Day 65 (23 June) - Mile 719.08 - 733.79

Campsite at Mile 719.08 to Campsite at Mile 733.79

I slept pretty good last night. I guess I was pretty tired after a day of climbing like we did. Plus, the tent site was flat and the temperature was cool, but not cold...perfect for sleeping.

I woke at 5:00 AM and was glad that j had another hour to sleep. I then woke at 6:15 AM...I guess I needed more than 1 hour more. The goal was to be ready to leave at 7:00 AM, but it wasn't until 7:42 AM that everyone was ready.  Audible took off before we did so he didn't make the picture, but Dallas made it.

Brad, Share Bear, Dallas, & Mighty Mouse ready for the day.

Today is not going to be easy. We start the day off finishing the climb we started yesterday. We still have just over 5 miles to climb with 2,285 feet of climbing that will take us over 10,000 feet. Then we will head back down for 6.61 miles to just under 9,000 feet and then we finish the day climbing back up over 10,000 feet. Not only do we have to deal with the climbing, but also the altitude since we will be spending the entire day over 8,000 feet for the first time on the PCT.

Before this fun can begin we hiked the short 5 minutes to the river where we collected and filters enough water to get us 10 miles to the next water source. Then, the climbing began. Luckily the scenery during the climb was amazing.

Hiking through pine forest.

Brad attacking the climb.

After some time hiking I decided to check how far we had come. I was pretty dismayed when I saw that we had barely come 2 miles...wow, this is going to be hard!  Share Bear wasn't feeling too well today and Brad is still getting over his sickness from this past weekend...not good.

I decided to hike ahead and see how I would feel pushing it a bit. Surprisingly I felt pretty good hiking at this altitude and made it to 10,000 feet before the others.

My 10,000 foot view.

However, this still wasn't the top of the climb, so I continued on until I saw this view of what looked like the top approaching:

Sky meets land means top.

I got to the top and was rewarded this amazing view of the Sierra Mountains framed by pine trees:

WOW!!!

I had to take a close-up of where we are headed:

We are in our way.

It was around 11:15 AM when we stopped for a break soon after reaching the top at 10,557 feet. This was just a quick 20 minute break to take out shoes off and eat a snack since we had only come 5 miles in 3.5 hours. We still theoretically had 10 more miles to go today if we want to keep with our 15 miles per day goal.  Luckily the next 6.61 miles is a gradual down.

We hiked for 3 more miles and stopped for our lunch break. It was now around 1:15 PM and we had only made it 9 miles. We ate and rested till 2:45 PM and took back off, down the trail to Death Canyon Creek where we will get our next water supply.

About 45 minutes later we arrived at a beautiful meadow with a boardwalk running though it. I think we have officially left the California desert behind!

Boardwalk through a meadow.

Meadow looking right.

Meadow looking left.

Just before arriving at the stream Share Bear noticed this cool rock that resembles a cougar.

Cougar rock.

We arrived at Death Canyon Creek right at 4:00 PM and was greeted by Audible. He had been there for about 2 hours waiting for us. During those 2 hours he met up with Sunshine who is doing well.

After 45 minutes we all had the water we needed to hike 10 miles with a dry camp somewhere before then. At this point we had covered 11.60 miles and had a tremendous climb in front of us. We didn't know how far we would go up this climb, but we dis know that there were plenty of campsites during this 4.79 mile climb from 8,948 to 10,639.

Audible took off first and I followed close behind.

Audible making his way up trail.

We stopped 1.91 miles from where we  started climbing. I think we were climbing at around 3 miles per hour which is awesome considering the climbing and the altitude. It took Share Bear and Brad a little bit of time to catch up to us.

At this point I knew we weren't going to go much further. Brad saw there was a campsite 1.10 miles up, so this is now our goal for the night. Audible and I took off and eventually I passed him and arrived at the campsite around 6:30 PM. The others arrived and we all pitched our tents. We then looked over to Audible and he was obviously not happy. "What's up Audible?"  He said he was upset that his audio book was finishing and he didn't have another book downloaded.

Poor, poor Audible.

Audible might be sad, but our campsite has to cheer him up:

All our tents pitched in an incredible campsite.

We all cooked and ate dinner and then got in our tents around 8:30 PM. We are camping at 10,161 feet so it was chilly during dinner and we expect it to get colder as the night goes on. It might be hard to get out of our tents tomorrow morning, but we are planning a 6:00 AM wake up and a 7:00 AM start time. Tomorrow we have 12.42 miles to hike tomorrow to Horseshoe Meadows Campground where we will meet up with Tim and Mary for the night. Until then...

My campsite for the night.

Campsite sunset at over 10,000 feet.