PCT Day 98 – SoBo Flip – The Plan After A

Chief Lake (mile 886) to Mono Pass Junction (mile 880) plus 10 miles towards Mono Pass/Mosquito Flats

Total PCT miles hiked: 1358

Due to our early start Keith (Starman) and I arrived at the Sierras when there was still a lot of snow, and decided it wasn’t safe to attempt a crossing given my skill level. We elected to flip up to northern California and hike southbound (SoBo) back to where we left off near Lone Pine – giving the snow a chance to melt out. During this flip the PCT milage will be counting down, but I’ll include a tally of our total milage hiked so that you can keep aprised of our progress in a linear fashion.

We wake when the sun crests the ridge above camp and suddenly the temperature in our tent rockets up, courtesy of the fire ball in the sky and it is too hot to sleep any more. Time to hike. I am feeling functionally better today, although now Keith feels like he’s starting to get sick. Drat. I blame the hostle in Mammoth, damn dirty hikers and their germs. We’ve gone just over 20 miles in three days, according to plan we should have gone more than 50 miles by now. If we stay here we’ll run out of food in two or three days. Already our delay is going to cost us milage on this section, forcing us to bail over Mono Pass and back into the front country. Time to start plan B, since plan A has fallen apart so spectacularly.

We climb up and over Silver Pass in the warm morning air, past more white dudes with beards and Hylerlite backpacks that we’re once white but now have faded into the greybrown color which, should really be the official color of thru hiking. We pass southbound JMT hikers with their slow careful steps and their oversized bright gear. They are so clean and new to the trail, and appear somewhat exasperated by being passed by PCT hikers twenty times a day as the final wave of the northbound heard moves through the Sierra.

By noon we’ve turned off the PCT/JMT and on to Mono Pass trail which, will take us back to the front country. Less than a tenth of a mile down the trail and the busy byway of the PCT/JMT fades away, replaced by the rushing television static of Mono Creek and the Cheeseburger calls of the chickadee. I make gaping mouth fish faces as I toddle down the trail – looking like I’m taking big bites out of the air. I can only manage to pop one ear at a time and mostly not even that. I’m walking through the world with the volume down low until *pop* suddenly I’m not and the world of sound floods back in. Again. And again. And again. Down down down goes the volume until *pop!* there it is, that endless, loud world of ours.

By 3:30pm both Keith and myself are fading and we decide to start looking for a campsite. Actually, we’re inspired to start looking for a site when we pass a really choice one, and we really don’t need to hike any further so lets just camp right here. This makes me so happy. A small rare bit of spontaneity which the trail so often feels devoid of.

The PCT is a well marked, exceedingly well documented trail. Almost every campsite and water source and pass and town is marked on the handy maps that we’ve loaded into our pocket super computers. It’s so easy to follow the crowd and the recommendations, turn off your brain and just hike hike hike in the same direction. It’s one of the most mundane parts of the trail. You’re almost always on the same trail, going the same direction, the same goal in mind. It can begin to feel like you’re sailing along on a Disney ride, watching the world pass by from your little boat—hands inside the ride at all times, please stay seated until we’ve reached Canada.

But two days ago things went wrong and the plan for this section fell to dust and we were rewarded by something new and all together wonderful. In pursuing the singular goal of hiking the height of this country I have begun to fully appreciate the joy of things falling apart. The unknown confusion of trying and flailing and having to right oneself again and again in the chaos that is a life. The freedom of choice is so easy to take for granted.

But today we stopped early because we only have five miles out to the trailhead tomorrow. Because what’s the rush. Because why not, this spot looks really nice and we’re the only humans for miles around. We bathe naked in the creek below camp. The smooth river stones feel funny on my tender pink feet—so accustomed to shoes after 1300 miles. The water rushes past my bare legs, warm for the Sierra but still cold enough that I’m retreating on to the bank after only a few minutes. We spend the next few hours before dinner hiding in our tent from the mosquitos. With just a thin layer of mesh between us and the great wide sky we can watch the drama of the atmosphere as thunderheads build and dissipate voluminous in climbing whites above us. In a campsite Keith didn’t research the night before, next to a water source we didn’t know was here before we walked right up to it, next to a trail that was admittedly a little worse than we thought it would be, all washed out with roots and rocks as it is, but new and unknown and all the better for it. Oh fictional gods I am glad for something that felt like it wasn’t planned for me, some real spontaneous decision making. We are all the better because of the things we do not know, but might one day be lucky enough to learn and see.