Day 75
Start: Falls Creek
Finish: Kennedy Canyon
Daily Mileage: 16.8
PCT Mile: 1008.0
It was a chilly night and approached freezing for the first time in a few days. Didn’t quite get there since the loads of condensation on our tents wasn’t frozen in the morning, but there was some frost on the early meadows I crossed.
Cookie Monster, Nomad, and I were continuing up Falls Creek to its source at a pass. We had about 7 miles to go and I thought it could take a while judging by the slow travel through the snow and wet yesterday. However, upon starting out the snow speed bumps in the forest were rock hard and easy to walk over. At least the colder temperatures helped in that respect.
I flew through the woods, over snow, swamp, and endless submerged trail paralleling the creek. It was mostly just forest but there were a couple meadows, though not as scenic as some of the recent ones.
While standing by the lake, I saw a torpedo shoot under the ice, and then an otter popped its head up straight through the ice. I was not at all expecting to see that, and was surprised they would live at an alpine lake like this which is probably frozen 8 or so months of the year. They must hibernate or something. It grabbed a few breaths and shot off under the main ice pack.
Dorothy Lake Pass was only slightly higher than the lake, and an easy walkup. After a break, we started our way down. First through mostly snow and suncups around some lakes and streams, but then amazingly the snow mostly disappeared! We were left with nice easy walking through forests and along creeks, with even a couple bridges thrown our way.
I enjoyed the pleasant walk. There was nothing terribly scenic about it, but it was nice to not have the day just be a sufferfest like a couple others on this stretch of trail.
We took lunch on a granite outcrop which highlighted the differences in terrain we were entering. We left Yosemite National Park at Dorothy Lake Pass, where the mountains transition from granite to volcanic in nature. So much for the granite domes and monoliths, but change is good and it is always nice to get a fresh set of scenery.
We walked through our first of this terrain with reds and blacks and rougher outcrops. Still the easy hiking and we started to ascend to our first new mountains.
The snow came back and it was definitely softer now. We climbed up to the last campsite before the trail traverses a high ridge. We considered taking on the ridge and camping on it, but overall it seemed to make more sense for us to stop short and leave it for tomorrow. There was a soft snow climb on the way up, we weren’t positive there was a dry camp or water up top, and the trail up traversed a slope that could cause soft wet avalanches late in the day like this. It will be there for us tomorrow.
This stretch of trail from Mammoth has been quite the roller coaster between good scenic days and hard challenging days. Luckily it seems cyclic with good days balancing the tougher. Today was definitely a good day.
