Day 72: Roller Coaster Climbs
Date: Thurs 6/28
PCT Start Mile: 1016.9
PCT End Mile: 1036.2
PCT Mileage for Day: 19.3
Total PCT Mileage: 1036.2
The Highlights: mosquito free bliss
What a difference a day or two can make! After our misery with mosquitos during the last section, returning to the trail today was great.
Hanging with furry friends at the Kennedy Meadows lodge.
After spending the night in a dorm room at Kennedy Meadows, we got up a bit before 6:30am, quietly packed our stuff, and went to the restaurant for breakfast.
One of the other girls in our room last night – Ashley, from New Zealand – joined us as well. She had just started the trail in Tuolumne Meadows and was heading to Canada from there. What a week to start – it had been our worst with the mosquitos.
After a hearty breakfast of chicken fried steak, Shawn, Squishy, and I hiked the mile down the road to the highway to begin hitching back to the trail.
When we arrived, five others were already there. Three stood by the road and two others were somewhat hidden behind a large rock. It can be very hard to hitch if drivers see too many people on the side of the road, so we joined the couple behind the boulder. Soon enough, a suburban pulled over and was able to take all five of them.
It was only about another half hour before we got a hitch of our own. The woman who pulled over was in her 60s and from Mammoth Lakes. She and her collie, Jess, were up in the area escaping the smoke from a fire near Mammoth Lakes that had started only a day or so after we left. She looked super fit and used to do a lot of backcountry skiing. For today, she was just looking for a good hike.
Back at Sonora Pass, we thanked her for the ride and started our own hike, just after 9:30am.
The trail immediately began with a 3.5 mile climb, much of it very steep. It was pretty windy and there were no mosquitos, so we were happy hikers. The trail hugged the mountainside with stunning expansive views.
Eventually the trail began to descend into a valley. Along the way, we came upon a man hiking south with his husky. We chatted with him for a bit and asked what the mosquito situation was further north. Very chill, he told us. Nothing like the horror stories he’d been hearing from the Yosemite area we’d just hiked through. Music to our ears.
It was funny though, once in awhile throughout the day, I’d feel like a mosquito had landed on me and I’d slap my leg… sometimes there may have been a rogue mosquito, but mostly I think I was feeling ghost mosquitos.
They say after a person loses a limb, they often feel “ghost” pains/sensations where the limb used to be. We felt like this was the case with the mosquitos. We were so used to having mosquitos around, we were sometimes feeling them anyway. I don’t think I got any new bites today, but I slapped myself a lot.
In the last section, when mosquitos were everywhere, I’d gotten to the point where I’d slap myself for absolutely any feeling on my skin at all. Sometimes a mosquito, but it didn’t even matter. A tendril of hair tickles my face – SLAP. A piece of grass brushes my leg – SLAP. I kick dirt back up onto my own ankles – SLAP SLAP SLAP. The chance that any feeling was a mosquito was worth slapping.
The descent was pretty sloppy, with melting snow, small rivulets running through the trail, and lots and lots of mud. Eventually we came to a river which the three of us all chose to cross in different places and then fell back in line on the other side, hiking onward.
Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to Can-a-da we go…. (whistling)… hi ho, hi ho… Squishy began singing. I joined in for a line. If we really thought about it, most of our emotions on be trail could be summed up by the names of the seven dwarves… with maybe a few substitutions. Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Doc, Grumpy, … I’d probably swap Bashful for something like Hungry, Hangry, or Thirsty, and Dopey would be more like Clumsy, but you get the idea.
After a steep hike out of the valley, the day was a roller coaster of climbs and descents, undulating through the mountains. We leapfrogged with several other hikers, including Mouse and Thumbelina, who we are camped near tonight.
We first met Mouse way back in the desert at Scissors Crossing, mile 77, the day we went into Julian. There was excellent trail magic under the bridge at Scissors Crossing that day and we had sat for awhile talking to her and Allison – now Surgeon. Thumbelina we had met for the first time about a day before Idyllwild. We’d seen them last on their way out of Bishop, when we were heading in.
It was so nice to set up camp tonight without swarms of mosquitos. A couple flitted around, but basically nothing. We ate outside without bug nets. Life was good.
Before bed, Squishy was talking about her toes again. The past few days, she has been mentioning that her toes are feeling numb. The first time she mentioned this, I said, “Welcome to the club! I haven’t felt my toes since Warner Springs (mile 109)!”.
Of course it’s not that I don’t feel them at all, it’s just that they have a dull numb-ish feeling with a lack of sensation, and sometimes pins and needles. If you dropped something on them, it would still hurt. I think.
I told her not to worry, it’s just a bit of Christmas toe, very common. “What’s Christmas toe?”, she asked. “You don’t feel your toes ‘til Christmas!” I don’t think she’s as entertained by this as I am. She just needs a couple hundred miles to get used to it.
