Thursday , July 5th
It’s morning and I am sitting on a
two-hundred year old stump watching the sun begin to shine down on the creek
flowing into the lake with a background of Lodgepole Pines covering the slopes
of a mountain side like a thick head of hair – and I am wondering the why. Not the how but the why. I understand how the basic forces of nature
interact, the rhythms and the cycles of the ecosystems both large and small
-but why is a question that is a little harder to understand. Why does a tree want to keep reaching upward
toward the sky, living out all these harsh conditions year to year for hundreds
of years and in the case of the Fox Tail Pine up to 3,000 years? Then I realize that a tree won’t ask that
question and neither will any other element of nature or animal except
man. So perhaps why is just a human
question and really irrelevant. Perhaps
everything happens just because it is good.
And I thank God for it. And I
praise God for all the beauty that he has surrounded us with and I ask his
forgiveness for ever doubting his existence in my frail human moments. And I pledge to God that I just want to be a
good part of his design – and that is more than enough – that is all.
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| Purple Lake |
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| The lakes were covered with yellow dust from these pollen cones of the Lodgepole Pine that were ripening and blowing everywhere. If you were to touch them they would fall apart and coat your hand with yellow dust. The wooden pine cones with scaled seeds that we are more familiar with are the female cones. These pollen cones you see here are the male cone and all pine trees produce both male and female cones. |
I get what is an early start for me
heading south from Purple Lake by about 8:00am.
Today I will be crossing Silver Pass, elevation 10,895 feet, and I want
to get as many miles in as possible so I can be close to the trail junction for
Vermillion Valley Resort (VVR). The VVR
is 7 miles off of the JMT, but I would like to go there because they have a
store, restaurant and hot showers for hikers.
About a half a mile up the trail I met a NFS trail crew clearing blow
down for us. They have a large good
looking white spotted mutt with them that growled at me a couple times as I
passed. It looks like he makes a good
guard dog and I remember hearing him a couple times barking last evening. I take a picture of the crew and marvel at
the fact that they were doing all this tree clearing by hand. They could have easily packed in a chain saw with
a mule to help them and make it a bit easier but wilderness regulations forbid
even them from using any power tools out here.
It’s good to know that our Federal Government is going to such lengths
to keep some parts of the country pure, wild and natural.
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| NFS Crews hard at work clearing trails of last falls blow down |
By 9:30am I am already 2 miles down
the trail approaching Lake Virginia and I can feel my mountain legs and lungs
kicking in. I have a lot more energy
already then I did at the start of the trip.
As we were coming down Donahue Pass on day three, we observed a hiker
just motoring up the pass without slowing down or taking any breaks. It was marvelous to watch him effortlessly
skip up the mountain with his pack and I wondered if I would eventually be able
to do the same. Lake Virginia offered a
wonderful vista and I stopped to do my best to capture that picture but this is the best I got - never seems to do justice.
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| Lake Virginia |
At the lake I meet a PCT hiker
called “Swiss Army” who says he is averaging 18 miles a day hiking though the
Sierras. PCT hikers have a tradition of
giving each other trail names and Denny is his real name. Denny looked to be in his 60’s. It seems that most PCT hikers fall into one
of two categories. You’re either elderly
and already retired or very young and don’t have many responsibilities
yet. These are two groups of people that
have the time to embark on a three to four month hiking adventure.
I keep moving all day, lunching
mostly on trail bars and make it over Silver Pass midafternoon. At 10,200 feet I observe Western Hemlock and
over 10,500 feet I begin to see Fox Tail Pine.
There are some truly beautiful specimens of these pines in this park
with thick mats of needles covering their entire branches and giving them a
bushy fox tail look. Needles come in bunches
of 5 and the bark has an orange tint to it.
The young needles make for a good mountain tea also if you ever get the
chance to try it. I hike until it is
almost sundown and cover a total of 17 miles for the day which would be the
record for the trip. I camp very close
to the junction of the VVR trail next to a creek that flows into Lake Thomas A.
Edison.
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| Approaching Silver Pass |
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| View From Silver Pass |
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| Jeffery Pine towering over my campsite at sunset |
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