Pacific Crest Trail: PCT-5

Saturday, June 9 - PCT mile 698

We're just a few miles from Kennedy Meadows, the entry gate to the iconic California High Sierras. We reached the first real creek in a long time and took a dive in the water right away!

The past 2 days we hiked pretty hard, 18 miles both days with taxing climbs due to the heat and loaded with food and water. We're still in very dry places.

First the Owens peaks from Walker Pass which we climbed late afternoon after the hottest hours.

Then a successions of mostly shadeless mountains, we're still on the outskirts of the Mojave desert.

And dry valleys.

Many hikers carry silver colored umbrellas for maximum sun protection. Joao calls them “the Mary Poppins”.

We've perfected our meals:

Cold soaking couscous or instant rice with herbs, dried tomatoes, curry, freeze dried chicken or bacon bits!

Look how much bigger the couscous gets in just ½ hour! This is light food to carry and better nutrition than just heavy protein/energy bars and snacks. And the funny thing is that the ideal container is a gelato jar made of sturdy plastic with a screw top. Most hikers use this simple lightweight jar instead of the expensive silicone collapsible or other fancy containers sold by the outdoors stores. Plus we get to savour a delicious ice cream full of much needed calories!

Jeremy at 8 pm from his tent:

Mom are there crabs in the desert??

What are you talking about?

I see the claws and it's under my tent.

It's probably just a scorpion. Just go to sleep.

Ok Mom.

😂😂

Monday, June 11 - PCT mile 713

We took a short break at Kennedy Meadows amongst a revolving crowd of PCT hikers. The boxes full of food we had mailed for ourselves to the rustic hiker-friendly General Store during our Tehachapi resupply break were waiting for us. Laundry and outdoor showers were also offered as hiker service as well as basic junk food we generously indulged on. A bit refreshed and calorie-boosted, we started to hike to the High Sierras.

Muriel was impatient to get out of dry desert zones, where we had seen a lot of depressing fire devastation and the follow-up desertification due to the warming climate. Oldtimer-hikers had told us how the PCT used to go through beautiful lush and deep forests up to 10 years ago for most of its southern course, much different than nowadays.

But even after Kennedy Meadows, we still faced more stretches of depressing burnt mountain slopes. Muriel got depressed, she expected green landscapes by now. The transition from desert and devastated patches was taking its time.

Wednesday, June 13 - PCT mile 743

At last, we’ve entered the high meadows, it will be a while now before we’ll be down lower than 9000 ft.

And Muriel is not depressed anymore. 😂

We're hiking at 10,000ft and it's a gorgeous, breathtaking scenery! Getting better every mile.

We're in the Sequoia National Forest. Trees are amazing!

Muriel next to a giant pine.

Look! Jeremy! He usually hikes behind us with other hikers and then we meet at the end of the day at a set mile, so we don't have many opportunities for getting pictures of him. It's just not cool to hike with parents!

We start seeing snow on the peaks in the horizon, where we're heading.

The desert is still not that far below down the east slopes though.

But the meadows are so green!

Tuesday, June 19 - PCT mile 789

We're resting for a day in a nice hiker friendly motel at Independence, CA, down from the mountains. It was time to shower, do laundry and resupply with food again.

It has been such an incredible hike the past 5 days! The difficult part: choose the pictures!

We first crossed the Sequoia National Forest. These are no sequoias, but they're still amazingly big pines, often twisted in awesome shapes, smelling voluptuously; they grow on rocks and white gravel.

Chicken Spring lake

Then more and more lush meadows rewarded our long hikes with picturesque scenery.

Mt Whitney, the highest mountain in the US (minus Alaska) at 14400 ft (4400m) got closer and we made the 16 miles detour to climb it.

Our “base camp” at Guitar Lake, 11,000 ft (3300m) the evening before climbing Mt Whitney.

The views are breathtaking 😀

The hiking a bit more perilous.

Summit!

And Jeremy? He continues to amaze us and every other hiker on the trail. He climbed Mount Whitney the evening before, in the dark with headlamps,with Lee, an experienced young hiker and PhD student who had been hiking with us for the past few days and taken Jeremy under her caring wing. They “slept” at the top to enjoy the sunrise! 😀 We're waiting for Lee’s pictures but here they are before their crazy night ascent.

Then the next day we went over Forester pass. The highest mountain pass on the PCT at 13000 ft (4000m).

On our way water crossings became more adventurous.

We hiked well above tree line.

We entered a different world! Rock and ice!

Snow crossings.

Then snow fields to slide down to the other side!

This is mountaineering landscape!

And then going down the gorgeous Kings Canyon ice-age valley.

Muriel taking no chances on a creek crossing 😂😂

Picture perfect scenery!

Those last 2 days we had hiked up to 18 miles per day with climbs to the highests points along the trail, above 13000 ft. Fatigue was creeping in and our food was getting low. Especially Jeremy’s who had gulped all his delicacy snacks within the first days as usual and was left with only dehydrated mashed potatoes and refried beans. Will he ever learn to plan anything beyond instant gratification!!!

But we got a great lucky surprise: a group of American Irish guys had set up some “Trail Magic” at the Vidette campground. Hilarious! They dressed as Canadian border patrol, mocking a border with flags and post signs and offered free pasta with meat or veggie sauce, s’mores, cheese and salami, a campfire, music and even whiskey! They had hired a pack of mules to transport all this!

Look at Muriel’s smile as she eats lots of pasta! Joao and Jeremy have never seen her so happy with pasta 😂😂

And then, in the morning, THEY SERVED BREAKFAST IN THE TENT!!! COFFEE WITH HOT CHEESE AND SAUSAGE TORTILLAS!!😀😀😀

The ogre in action (We know, great full body tanning, we know, we know…)

It got cold that night by the way; socks washed the evening before froze over 🤣.

And to finish this first part of the sierras, we went over Kearsarge Pass (11700ft) to go back down to the hot desert in order to resupply in the small town of Independence.