Sorry for not posting, we took out eight days of food and I had no internet for that long. Mt. Whitney pictures are at the bottom which wouldn’t upload before as well. Thanks for your patience!
We resupplied by taking a side trail east over Kearsarge Pass down into the Onion Valley to a road which would take us several thousand feet down to the small town of Independence, CA. Taking the Bullfrog Lake trail up to the pass, we caught amazing views of the Penacles and beautifully blue alpine lakes that reflected the image of the mountains in them. The pass stood at 11,780 feet; although it wasn’t on the PCT, we took it as a bonus pass and got naked for it anyway just to keep up ESPN. It was definitely the longest I’ve ever hiked to a resupply…usually I hit a road and stick out my thumb, conveniently getting a ride to food and beer. Nope. Nine miles to a road. Then we had to depend on day walkers, all of which were inconveniently staying at the campground there and enjoying the outdoors, not Subway, beer, cheap motels, and hot tubs.
Eventually, we did get a ride down in a beat-up white pickup with a guy who charged $5 a head and had taken up a load of thru-hikers including Neon, Onna Move, Bolt, Ornie, Waffles, Cheesecake, and Snowflake. Astro, Magellan, Dead Animal and I jumped in and put our heads down every time he took a turn fast and yelled at us to hold onto our hats while we bounced in the bed of the truck.
We got dropped off at the Chevron gas station and Subway where I had the amazing resupply guru, my mother, send me a package of seven days of food. I got it after I wolfed down a foot long veggie sub in about five minutes or less, then all of us jumped on the regional bus up to Bishop, a bigger town 40 miles north. Inspector Gadget and Hop-a-long had gotten ahead of us to catch the post office hours for his laptop bounce box and gotten Gadget’s dad’s Holiday Inn points for a room in Bishop.
A nice zero was in order where we relaxed, played in the pool, checked out Bishop’s three outfitters, and ate copious amounts of food. The next day, we got back to the Chevron via the local mid-day bus and began hitching back up to Onion Valley. We picked up House and Lunchbox, so we split up to try for rides. Eventually, Hop-a-long, Inspector Gadget, House, and Lunchbox got a squeezed ride up while Dead Animal and I waited. Before long a car pulled up and screeched to a stop. Bounce Box, Major Upchuck, and the Indiana Boys jumped out with one of their girlfriends who was going to hike for a while. Bounce and Upchuck were actually heading back to Lone Pine where they got off, so they got back in the car while a nice woman named Debbie drove the five of us left up to the Onion Valley trailhead.
Hop-a-long had left her poles in a rides car going down. The trail is good though because the ride gave them to a hiker at the Chevron who posted on the PCT-l (PCT email list) that they left them with the Onion Valley Campground Host. However, when we got there, the host had lent them out to a family with kids two and a half miles up the trail. We began walking and we found the kids who returned her poles one at a time.
That evening, Hop-a-long, Dead Animal, Inspector Gadget, Lunchbox, House, and I camped near a lake about halfway up to Kearsarge pass. We hit the pass in the morning for a second time and took the pass trail back to the PCT where we immediately climbed over Glen Pass.
We had naked time on top to continue ESPN, then hiked down to Rae Lakes where we went swimming in the alpine lake and got eaten by mosquitos. The downhill continued to right before mile 800 where we camped in the last bear box campsite we saw with lots of JMTers.
The PCT and the JMT (John Muir Trail) are the same for a large chunk of the Sierras and most of the JMTers hike sobo to finish on Mt. Whitney with their extremely large packs.
The next day was trying for me. Pinchot Pass kicked my ass, the seven days of food weighed me down, and I cursed the bear canister which was trying to rub blisters on my back. The pass just climbed and climbed and climbed on obnoxiously large rock steps and for most of it, I kept thinking I was farther than I was, probably because we tried to hike faster to out-hike the mosquitos, then running out of breath and expending energy killing them as they tried to suck our blood.
We took a decent break on top, getting naked to spite the evil pass that took incredibly too long to climb, then we descended slowly. I was so beat by the bottom, Dead Animal and I camped there with the mosquitos while Hop-a-long and Inspector went on another 40 minutes or so.
In the morning, Dead Animal realized that some creature had eaten large holes out of his new socks that he had only worn once. The probable suspects were either a mouse or a chipmunk.
We found Inspector Gadget and Hop-a-long not too far up the next morning and they talked about frost. We all got to the top of Mather Pass, did the usual naked ritual, and began a hideous decent which actually hurt my knees a bit for the first time this trip. Following a waterfall down, switch back after rocky switch back, we passed lots of JMTers and their large packs going up. There were beautiful look out points where we could see deep into the valley that we would plunge down into, almost down to 8,000 ft.
The Backpacker Chronicles 