Susanne's Adventure Journal

2.4 PCT miles I'm back! Well, sort of. I originally wanted to come back yesterday, but ran into some unexpected problems, so I came back to Kennedy Meadows South today. My plan was to leave really early in the morning so that I could hike most of the day. I didn't end up leaving Orange until well after 10 am. Instead of rushing to get to the trail, my Trail Angel and I took a scenic detour.  We drove to Kernville and paralleled the Kern River until we reached Sherman Pass Road, which we were going to drive 75 miles through Sequoia National Forest to get to Kennedy Meadows. It was a hot day. As we were driving through the desert the dashboard thermometer read 109 degrees (F). As we drove along the Kern River the temperature was still in the 90s. Only when we got up to 5,000/6,000 ft did the temperature drop into the 80s. Once we hit Sherman Pass Road and started heading deep into the forest the scenery got really pretty with the sharp granite rock formations and pine tre...

I came off trail recently for a couple family events in Minnesota and Illinois.  The plan was to hop back on the trail immediately when I returned to California. Unfortunately, California  (and most of the southwest) was hit with a heatwave. It has actually been a prolonged heatwave, lasting a little over a week. Considering the next part of the trail takes me into the upper elevations of the Sierra-Nevada Mountains, I decided to wait it out for a while. The numerous water crossings were already swollen and dangerous, so the massive snowmelt from the heatwave would have made it even worse. Additionally,  I will be crossing Forester Pass, the highest point on the PCT, in this next section. It is safer to cross the snowfields when the snow is solid and it may not have gotten cold enough, even at night, for this to happen. As we are currently in the tail end of the heat wave, I am heading back to the trail. Some reports I have seen show that the water flow has peaked for...

5.3 PCT miles For the first time on the trail I didn't set my alarm.  I was only going a couple miles to Kennedy Meadows South and I told my Trail Angel I would be there by morning or lunchtime depending on how close I was the night before. I stayed in my tent for quite a while after waking up and, because I had left the tent fly off, I was able to watch the sun light up the granite mountains across the valley. The mountains across from my tentsite lighting up. I packed up everything and headed towards Kennedy Meadows South.  This is the last stop before the High Sierra, and everyone had been talking about it for a long time.  It almost seemed like this far away fantasyland, but I would be reaching it today. Soon after I started hiking I hit the last piece of the scenery puzzle that, in my mind at least, officially made this the Sierra: a river cutting through the landscape. I celebrated in my head shortly before getting serious.  As a walked alongsi...

24.7 PCT miles This morning I started out by finishing the uphill climb I had started the night before. I still had about two more miles of uphill before it started to go down again. The sunlight was streaming through the trees during this section, which made it really pretty to walk through. Not a bad way to start the day. After I hit the crest I was going to head down until I got to Chimney Creek. The nice thing about this section was that it was still mostly covered in trees. And, those trees were not Joshua trees. Finally! Hopefully that meant I had officially left the desert. In addition to the (non Joshua) trees were large granite boulders and close to Chimney Creek there was a beautiful, large meadow. Did I do it? Did I finally transition? It felt like it. Mountain meadow. Boulder formations along the trail. I filled up with water at Chimney Creek. Here I met one of the hikers from yesterday, named Ballistic. It was a name I feel like I have seen o...

20.9 PCT miles I didn't get off to a great start this morning as I woke up over an hour and a half later than when I had set my alarm for. I checked my phone and both the alarm had been set and there was no “missed alarm” message. I must have turned it off and fallen asleep again. As a result, I didn't get back to Walker Pass Campground until 8 am, which is pretty late start for desert hiking. Plus, I had a large desert hill to climb within the first mile. It was my fault for sleeping through my alarm, so I was just going to have to deal with it. I walked to 0.8 miles to Walker Pass (where it crosses the freeway and signed the register before starting uphill. While I didn't see anyone on the trail, there was a long list of people who already passed by there this morning and signed the register. Going up. As I started hiking up I noticed two day hikers behind me. I have come to be irrationally irritated by day hikers. Maybe it is because they are clean....

Originally, this was supposed to be just a single zero day.  My Trail Angel was still going to pick me up from Walker Pass, but we were going to zero in one of the nearby towns instead of driving back and forth.  I am getting far enough north now that going "home for the weekend" doesn't quite make sense anymore. However, my Trail Angel convinced himself that the drive wasn't that long and wanted to do a double zero.  Since I wasn't driving, I didn't have a problem with it. It was a little difficult to sit in a car for several hours after hiking all week, but I was able to hobble the stiffness out of my legs when I got to the house. My recovery time on my rest days is improving and I actually spent the morning of my second zero day walking around Disney's California Adventure.  I checked out the line for the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride, which was already way too long, before getting a fastpass for Soarin' and waiting in the standby line for Ca...

20.5 PCT miles I was packed up and ready to go a little before 5 am this morning.  Everyone who was camped at Bird Springs Pass was going to start their day with a long, exposed uphill climb through soft sand.  Brewhiker was trying to encourage everybody to get up before sunrise to tackle the climb before the sun hit that area and had offered to make people breakfast burritos starting at just before 4:30 am. However, last night as I went to bed, the fuel canister to his stove had run out of gas so I figured there would be no breakfast burritos.  I still got up early to do the ascent, and walked over to his car to see if I let my sun gloves there the previous night.  To my surprise, he had a burrito ready to go, toasted and all.  He was able to use a frying pan with a different stove and had already made two batches of breakfast burritos for the hikers this morning. I ate the burrito, thanked him for being so awesome, and left to tackle the climb. I’...