Day 74
Start: Piute Creek
Finish: Falls Creek
Daily Mileage: 17.2
PCT Mile: 991.2
No visits from the bear last night, not that I was expecting any. Got an early start since we had a creek to cross before the water level rose during the day.
We first had to climb to Seavey Pass. The morning light highlighted some of the high peaks in the area which was beautiful. The climb was good and went fairly quickly. There was no snow until near the top where there were some small ice free lakes. The snow was good and hard for the most part, making for easy travel, though some stretches led to frustrating postholing. Soon enough the pass was behind, and I was on the way down to the next challenge.
We flipped over to the north side of a ridge, so it was snowy on the way down and fun to slide and glide down snow slopes and skip the trail. However, that soon changed when I got to Kerrick Creek. The trail started right alongside the creek and seemed to follow a narrow path between the creek and rock walls. With snow added to the mix, there was a sloped surface ending directly in the creek. Thus, the trail went on this steeply sloped snow drift where if you slid or fell, you would end up in the rushing creek.
I definitely put on my microspikes, and should have grabbed my ice axe too in hindsight. There was bootpath on the snow slope which really helped, but I did slide out with a foot a couple times, and postholed awkwardly a couple other times. Not the most comfortable stretch of trail, but I picked my way through it, and was glad when it was done.
There was still more snow to traverse going down the valley, but it was easy in comparison until I dropped enough elevation that it disappeared.
I got to the trail creek crossing and scoped it out before Cookie Monster and Nomad caught up. Kerrick (Rancheria) Creek is supposed to be one of those dangerous Yosemite creek crossings. The crossing at the trail did look more than waist deep and swift, and I would not want to cross it. However, the creek braided out into 3 parallel streams just upstream, and these turned out to be knee deep. In the end it was not a challenging crossing, and it went very well.
Up and over a minor pass with a snow descent on the backside and we were in Stubblefield Canyon, which surprise, surprise had its own creek crossing. This one looked deep and swift, but there was a fallen tree bridging the river right next to the trail. However, the first part of the tree was slightly underwater. The obvious path was to cross the tree because I didn’t immediately see a good ford. I crept out on the tree and the start of the crossing was slippery due to the water, and then my shoes were wet for the rest of the tree crossing. Even though the tree was a good size for crossing, I felt unstable the whole traverse because my shoes were wet and the tree smooth. I was very glad to be off the tree and on the opposite bank.
Again after crossing this stream we had a climb up and over another minor pass and down in snow. The descent was drawn out with a couple creek crossings and tons of snow traverse, and was not the most exciting thing in the world. The trail eventually got to Wilma Lake, and the trail went literally under the water, hugging what must be shoreline in the summer. A good bit underwater. Obviously that wasn’t going to work for us, and we were left with making our own way along the lake. The shore was steep and covered with snow, leading to tiring rapid ups and downs to make horizontal progress through the tight trees. It was very slow, but I was glad when I popped out at a campsite at the end of it.
The trail headed upstream the creek to its source, and we made it a bit through the piles of snow, bog where there wasn’t snow, and across the creeks that came down into the valley. Basically it ensured we spent the rest of the day with our feet wet.
We stopped when we had made enough progress for the day at one of the few dry spots along the trail. Dried out our stuff so it can be rewet tomorrow morning and planned out our next couple days to town.
There was a lot of elevation gain today, 4,500 feet. That doesn’t consider the snow travel and all of the creek crossings though which added much difficulty. Many challenges today, and yet we were mostly buried in forest with few clear views of the terrain we were traveling through. Not my favorite day of hiking, but part of the trail all the same.
