Jack (Silver Fox) Turley's PCT hikes: Day 45 June 20, 2017

Daily mileage 11
Total miles 785
Hiked from 6:15 am to 5:00 pm

Forester Pass done.

One intense rain squall came through last night but other than that it was uneventful. Got up at a leisurely pace and got going at the job at hand. Get up to Forester Pass. This is the highest point on the entire PCT at 13,200 feet. Because we were going up early in the morning, the snow was still frozen which made for fast travel. The first big challenge was a very steep side hill traverse to get us to the bare trail carved into the side of the mountain. With my crampons and ice axe, it was doable but definitely had my full attention.

Early morning near Forester Pass

Foresrter Pass is the small notch in the wall of granite

Steep traverse across snow field. That was the sketchiest part of the day.

Back onto bare trail

One last snow chute to cross before the pass

Forester Pass

After that came the famous (to PCT folks anyway) snow chute just below the pass. To be honest, it was less scary than the side hill traverse. Then we were at the top. It was a beautiful clear day and the views were amazing. Made all the better knowing that the only way to see them was to work your ass off to get there like we had!

There are two ways of getting down off the north side of Forester in a big snow year like this. First and most popular is a couple of long glissades or pants of your ass sleigh runs. The other was a long traverse off the pass which supposedly lead to an easy way down to the valley below. Because I was not comfortable with the glissades, I opted for the "easy" way down. And it was easy right up to the point where it was not. The footsteps lead to a cliff with no apparent way down. After poking around a bit, I found a safe way down that included, you guessed it, a glissade. Now this was a little baby version of the other way down, but the irony was not lost on me.

Then we started the long, slow hike down the Bubbs Creek valley. There was one stream crossing to contend with which involved a rather small log over a torrential stream, but all of us made it over safely.

Stunning scenery surrounded by the devil sun cups.

Line of fellow hikers making our way down the Bubbs Creek drainage

Log crossing over the raging Bubbs Creek

For whatever reason, I simply could not get out of low gear today. Most of the day was spent hiking on snow which is very tiring, but even that does not justify my glacial progress all day. Oh well, tomorrow is a town day so maybe I can inhale enough calories to become effective again.

A bunch of us (Nacho, Yeti, Flame, Colten, Sam, Chris and Gabe) are camped at Bullfrog Lake which is actually off the PCT and is tributary to Kearsarge Pass. We have about seven miles to cover, all of them likely snow covered to get yo a road leading to the town of Bishop. I will likely take at least two days off there to recharge the batteries. While there, I also have to come up with a game plan for moving forward. Going back into the Sierra at this point seems a bit foolhardy because of the massive melt happening right now. So I have to come up with Plan B.