Hello friends!

It has been 140 miles since my last post! In that time my wee sea baby lungs still haven’t adjusted to the 11,000+ ft altitude, which means that even though we are almost done with The Sierra, I am still breathing like if the Little Engine That Could had been smoking Pall Malls and fronting a hairmetal band for 40 years before taking up being a train. While it doesn’t directly impact my ability to hike, it does somewhat diminish my long-distance hiker credibility when, while interacting with day hikers, I can only speak for a moment before the words sound like they’re being wheezed into a can attached to another can by a string 30 feet long. I do like to think that this high altitude breath training means that when I return to the East Coast, where oxygen is plentiful, I’ll be able to finally accomplish my dream of crushing Celine Dion’s “All By Myself” at karaoke. A boy can dream.

The Sierra has been wrapping up our tired hiker bodies in unfathomable beauty. The late snow melt means that we have been staggering down cliff-faces half drowned in bellowing waterfalls, water molecules leaping joyfully free of their frozen imprisonment to sail sparkling back into the open air. Meanwhile, enormous swaths of stubborn snowfields still cling resolute to the highest passes. Sun cups have turned the deep snow into a turbulent ocean frozen rigidly in place, our determined feet sliding up and down the swells, our forms temporarily disappearing behind perfect waves paused mid-crest. Impeccable, pristine alpine lakes of untouched aqua-blue wait just around every bend of the trail, the water so indescribably clear that to swim with goggles would feel like a deep insult to Mother Nature. Fish and round-bellied late-season tadpoles flick their tails through the crystalline sublimity with no mind to how luck has placed them in one of the true corridors of untouched wild.

One afternoon we arrived at camp earlier than expected, and rather than continue hiking, we stripped to our underpants and climbed into the huge, cascading creek next to the tent site, shrieking joyfully at the shocking cold. After emerging, we plopped our wet butts on a warm, smooth expanse of rock to dry in the afternoon sun, our eyes trained up to the staggering peak of The Hermit laid bare before us, reaching up with hands outstretched to the boundless lavender of sunkissed sky. Argonaut nudged me with an elbow and pointed over our shoulders, and I turned just in time to see two elegant female deer and a small, energetic fawn tiptoe their way delicately past our tents, light dappling their sandy fur.

This magical deer experience was quite the contrast to 2 days later when, while squatting behind a tree to take a quick pee, a deer emerged from between several nearby trees and started trotting immediately up toward me with unbroken eye contact. Without thinking I simply said “Oh… hello,” the way you might greet someone who’s just come up to your cubicle with a memo and walks directly into the noxious cloud of gas that you thought you could discreetly pass just moments before they arrived. If you’ve ever wondered what’s the most effective way to quickly finish a pee, having a large mammal run directly at you is pretty productive. As soon as I could, I stood up, and spoke to the deer calmly but firmly, making it more clear that I was neither a pal nor a threat. The deer stopped cold in its tracks about 8 feet from me with a horrified look in its eyes, much like when you yell and wave enthusiastically to your friend across the street only to realize once they look confusedly up at you that the person is not your friend at all but actually a total stranger and now you want to crawl into a hole and never be perceived ever again. She scampered away with as much dignity as she could muster, which to her credit, was actually quite dignified, given that she was a majestic forest beast.

About a week ago we took a zero day at a small cabin on the West side of The Sierra, about an hour drive on the most terrifying road I’ve ever been on. It was mildly paved, barely wide enough for the Prius (let alone 2 cars), pock-marked with gaping car-swallowing pot-holes and followed winding switchbacks on a cliff’s edge, the path wedged claustrophobically between boulders. It gave the feeling that we’d somehow taken a wrong turn and were driving the Prius pell-mell down a side trail that someone had accidentally spilled some asphalt onto. Once or twice an oncoming car approached, and we’d have to stop and reverse until we could find a crumbling dirt turn-out to creep slowly backward into, our hearts in our mouths, taking it on faith that the turn-out had some kind of rock underneath it and wasn’t just a Looney Toons style drop-out, Wile E. Coyote waiting just below with a manic grin, fork, knife and bib. We made it through, given Toasty’s profound skill, and got to Highland Lake.

I don’t know much about Highland Lake, except that it’s beautiful, and definitely a summer community. What that meant is that the cabin we’d rented was in a cluster of tiny 1960’s lakeside cabins that had never been touched or renovated, and all of which were totally empty. When we arrived, there was no one there. It felt like escaping to the woods during a zombie apocalypse, stumbling upon a cluster of shelters and deciding this is a good a place as any to make a stand. Toasty called the cabin manager (which was exceptionally challenging, as there was no service whatsoever), who told us that all the cabins were unlocked and we could just pick whichever one we wanted and go nuts. All of the cabins had been buttoned up for the season, which meant only a few things worked in each one. We ended up sleeping in one cabin (the one with beds) using the shower of a different cabin (the one with hot water), and the stove of a third (the one with gas). It was genuinely so fun, and we didn’t really want to leave. Toasty made fried chicken, steaks on a campfire, and a dairy-free cheesecake. It felt like we were the last people left on Earth, determinedly choosing joy in the face of a world on fire.

When we went back to the trail we had to tackle the nightmare road again, and unfortunately my motion sickness medication decided to not work, which meant that when we arrived at the trail head I had to take a 45 minute nap to unravel the cosmic nausea ricochetting around my trembling body. After I woke up and ineffectively wiped the drool off my face, we said goodbye to the resolute trooper of Toasty and headed back into the wilderness. We rapidly ascended, and every moment served exponentially more grand vistas as we traversed over passes (unfortunately named for old white guys), each more breathtaking than the ones before. On Muir Pass we had the pleasure of meeting and sharing lunch with several John Muir Trail hikers (the JMT overlaps the PCT quite a bit in this section). One hiker, Rebecca, was my leg hair twin, also lives in the North East, and was so kind.

One evening we stopped a bit early, sort of because we were tired, but more truthfully because we came across a campsite with a rock monster that sent me into such throes jubilation that I simply couldn’t leave. The rock monster was a huge boulder whose lower third, at some indeterminate point in the past, had broken off and fallen down to the ground, making a gaping maw. Some wonderful person (I wish I knew who) had placed smaller rocks along the bottom ridge, making a large toothy mouth. This campsite was additionally situated directly next to the waterfall we’d been hiking alongside for the past several miles, and also had a beautifully (and safely) constructed fire pit. So, for the first time on trail we had the ultimate reward of a small campfire. Sidenote: this was a campsite below 10,000 feet so fires were permitted, Dumptruck is a fire safety expert, we made only a small fire, there was no wind, and we extinguished it properly. Please don’t burn down The Sierra. It would be a real bummer, and Smokey the Bear will be cross with you. You don’t want that. Smokey can be a right brute when he’s mad. He’ll use all your dishes and leave them dirty in the sink, clog your toilet, eat your leftovers without asking and terrorize your cats. Real monster that guy.

We’re currently in Bishop, we’ve had exquisite Mexican food as well as Sushi, and have met several other lovely hikers (at the laundromat and the post office, which are ostensibly the hiker watering holes). We’re currently considering temporarily skipping the last bit of The Sierra (we only have Forester Pass left!) because there’s a predicted 48-hour snowstorm this weekend. As much as that would make for compelling content, it’s not really worth it to us to be above 13,000 ft when it’s likely to be in single digits and 5-10 inches of snow. As we have Toasty with us, we’re thinking of skipping this 30 miles, hiking for several days then bouncing back to get Forester Pass (if it seems safe)!

Oh, also I now have a dyed green mullet as well as a tamagotchi. My 11-year-old inner child has never been more validated.

Love,

Thresher

P.S.

I named my tamagotchi Locutus. If don’t know the reference, just know it is deeply, deeply dorky.