We knew we had a short day today, so we all decided to sleep in. It never seems to be difficult to get buy in from the group to sleep later. Try and sell the group on doing an extra long day and getting up at 4a and there’s going to spilled blood. I feel sorry for Bear on days like this. When Bear opens his eyes, he is wide awake. As regular followers might recall, Sassy is not a morning person. I just imagine the poor guy lying on his back shaking with energy but afraid to move. He didn’t have to stay that way for long. We still hit the trail by 9.
Keeping up was not bad for the first…1/2 mile. They are just too fast for us. You’d think after 5 weeks out, we’d start to build up some strength and stamina. We just crashed. Our caloric gambit at supper last night did not work. We got in over 1500 calories yesterday and still couldn’t keep pace. We are only consuming about half of the calories we actually need. We are losing weight, but we are paying the price of low energy levels throughout the day.
We caught up with the A-team at lower Rae Lake. They had been sitting a while and enjoyed a small snack. Bunny and I decided to wait on our “big” snack until upper Rae Lake in 1.3 miles. There were actually quite a few people scattered around the lake—one even had a guitar. This just indicates how close we are to the Onion Valley Trailhead.
Near upper Rae Lake, we saw the roof of a ranger cabin peeking over the shoulder of the trail. As we came around to full view of the cabin we also came into full view of a ranger sitting in a lawn chair, soaking his feet in a bucket of cold water, and checking permits. Normally, I’d try to talk the ranger out of checking our permits because I carry them in a dry sack with all my electronics. Today, I welcomed the forced break and didn’t even think of asking to keep going.
The forced break gave us the opportunity to talk with the ranger. He told us that he is assigned to this location for 4 months straight. When they bring him out, all of his provisions are brought out—he doesn’t get resupplied the entire time. To keep the fresh food from spoiling, he ended up eating most of it the first month. Now he’s down to dried goods. He doesn’t really get days off, so he doesn’t have time to go over Glen Pass and Kearsarge Pass and back to get fresh food. On the plus side, he doesn’t have the opportunity to spend any of his salary, so he saves every penny he makes.
There is an isthmus between two of the Rae Lakes. It looked like we would have easy access to water and possible shade there, so that became our break target spot. This was also the last chance for us to decide how we were going to go over Glen Pass to Kearsarge Pass to get out for Bishop. We’ve been having a minor strategy debate for a couple of days.
All indications are that there aren’t any decent water sources from where we stopped until we get to the second trail leading to Kearsarge (and showers—12 days since last one). If we go to the second trail, we will have to drop (and, consequently climb) an additional 500’. The plus side is that we would cover every inch of trail. Some might think that I would favor this approach. They would be wrong. We are having to walk 8 miles out to catch a hitch to Bishop to resupply, find a ride back, and then hike the 8 miles back in. These 16 unofficial miles more than make up (in my mind) for the 0.6 miles of trail we will miss.
The other alternative is to carry all of the water we’ll need for the rest of today, tonight’s supper, and tomorrow’s breakfast before we get to the next water source of the first exit trail. That’s a lot of weight. It would slow an already weak and slow Easy and Bunny even more. I was against this plan as well. Plus, if we came across water after carrying 8 liters of water (16.6 pounds) up and over Glen Pass, there would be one super pissed Easy.
In the end, we decided to risk that there is water on the other side of the Pass even though everyone is telling us there isn’t. There is usually a high snow melt lake near every pass if we can just get access to it. If we can’t get water, we will hike on to the second trail, get water at Bullfrog Lake then hike on until we can find a camping spot (no camping at Bullfrog Lake and the ranger warned us this is enforced and patrolled).
The only thing daunting about this climb was our low energy levels, the full sun, the rocky trail, and the exposed switchbacks on the upper level. Interestingly, there were several slow but adequate water sources on the climb up. You’d think maybe one of the dozens of people we’ve been interrogating the past few days would have mentioned these streams. Of course, Bear and Sassy blew past us. They patiently waited at the top for us. I managed to get a picture of them sitting there when we were still 1/2 mile and 500’ behind.
This was as close to a knifes edge as we’ve come across on this hike. It wasn’t even 5’ wide at the top of Glen Pass. We could see snow melt lakes on both sides. We had even passed a couple on the way up, but they were too steep for us to get water from if we had needed to. We could only hope the one ahead of us was more accessible. We could see the trail running by it, but it was a couple hundred feet of drop to the water.
We asked some hikers that had just come up, and they said there wasn’t any water for a good 5 miles (further than either of our turns. We just sat, chilled, and socialized at top while Aimee (one of the girls we’ve been hiking with for last couple of days) took our picture. Her husband is hiking out to meet her from Kearsarge. If we time it right, they might be able to give us a ride to Bishop.
The trail did follow the bowl of the lake with well over 100’ of loose scree all around, but because we were keeping an eye out for it, we were able to back track the dry stream bed, that everyone had told us about, back to the lake. Our gambit paid off. We’d only have to carry a full load of water for a couple of miles with the majority of that being downhill. We were now able to take the first exit to Kearsarge Pass.
I was so relieved. Even though we’ve only gone 7ish miles so far, I am beat. I need rest and calories. We’re close to 6 weeks in which is when I should be getting in pretty good shape, but I’m struggling with every step—even downhill. There are plenty of flat spots on the trail leading to the pass. It’s only about 3 miles to Kearsarge in the morning and then it’s all downhill to the parking lot. We just picked the first good camping spot we all agreed on and stopped.
We set up camp and cooked our last trail meal together for a while. It hasn’t been said yet, but I expect Bunny and I will be coming back on trail by ourselves. Bear needs to get back to teach a course that he’s developed for a new program and Sassy will go visit her daughter. We looked around trying to figure out where Forrester Pass is. We also noticed a plume of smoke in the distance. I’m sick of fires.
EFG