Pct

Today I did not do much which I guess is also kinda the point of takinga zero day. In the morning I woke earlier than I would have liked and spent some time on my phone before going to the hotel’s breakfast. The breakfast was quite good and as usual when in town I ate too much. After breakfast I did some blogging and planning of resupply from South Lake Tahoe and Sierra City. I will be sending the resupply for Sierra City from South Lake Tahoe so I have to buy quite a lot. ...

Today my goal was to reach South Lake Tahoe, I really feel like I need to get to town and dry out my feet. My secondary goal was to get to town before the post office closes so I can get my new shoes which should be waiting there for me. I knew it was 16.8 miles from our camp to the place where it is best to hitch to South Lake Tahoe. Normally this would mostly be sufficient to calculate how long it would take to hike there. However the conditions lately have been so unpredictable that it is very difficult to calculate hiking times. ...

Today we both wanted to camp one last night together in the Sierra so we had decided to push to the campsite at 1073.2 conditions permitting. This site should give Avocado an easy day tomorrow as he pushes close to South Lake Tahoe and allow me to push all the way to town. We went back to starting at 0600 and quickly had to cover a lot more snow than we had hoped for. This quickly caused our speed to drop especially as navigation was often a chore. ...

Today I had hoped that we would see a marked difference in the amount of snow we would have to pass. Sadly this was not really the case and I am getting a bit tired of having cold wet feet. We started a bit later than usual at 0630 after a long day yesterday. Being out of the area where bear canisters are required we can now have them next to our tent and we both had breakfast in our sleeping bags. ...

The goal of today was to get past all of the high elevation near Sonora Pass. This was quite the ambitious goal as we first had to actually pass Dorothy Lakes Pass. The sun peeking over Dorothy Lakes Pass We started at 0600 even though we expected a big day as neither of us like getting up earlier in the cold. We went straight on the snow as we made our way towards the pass. The snow was full of suncups but luckily we did not have far to go. The top of the pass was not very spectacular so we quickly went on and tried to follow the faint footprints. ...

Today was probably the toughest and my worst day of the PCT so far. We again had quite an ambitious goal as we wanted to reach Sonora Pass tomorrow. Today we wanted to get as close as possible as the trail travels at high elevation a long distance before Sonora Pass, optimally we wanted to make it past Dorothy Lakes Pass. Beautiful calm lake near the top of Seawey Pass ...

Today was to be a fairly long day where we would try something we had not done before, we would cross a pass in the afternoon. Beautiful meadow that we crossed early in the morning We started earlier than usual at 0535 in beautiful clear skies which also meant it was quite cold. Once we started hiking the cold was not really an issue and as the sun actually started hitting us we quickly had to remove our jackets. ...

Today we would be leaving Yosemite Valley for the PCT again. It would obviously have been nice to stay longer but staying in the valley is problematic because of permits and there is still plenty of the PCT to hike. Yesterday we had both mostly sorted our resupply so we decided to do our own thing until we had to leave the campground at 1200. The day before I had decided I wanted to try and do the Upper Yosemite Falls Trail with the extension to Yosemite Point. The Upper Yosemite Falls Trail in itself is officially rated at 6-8 hours for the roundtrip. I took the first shuttle to the trailhead and arrived at 0715 so to be back in time to pack up camp I had at max 4 hours to do the whole thing. The hike is 8 miles with 3446 ft of ascent and descent. I decided to do the hike with a minimum of gear consisting of: rain gear, gloves, my fanny pack with snacks and mobile. ...

Today we will be going the rest of the way to Yosemite Valley and on the way do two amazing trails: Half Dome and Mist Trail. When my alarm sounded in the morning it was a very cold morning awaiting me. It took a few minutes before I even got starting on packing. When I got to my socks and shoes I noticed that both were completely frozen. This is a first for me on the trail. This meant I had to use my other pair of hiking socks even though that meant I would have two wet pairs of hiking socks. ...

Today we were for the first time doing two passes, Island Pass and Donohue Pass. The passes are close together so it fits well to do them together. Also near the end of the day we will be getting to Toulumne Meadows where we plan to get a permit to go to Yosemite Valley via the John Muir Trail and do some day hikes and if we are very lucky climb Half Dome. ...