The ten day section of PCT hiking from Kearsarge Pass (Independence) to Duck Pass (Mammoth Lakes) was some of the most epic hiking I have done on the PCT…and in my life. This was what I had been waiting for on the PCT – and it didn’t disappoint. In fact I think it has spoiled me for the rest of the PCT. Near the beginning of this stretch I met up with several other PCT hikers, and as a little band of brothers, we made the daily climbs and descents on eight different passes as we journeyed north towards Mammoth Lakes, California. What was most striking was how different each of these passes were – Kearsarge, Glen, Pinchot, Mather, Muir, Selden, Silver and Duck Passes. This blog update can’t do justice to all of these passes, but I’ll try to give you a taste of each of these very different passes through the High Sierras.

This year was a relatively low snow year in the Sierras and as a result, it made it much easier to summit each of the passes. Generally during this time of year, PCT hikers have to traverse expansive snow fields during these pass crossings using traction devices called microspikes and carry ice axes for self arrestment safety purposes. While I had these devices with me, I rarely had to use them.

Kearsarge Pass (Day 28)

After spending a zero/resupply day in Bishop, California, the first pass I crossed (for the second time) was Kearsarge Pass. My good friend Laura Roberts had been a Trail Angel for me and not only did she pick me up from the Onion Valley trailhead on Day 26, but she also dropped me back off at the same trailhead two days later after my time in Bishop.

The hike back up Kearsarge was a long, hot affair and I think I had already become soft from my day and a half off of the trail. I was reinvigorated when I got a text on my GPS device from my good friend Hocka Leung who said he was about to takeoff with his jet in 45 minutes and he was going to fly over me to say hello. He asked for my GPS coordinates, which I passed to him, and I told him I would give him a mirror flash using my iPhone when he flew over. Right at 1435:36 he flew over from east to west, rocking his wings and I gave him a mirror flash so he could spot my position. Then he did a climbing chandelle and came back to the east wagging his wings as he flew right over Bullfrog Lake where I was hanging out just to the north of it on the trail. I took a video but since I was trying to mirror flash him at the same time, the video isn’t very good quality. Hocka got a video from his jet and his wife Faith posted it to my Facebook page if you’re interested in seeing it.

Glen Pass (Day 29)

I spent the night at trail mile 790 and shared the campsite with Todd who was finishing up a southbound JMT section hike. We had some great conversations about life, how people on the trail take care of each other and he told me all about Burning Man which he’s been to for seven years and works at one of the camps there.

The campsite was just about a mile from Glen Pass which meant that I would be able to go over the pass in the morning before the sun had time to start softening up any of the snow near the top – especially on the north side. This became the main tactic for all the passes. We would get to the approach of the pass each night [within three to five miles of the pass] and then do the pass first thing in the morning.

On this morning I got going around 7:30 am, and after a 900 foot climb, and an hour later I was at the top of Glen Pass. There was no snow to contend with on the south side and there were beautiful views of some emerald and turquoise blue alpine lakes surrounded by jagged gray granite. To the north were many more high altitude lakes up in granite bowls, and lower were the Rae Lakes which were ringed with green vegetation and gray granite peaks in the background.

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Down at Rae Lakes, I filtered some water and then did some shore fishing. I caught mostly brook trout with a few rainbows intermingled in there. This is when I met up with fellow NoBo (northbound) hikers Black Market and Money who I had first met at Kennedy Meadows. It was Money’s birthday and in our first interaction, the first thing he asked of me was to sing him happy birthday. A guy can’t be stuck out on the trail without being sung happy birthday to and so I did my best to belt out a vigorous happy birthday to him amid the granite cliffs and by the shores of Rae Lakes. They were interested in the fishing I was doing with the Tenkara rod and so I taught them how to fish using the rod.

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I had lunch at Rae Lakes with BM and Money and then we hiked together for the rest of the day. I would end up hiking through the rest of the High Sierras with these guys and get to know them quite well.

Pinchot Pass (Day 30)

We had camped on Woods Creek and had a long, seven mile hike up to the top of Pinchot Pass. The views of Woods Creek on the way up were incredible including a slide rock area that one PCT hiker said they had ventured too close to and had been swept away and nearly sent over the edge of a waterfall.

The nature of the approach to this pass was a seemingly never ending, steady climb through a gauntlet of man-eating mosquitoes. I have found that my best mosquito protection has been to don my rain pants over my hiking shorts and to put on a mosquito head net. The mosquitoes can’t bite through the rain pants or my long sleeve Columbia Silver Ridge hiking shirt.

The terrain approaching Pinchot looked markedly different than previous passes. There were the snow runoff streams amid green tundra landscape and then the mountainsides in the distance had reddish brown colors instead of the slate gray we were used to.

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We rested at the top and were treated to great views of Lake Marjorie on the north side. We were surprised to see mosquitoes even up there at 12,107 feet, but they were easy to kill – probably due to their lack of oxygen – they weren’t very quick!

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On the way down from the pass in the afternoon we stopped at Lake Marjorie and soaked our feet in the cold water. That is a godsend when you have tired and sore feet after a grueling 1000 foot descent down a steep and rocky trail.

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As was our standard game plan, we hiked to the bottom of the canyon below Pinchot Pass and then started climbing up the next canyon which would lead us to the next pass – Mather Pass. We camped three miles from the top of Mather Pass at a location right next to the South Fork of the Kings River which could have been straight out of a postcard. That evening two additional thru hikers named Mariposa and Dean who were from Vermont joined us at our campsite as did a solo hiker named Brett who had just started the trail at Tehachapi.

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Mather Pass (Day 31)

After a normal snow year, Mather Pass is one of the more challenging passes to traverse. The south side of the pass has a steep head wall and switchbacks and when covered in snow, it can be quite challenging to ascend. We lucked out and there was very little snow remaining on the south side of the pass, and no snow in the switchbacks. It was actually one of the quickest and easiest ascents of all the passes.

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Looking at the view from the top, this Pass was surrounded by gray granite more similar to what I had seen at Forester and Glen passes. It was a striking, clear, blue day and so the gray peaks with snow trapped in the nooks and crannies of the bowls stood out distinctly from the sky. To the north we could see the bowl quickly narrow into a valley where Upper and Lower Palisade Lakes could be seen shimmering deep blue as the wind made distinct rolling ripples across the water.

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Up at the top we met with three other thru hikers who were already up there enjoying the view. These three included Kitchen Sink, Milkman and Drew. We got a selfie with all six of us to commemorate the achievement and then started making our way down to Lower Palisade Lake where we soaked our feet, had lunch and caught several rainbow trout that we later took to our campsite that night and cooked in the fire after coating them with olive oil and spices and wrapping them in tin foil. We ate our fish under a light rain from a pop-up thunderstorm – the first rain I’ve encountered on the entire trip.

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Muir Pass (Day 32)

The ascent up to Muir Pass felt like an unending climb where every time you approached a bend in the trail, you thought you would see the pass, but instead you were welcomed by yet another alpine lake and more hill to climb.

Black Market and I started out around 7:30 in the morning – much later than the rest of the guys from our camp. We didn’t get too far before I was fishing a beautiful meadow stream for golden trout. We even saw a young buck with fuzzy antlers come out into the meadow to feed and drink while we fished.

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Again we got sidetracked and fished some more a bit higher up the river (Middle Fork of the Kings River) where we found some beautiful goldens. These were good sized goldens for a stream, with some coming in around nine to ten inches.

As we got higher in elevation, we found ourselves slogging through a wet trail where the snow melt was running down the trail. There were several sections where we tramped through slushy patches of snow fields. We saw several JMT hikers pass us by and they reported that the trail continued to be a wet, soggy, muddy mess all the way up to the pass. Interestingly in the mid afternoon, we saw a two-ship of F-18s in fairly close formation cruise low over the top of us in the direction of what appeared to be Muir Pass itself. It was a Friday afternoon and I bet that after completing their training in the nearby airspace, they were doing a bit of High Sierras sightseeing before returning to base…I may have done similar things a time or two as well!

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Muir Pass was my favorite pass because of all the beautiful views along the Middle Fork of the Kings River, the meadows and the beautiful lakes we passed on the climb up. It was topped off at the pass by incredible views and the iconic Muir Hut which was constructed by the Sierra Club in 1930 to honor their founder, John Muir for which the pass was named after.

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Seldon Pass (Day 34)

The climb up to Seldon Pass was not as beautiful as the others. By this point, we had traversed all of the varsity passes on the PCT. Now, as we moved north, we were getting into the JV passes. This is not to disparage them in any way, but they weren’t quite as impressive as the previous passes.

About 6 miles up our climb, we stopped at lower Sallie Keyes lake where we saw some large trout cruising and so we just couldn’t pass up a prime opportunity to fish.

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We had some good success there and then kept moving up the mountain. There were some good views of a heart-shaped lake named…Heart Lake – very fitting.

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We were all excited on the downhill because we would be finishing the day near the eastern shore of Lake Thomas Edison. The following morning we could take a boat over to the west shore and visit Vermillion Valley Resort for “town food” including a full eggs, bacon, hash browns and pancake breakfast, beers and burgers.

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Silver Pass (Day 36)

Following our day at VVR, we hiked up Silver Pass which was a 7.5 mile climb – not as difficult as the rest though. There were some good views of gray granite peaks and several alpine lakes that we passed.

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We passed some meadow streams following the pass and I was able to do some fishing for wary brook trout.

It was in the late afternoon on this day where we passed three day hikers who seemed to us to be unprepared for the hike they told us they were doing. They had left their tents and most of their gear near Duck Lake and were doing a 20 mile round trip hike to Silver Pass with no extra clothing layers, and very little food. We all thought it was strange but continued northbound. In the evening, we ran into one of the members of that party who had turned around before his friends because he was getting cold and didn’t have much food and just felt uncomfortable. The other two apparently gave him some grief about it for being a wimp, but he knew his limits. By the time we ran into him he was quite cold and hungry and so Black Market and I each gave him a layer of clothing to wear and some energy bars so that he could get back to his campsite which was still about four miles away. He ended up fine and got back to his campsite safe and it was good that we were able to help him out.

Duck Pass (Day 37)

Duck Pass was our final pass to go through before we made it into the town of Mammoth Lakes for a well deserved zero day. On our way past their campsite, the hiker we helped the previous day had left our clothing he had borrowed on the side of the trail so we could get it back. But he got out of his tent to thank us again for helping him out the previous night and he even gave us a bunch of stuff to eat which was much appreciated since we were running low on food.

We had some beautiful views of Duck Lake and then crossed over Duck Pass where we got great views of several high altitude lakes on the outskirts of the town of Mammoth Lakes. We were cruising downhill because we couldn’t wait to get into town for some delicious town food. We eventually made our way to Lake Mary road where we were picked up by the free town trolly and taken to downtown where we checked in at our stylish Motel 6.

It had been ten tough, but rewarding days through the High Sierras where I had teamed up with several other thru hikers and we made it up and over eight vastly different passes. In fact, we were quite lucky this year in that we had very little snow to contend with overall. In a normal snow year, hikers face some very treacherous ascents and descents up near the tops of each pass. We had only dealt with relatively small patches of snow that were fairly simple to traverse as long as you did so in the morning while the snow was still cold.

Another blessing during this low snow year was that the runoff from the snow melt was not as torrential as in normal years. For most stream crossings, we were able to rock-hop across or walk across fallen logs and remain dry.

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There were only two streams where we ended up taking off our shoes and socks and wading across using our trekking poles to steady ourselves. These two streams were Evolution Creek after Muir Pass and Bear Creek after crossing over Selden Pass. Overall, we experienced an amazing journey through the high Sierras and were blessed with great weather, exceptional views and low levels of drama when it came to snow and runoff.

Trail Facts:

• Trail miles walked – 450
• Current PCT mileage marker – 904
• Current Audiobook – The Second Mountain by David Brooks
• Additional PCT Thru-Hikers I’ve met – Lobby, Fire Piss, Kicks, Red Meat, Captain Ahab, Amsterdam, Rally, Dirt, Midnight Rider, French Fry, Lost Larry, Mariposa, Dean, Brett, Drew
• Additional wildlife seen – Sooty grouse, lots of robins, southern alligator lizard, western toad, Steller’s jay, American goldfinch, Clark’s nutcracker, osprey