The next one - Pinchot Pass - was about 13+ miles away 🙄 from where I had camped on D-39. Yes, it was far away and that would mean I could only reach it later in the morning & hence, a painful traverse across slushy snow-fields and a lot of post-holing. To minimise the pain, I decided to start real early @ 3:45 am. First night hiking experience and it was not that different, especially since the trail was rather straight forward. There was one larger water crossing, but that was not deep, but just wide. And the sun started showing up an hour later anyway.
This was one rather wobbly bridge which reminded me of the Tacoma Narrows "Galloping Gertie" bridge as I was walking across 🙂.
After a very long hike and unfortunately, a few post-holing incidents later, this is almost to the top of Pinchot Pass (PP)
Finally found a marmot that was not camera-shy on top of the pass. These large rodents are rather crafty little thieves. They will steal your food from your tent/backpack - even chewing through them - when you are not looking.
Lots of places where the trail was full of flowing water. Rock dams on the trail divert the flow away.
The next pass was the dreaded Mather Pass - at least, according to some comments on the Far Out app. I was really hoping to climb the pass the next morning with some company, rather than alone. And, by an absolutely wonderful coincidence, the only person who was at the last campsite just before Mather Pass where I was going to camp for the night was a fellow-hiker named Guy.
Let me tell you about how I met Guy. The first time I met him was around mile 250 or so, when we said hello to each other as we were camped next to each other. The next time I saw him was on the morning of Day 20 getting out of Wrightwood when he had flagged a ride out of town to the trail and I also managed to get in the same car. We briefly chatted and I was happy to see that he was hiking at a similar pace & daily distance as me. Also, he said that his main goal was to hike the trail & not spend time partying long in town. Exactly my sentiments! Finally, he wanted to get to Tahoe as quickly as possible and he was missing his wife, just like me 🙂. However at the end of that day, I stopped early as I had planned to camp with other fellow hikers at a specified campsite. I was sorely tempted to continue on with Guy who was going on for another few miles, but I said I was sorry and never figured I would meet him again. But, an extremely lucky chance bought us both to the same campsite on the night before a tough climb. Both of us shared the same concerns about the hike next day, climbing with micro-spikes and one hiking pole each and without an ice-axe. But, we had each other's company at least - as they say, misery loves company 🙂.
My tent and Guy's tent next to a large snow berm at the base of Mather Pass.
Next day, we started up the pass around 5 am and though we had to do some way-finding through the steep uphill, we fairly quickly made it to the top of the pass. The descent was also a bit steep, but the hard, morning snow and the path created by previous hikers made it relatively straightforward.
Data:
D-40
D-41
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