Day 58

Mile 981.0 to mile 1005.6

PCT Miles: 24.6 (39.4km)

Total Miles: 1005.6 (1609.0km)

Every morning I have to pack my backpack from scratch: since the sleeping bag and sleeping mattress go on the bottom of the backpack, I need to empty it and reassemble all the contents.

Since day one I use a big dry sack where I put the sleeping stuff, my clothes (extra socks, sleeping merino pants, fleece, puffy jacket) and my power bank. Every morning I make sure that everything fits in the dry sack properly and that the dry sack is properly closed. After 58 days hiking, today was the first day that I was very thankful for my own discipline. I’ll get there soon (spoiler alert: it rained).

It was not so cold, so I slept with one of the doors of the tent open (but with the net, of course). It’s so cool to wake up at night, open your eyes and see the most starry sky 🌌! That’s for sure one of my favorite things about camping!

I had an ambitious plan for today: make it through the loooong ascend to Dorothy Lake Pass (and leave Yosemite) and go down to get as close as possible to Sonora Pass, where I can go to town, hopefully tomorrow. This would be awesome because I would arrive in town one day earlier than I planned and could take a nice (and well deserved!) zero. But that also meant a 24 miles day.

The day started well. The deer family was still around in the morning and I was in good mood so I started the day hiking a bit faster, trying to push a bit on the ascend to Dorothy Lake Pass. It was very wet and swampy and my feet stayed wet for the whole day. It’s actually kind of liberating when you realize that there’s no other way, so you should just accept that you can freely step in water or mud.

Mosquitoes surrounded me at all times. In the morning I had to hike with rain pants, wind jacket and the head net. It was suffocating to hike on my own portable sauna, but it’s just maddening otherwise. For three times I tried to take a break but it’s just impossible to enjoy, so I kept hiking without a break for 14 miles. I could only stop to have breakfast+lunch at 1pm, having started at 6. I was starving.

Good thing is that it made a very productive morning, although I still needed to hike up three more miles to go over the pass and descend for seven miles to the campsite.

At 3pm I made it to the top. There was very little snow (but a lot of water). By the way, I don’t think I’ll need my snow gear anymore. I’ll probably mail them back next week.

Crossing the pass, I was in a tight but possible schedule. I was hoping for little snow on the other side as well. What I was not really expecting was rain. And hail.

I still had to hike for 7 miles, which usually takes me 3-4 hours, depending on the trail. As soon as it started raining I wore my rain jacket (for the first time!) and exhaled relieved as I remembered that my things were protected from the rain in my backpack. A few minutes after the rain, it started to hail. The mix of rain and hail lasted for about one hour. For the first mile or so (~30 min), there was a bit of snow, but then the trail became snow-free. I was a bit scared when it started raining but I checked the forecast and the sky should clear up tonight still. I just wanted to arrive at camp,

so I hiked fast. In the end, the rain didn’t bother me that much.

I arrived at camp before 6pm (!), so I had plenty of time. Unfortunately the rain became a bit heavier while I was setting up my tent and everything got wet inside. Right after it stopped raining I opened the doors and let the air circulate to dry the tent a bit and since all my sleeping stuff are super dry, it’s all good!

Currently it’s not possible to enjoy the camp. It’s unbelievable the amount of mosquitoes and how they’re really hungry! Since yesterday, the first thing to do when arriving at camp is to wear the anti-mosquito clothes (pants, jacket, net). Only then you can proceed with the other chores.

Tomorrow I have a relatively short day (12.5 miles) to arrive in town! The two problems are: first, it’s a big ascend (~2300ft/700m) up to almost 11000ft/3350m. Hopefully there won’t be a lot of snow to slow me down. Second, all my things are wet. I’m not sure how early I’ll be able to leave camp in the morning. Let’s see!