This video is actually from Day 8 when I passed Margie Lake and
crossed Selden Pass, but I forgot to include it so here it is now
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| Giant Sequoias |
Sunday, July 8th
Today I
will be making my last major resupply at a place called Muir Trail Ranch
(MTR). The MTR is only a mile off of the JMT
and is the only convenient place to get a resupply between here and Mt. Whitney
Portal, about 115 miles away. I investigated
other ways to get resupplied for this hike and they all involved long hikes of
10 miles or more off the trail, or hiring an outfitter to meet you and bring
your resupply by pack mule – a rather expensive option. So I shipped a five gallon plastic pail with good
old USPS stuffed full of provisions out to MTR a little over a month ago and by
now they should have driven it in from the post office at Florence Lake and
have it waiting for me. They charge $55
for this service. In that pail is enough
food to last me another 10 days or more (I actually packed 2 extra days’ worth
of food just in case.) One hard part is
going to be fitting all that food in my pack – the hardest part is going to be
carrying it. Right now my pack is light because I am low on food, but after I fill
up I will be maxed out. Even dried trail
food averages 2 to 2 ½ pounds a day so I am looking at approximately 25 lbs of
additional weight. To top that off MTR is
in a valley at about 8,000 feet and from there the trail heads up Muir Pass,
which will be the highest pass of the trip so far at 11, 965 feet. That’s almost 4,000 feet of climbing I have
ahead of me with a wickedly heavy pack – just hope those straps hold.
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| Spencer Creek |
I take
a good inventory of what food I got left in my pack after being out on the
trail for seven full days since leaving Tuolumne Meadows and this is what I
find: Two servings each of quinoa and
taboli, 4 servings of humus, a handful of nutritional yeast, ½ cup of ghee, 8
oz of honey and 2/3 cup of salt. This is
probably enough for just one more day of hiking since I am low on grains, so I
calculate that in all I was able to fit a total of 8 days food in the Bear
Canister. The ten plus days of food I am
picking up will not fit in that can. I know
I want to see some bears but I really don’t want to play with them as they try to
get at my food. So to accommodate the
extra food I will be using a Ursack which is “a bear resistant food sack made
from lightweight, flexible, "bullet proof" fabric.” The material was originally developed for the
military and in testing the worst a grizzly bear could ever do is puncture the
bag with his teeth but was still unable to get any food out. I also will need to buy one more fuel can
at MTR since I went through almost 8 oz of fuel already.
The MTR
is a very neat well-kept place and I get there mid-morning. The place is surrounded my wood fences and it
has corals for the horses and cabins for people staying there. They have a picnic table set up with a shade
over it for incoming hikers to sit at and sort out and pack their resupplies. A very kind elderly lady greets me as I come
in the gate and asks me for my claim check, while two other hikers continue to
go though there stuff at the table. I
have two claim checks because An won’t be needing the resupply bucket he shipped
out. I am glad to have his claim check
as he’s got the toilet paper which I ran out of a day ago. It’s my birthday today and I make a joke of
it. I say that my friend has a birthday
present for me in the pail – the toilet paper.
Well it was funnier at the time.
It
takes me a couple of hours but I finally get everything I need into my pack. I had a lot of stuff to get rid of because of
the extra resupply bucket and all this went into the hiker barrels. These are bins that anyone can go through and
pick up free stuff that other people left behind. I met one guy that even picked up a fishing
rod. I guess another hiker left it after
he/she got tired of carrying it. One man’s
trash is another’s treasure, right? I picked up one package of food that someone
put together that had a bunch of rice and dehydrated vegetables that looked
good to me. I left a bunch of good food
in there including stacks of trail bars and I told “I’m fine,” that he should
go check it out. Yep that was his name. When I asked his name that’s what replied, “I’m
fine” - very confusing. “I’m
fine” was a wisp of a PCT hiker that looked like he should start consuming that
entire barrel. After I got all loaded up,
we all wanted to see what this monstrosity would weigh. I hang my b\pack from a scale and amid gasps,
heehaws and camera flashes, tops out at 65 pounds. The old lady says, “why would anyone want to
do that to themselves? Do you really
need all that?” Nobody carries a 65 lb.
pack. Anything over 35 pounds these days
is considered heavy and PCT hikers get there loads in under 20 lbs. I’m an old-timer though and maybe a little
old fashion. I didn’t spend a ton of
money slimming down my pack with all the latest ultralight gear. I say ultralight just means it means your
wallet is going to be ultralight. Now we
are going to see what ultra-heavy does to me.
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| After resupply my pack weighed out at 65 lbs. |
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| Entering King's Canyon NP |
There’s
not much I can do about the pack weight really, I enjoy my fishing gear, my
field guides, extra running stuff and enough extra clothes in case it gets
really cold up in the mountains and I set out from MTR around 2:00pm. A little
slower now, smaller steps and more breaks but still forward. Onward, we travel. Those people at the MTR were really nice and
I mean to send them a thank-you note someday.
I hike about 3 miles that afternoon
and decide to set it down under a Giant Sequoia for the night. That evening while hiking I met a man wearing
a tie and he stopped and asked me how much further to MTR. I told him he was only about an hour
away. It was hard to understand him and
I wasn’t sure if he couldn’t speak English very well or if he had a speech problem. The Tie was odd too. Then just yesterday I saw his picture on the
Pacific crest Trail Associations Facebook page.
His trail name is “Golden Ray” and he is a deaf hiker that always hikes
with a tie.
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| Copied from PCTA Facebook page - "Here is Golden Ray giving the "I love you" sign at the Canadian border! Yes, he hikes wearing a tie, and yes, he's a deaf adventurer. Such great people on this trail." |
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| Nice camp site under a Giant Sequoia |
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| Deer mouse hiding in the brush |
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| Two towering Giant Sequoias |
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