The End of the Seirras (D-52 1016.9-1034.2; D-53 1034.2-1060.5; D-54 1060.5-1083.5)

Finally, the end of the Seirras (remember the Beauty & the Beast tag) is almost here. At least, officially and by the change in terrain and scenery. Hopefully I will be reaching Echo Lake tomorrow morning and that's the official end per Far Out app. Supposedly, the Seirras are the toughest part of the PCT. I can definitely attest to it being physically demanding and mentally challenging, especially since it was early in the season with lots of snow around and lots of snow melting resulting in sketchy snow traverses & water crossings. I am sure the trail will remain "adventurous" in the next 3 sections - Northern CA, Oregon & Washington - too (esp the last).

In the last three days, I didn't cross any high passes but it was lots of constant ups & downs with plenty of trail still covered by snow & water, which meant lots of painful way-finding and losing the trail. Did I mention already that I hate way-finding? 😬 I think I am done with snow and hoping it goes away soon. There were also couple of so-called Death Traverses, only cos a fall would mean sliding a loooong way down. But they were actually easy as long as one was careful and slow.

I have been hiking with Sofie, Owen & Cinnamon last three days, or at least, meeting them occasionally on the trail and at the end of the day, which is very pleasant & something to look fwd to. Tomorrow we split apart due to our different zero day schedules, but hopefully I will meet Sofie & Cinnamon later on (Owen is taking a few days break).

The last three days have been rather uneventful and in fact, I seem to be jaded by the beauty of Seirras by now 'cos I took only 1 pic on D-52 (see above).

Getting ready to get on the trail after a shuttle ride from Kennedy Meadows North

An artistic pic 😋

A snowy traverse to Noble Lake

Bare hillsides with the trail going up, definitely indicating a change from a typical Seirras trail

Nice new PCT signage

Alpine lakes - still fascinatingly pretty (in case you didn't notice, my notes now have video links too, like this one of the Alpine lakes)

A couple of those long snowy traverses which drastically reduces your pace

An abundance of natural toilet paper (they are good!)

Finally, the return of trail magic - at the Carson Pass info center

Hiking along in the twilight

Cowboy camping tonight

Data:

D-52

D-53

D-54

Comments

In-town & Trail Activities (D-45 @ 903.3 and D-46 4.3 miles plus 906.7 - 924.5)

I am still surprised how busy in-town zero days can be. You think that you have a lot of time to take care of everything that you had planned to do while hiking earlier. Yesterday, in Mammoth Lakes, first I had a large breakfast (very important thru-hiker activity) & then visited 3 different stores to research and buy new shoes & glove liners. Old ones were completely gone. Post that, went to the big grocery store to buy the resupply food till the next stop & as usual, got overwhelmed by the number of the items available, picked up excess items, realized I can't carry all this, put back a lot of stuff and still ended up with extra food to carry. Next stop was the pharmacy to get blister-care bandages, then a decent sized pizza lunch and then back to the room to sort and repack. Speaking of blisters, I have got 2 till now and I had to prick one of them with a needle a few days back and then cover it up. First time, I had to sterilize the needle in a flame and the...

The High (& sometimes scary) Passes of Seirras - Part 1 (D-38 760 - 774.7; D-39 774.7 - 795.5)

The 7 main mountain passes (a pass being the low-point saddle between two mountains that one has to cross to go on the other side of the mountain) that I had to cross were as follows (south to north): 1. Forester Pass (13200 ft / 4023 m) 2. Glen Pass (11957 ft / 3645 m) 3. Pinchot Pass (12127 ft / 3696 m) 4. Mather Pass (12094 ft / 3686 m) 5. Muir Pass (11970 ft / 3648 m) 6. Selden Pass (10913 ft / 3326 m) 7. Silver Pass (10778 ft / 3285 m) All of these passes have some ascent and then a descent and essentially, the descent of one pass leads to the ascent of the next without too much of a flat area in between. Because this was a low snow year (some reports put it as only 43% of the average trail snow which means a bad summer drought for California 🙁), hikers like me are able to enter the Seirras and hike through these passes so early. Of course, this also means that there is still quite a bit of snow left on the passes and around them, which makes them more difficult and...

My gear and my tramily (D-97 @ 2148 - Zero day)

Some of you have asked about what gear I am using. Since today is a Zero day (the last Zero day was on D-57) and there is nothing much to report other than the fact that I shipped the last set of resupply boxes to different places in Washington state and ate substantial amounts of food today, I figured I might as well talk about my gear, and also a bit about the other most essential component on the hike - my "tramily" (trail-family). Tent : 1-person Rainbow Li from Tarptent (bought new). This has worked very well for me and as you know from my earlier posts, Tarptent has given very good customer service too. I haven't had the chance to use the tent in heavy rain or snow (luckily) though and can't comment on it. I use a Tyvek ground sheet (already owned), also from Tarptent. Backpack : Catalyst from ULA (already owned). I started with Zpack Arc Air Robic 60L (bought new) and used it for 700 miles, but it was not comfortable at...

A thru-hike attempt

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