Bubbs Creek to Lower Rae Lakes
It’s so nice to wake up without an alarm clock, something I haven’t done in what feels like years. Keith is still snoozing, and so I attempt to extract myself from our tent as quietly as possible so that I can start morning chores – poo, gather water, make coffee and watch the sun fill the valley we’re camped in. Somewhere in there I wash my hands, promise. While I’m gathering water a doe walks within 50 feet of me, getting her early morning drink from the creek. I feel special to be sharing this little bit of creek bank with a wild creature – meanwhile the busy campsite above us is filled with the clanking of titanium pots boiling water for oatmeal, and the hiss of sleeping pads being deflated.
In the early morning light I can see that Keith and I are definitely the youngest people here, by at least 15 years. One couple looks older than my parents. I hope to still be exploring these wild places when I’m in my 70’s.
With only 10 miles on the agenda for the day we spend the morning dicking around in camp. Keith fishes in the creek and actually manages to catch a few fish! They’re too small to eat, but I frankly didn’t think he’d catch anything on his $10 fly fishing rod, so he’s already far exceeded my expectations.
We’re on the trail by 9:30am and today is the first day that I don’t feel 100% stoked to be out there. My legs are tired I’m feeling slow and stumbly as we descend along the creek. However, once we start our ascent towards Glenn Pass the endorphins kick in and I’m feeling good. Woo, body drugs!
A little into our climb we pass our first NoBo hiker! We haven’t seen anyone else going our direction, and we’d started to feel like the only ones. He says he’s struggling on the climb, and we agree – it’s hot today and the climb is steep. Unfortunately for our new found friend our struggle pace is faster than his struggle pace and so we hike on knowing that we’ll probably never see him again.
Glenn Pass also feels like a struggle because there are so many people descending past us, so we’re always playing the step aside, you go, no you go game with strangers who all look vaguely familiar. I tell Keith that we must have missed the thru hiker uniform memo – carrying a massive backpack, dressed live Steve Irwin raided an REI, and being a white 40 something dude. All day we pass guys who look like REI or LL Bean catalogue models and it’s really weird. It’s times like these when the white, hetero-normative, bro-y nature of our outdoor spaces is really obvious. Over the course of the next two weeks I’ll calculate that only about 30% of the people out here are women, and that about 10% of people are anything other than white. I don’t know how we fix those statistics, but we need to.
The top of Glenn Pass is barely big enough for more than a few people to gather at a time, so we get our picture made and then start to scurry down the back side. There is another snow crossing that I’m less than thrilled about, but at least I keep the water works at bay.
About 100 meters below the saddle we meet an Australian couple hiking the JMT with their young daughter. They’re pretty freaked out and want all the beta we can give them on Forester Pass – how much snow exactly, how close to the top, what about the south side, etc etc. We answer with an odd combo of honesty and assurance which we can see isn’t doing much to assuage their fears. They then tell us that both Muir and Mather passes have super sketchy snow crossings and that you definitely want to cross them in the morning*, but when Keith asks why they have no good reasoning.
* Note: this is objectively terrible advice. If you have to navigate a snow crossing, the best time is early to mid afternoon when the snow is soft and it’s easier to self arrest on if you take a fall.
The last three miles of the day I’m bonking – hard. But we’re so close to camp that I really don’t want to stop to deal with eating. Plus, I’m starting to get the creeping sensation that I haven’t packed enough food.
Rae Lakes welcomes us with a big, slow moving, ford where the surprisingly warm water comes above my knees. The word warm when applied to alpine bodies of water refers to anything that doesn’t make you gasp when you get in it. It’s like a natural ice bath for my aching legs.
Our camp mates for the evening are another clueless bunch of bros. Some are camped far too close to the water, bear canisters stored unnecessarily inside the bear box, others set up camp right next to us with no introduction, they just assume it’s fine which, it mostly is, but their arrogant nature bothers me. I’m grateful that I was raised in an outdoors family, that I was brought up knowing how to behave myself outdoors, how to be kind to mama nature when I’m out and about, and how to generally not be the jerk that people write blog posts about.
Laying in our tent, protected from the mosquitos, I run over the confusing beta we received from the scared Aussies earlier today. So far both Forester and Glenn passes have had snow crossings on which I was less than comfortable. What will happen if Muir and Mather and Pinchot are worse than that? On the JMT there is no real option to bail, no real alternate trail where you could go around a pass if you’re sketched out. I resolve to deal with it when I get there, and not try and stress myself out before that moment. Of course, there is no other option in this situation either, either it will be fine or I’ll have to figure it out.