Day 67
Start: Silver Pass Creek
Finish: Deer Creek
Daily Mileage: 19.2
PCT Mile: 902.6
I slept poorly again and was exhausted when my alarm went off at 4 for our 5am start. We had a bit of snow to cover today and we wanted to do as much of it as we could before it started to soften.
We had stopped last night where the snow had started and were straight into it this morning in the dark, but it had firmed up as always. We were climbing towards Silver Pass and the ascent was nice and gradual. After some initial route finding and a creek crossing on a sketchy icy log, we headed uphill and reached an open snowy plain that was simple to navigate. Just had to keep walking up the valley to the end. There were some lakes along the way but they were buried and I almost ended up on one of them before I checked my GPS to see where it was.
I was tired climbing, and it was getting warm. I was exhausted from the lack of sleep or the number of days in the snowy high Sierra at high elevation. Some or all were factors. But there was nothing to do put push on. We would be in town tomorrow with a zero day to recuperate, so hopefully that would do some good.
I set a pace and did the climb that was thankfully snow free. Until we got to the top where our old nemesis awaited us – the snow was softening.
It was a slog to Virginia Lake with some steep snow slopes to navigate, but it went. The trail crosses between the lake and an adjacent bog, and it was deeper than I wanted to navigate and enough ice had melted that I was unwilling to attempt anything foolish. So I set out around the bog to avoid the whole situation. Others had done that as well. I did find a shortcut back to the trail on the other side though, cutting up a creek then cross-country over snow to a saddle. The off-route navigation picked me up a bit.
There was then a snowy descent to Purple Lake. There were some switchbacks that the footprints ahead were trying to follow, but I wasn’t having any of that and headed straight down on the snow. Safer and much quicker. I am not one to normally cut switchbacks since it causes erosion, but that’s not a factor on snow.
We continued on undulating trail above 10,000 feet through a mix of snow and occasionally dry trail until an even better descent to Duck Lake. The snow was getting nice and soft, and the trail switchbacked near a shallow open chute, so I went straight down that thing, quickly plunge stepping to fly down it. All of my snow alternates were picking me up quite a bit, though I was still tired.
Then we were in the home stretch. We started going down, and the snow slowly started decreasing. Still loads of speed bumps, but not enough to slow me down at this point. We were targeting a campsite 5 miles from town, and I was going to get there because I wanted the break. I left Cookie Monster behind and dashed off towards the finish line.
It came soon enough, and interestingly, the camp was on a bed of small volcanic pumice stones. I hadn’t seen that yet on this trail, and the various forms of lava have always intrigued me.
I killed all of the remaining food in my bear can because hiker hunger, and we had the afternoon to relax before bed.
