May 10: Snow talk

It was a very easy day, smooth rolling trail, pleasant pine cover, our well-rested bodies . . . We were dropped off at the trail head by Walkabout at 9am and had hiked a solid 19 miles by 4:30. We pulled into the Deer Spring horse camp and cooked dinner, chatted with some other hikers, rested our feet until 6 or so when we packed up and pushed onward with another guy, Cypress, until making camp at around 7:30 under a statuesque pair of Ponderosa Pines. *** Everyone is talking about the snow again. We got a report from a guy who lives in the mountains up in central California that two feet of fresh snow just dropped this Monday. They re-opened ski resorts in the Sierras, he said. Everyone's next thought is of the dubious and disjointed flip-flop hike. People are realizing that there is simply no getting around it anymore. All Spring there had been hopeful predictions circulating on the Net of an early summer and a rapid snowmelt, just a minor postponement at Kennedy Meadows before being able to hit the Sierras full stride. It keeps raining, though. And in the mountains, it keeps right on snowing. It is the worst case scenario for anyone who rejected the notion of the flip-flop from the get-go. Eliza hated the idea at first, figured that it broke up the hike's continuity, lended an elevated sense of arbitrariness to the whole endeavor -- a "why don't we just walk in a circle in the back yard for six months and save ourselves some money" kind of thing. But when making it to Canada no longer seemed like a viable goal (we banked on the Sierras staying snowy well into the summer months ago), what could we do but come up with a contingency plan? Our initial goal, the end of our first stage, is to make Lone Pine by June 14. Lone Pine is the eastern jump-off point for climbing Mt Whitney, nestled in between Great Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks and Death Valley. If we can make it this far before flying up to Vancouver on the 21st, we will have given ourselves an ideal final endpoint in Mt Whitney itself. We will climb the highest peak in the continental US a day or so before we complete the entire PCT. Now others are thinking of doing the same thing. It could be that getting up to Lone Pine from Kennedy Meadows at that point will be impossible -- we don't really know what kind of snow cover to expect at that point. And there are other obstacles to tackle before then, namely, Mt. Baden-Powell, the next high, ice-packed ridgeline, west of here in the San Gabriels, with trail at over 9000 ft.