass, there was a little bit of wind, but more importantly, the thunder started clapping quite a bit louder. From what we could see, the lightning was all cloud-to-cloud, without any visible strikes to the earth. However, the clouds were really low at that elevation, so we moved down the other side of the pass quite quickly. For a bit, the thunder was particularly active, so we stayed up against a rock face so that we were not the tallest objects in the area.
Once fully descended and walking near Rae Lakes, the thunder stopped, and we just had some intermittent sprinkles.
The ranger we had seen near Bullfrog Lake warned us that bears had been pretty active in the area stretching from Rae Lakes to the Kearsarge Pass area and on up to the basin below Forester Pass. We walked past the Rae Lakes campsites and continued on to the last spot where there are bear boxes and found an area that worked for Mace’s tent and our hammocks.
Tonight, we are in bed before 8 p.m.…so hopefully, we’ll get some long hours of sleep.
Ending Location: 36.827418,-118.408870
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