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Click "Play" below to listen to the Day 16 audio journal.
June 9, 2015
Day: 16 Daily Miles: 42.5 Total Miles: 754.75 Hours Hiking: 16.5
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| Early morning sun on the first clouds of the weather that was about to hit. |
June 9th, I made it 42.5 miles to point 0384692 E 4038028 N UTM. I started off, lets see...where...at the little pass about 10 miles away from Kennedy Meadows, right where I wanted to be. I got a normal start at around 5:25 am...actually I think I got a little earlier start at 5:17 am...whatever, it doesn't matter... I made good time on the flat miles, to the South Fork Kern River, I got a little water and headed over to Cow Creek. I passed probably, at least, 20 people still sleeping in camp with tents...that's A LOT. I started going up Cow Creek and began that climb....which brings you up to about 10,500 ft, which in 2012 I remembered it as being pretty bad, but, it wasn't that bad this time. I just powered right on up it, felt really good. I met the two folks that I had met at Kennedy Meadows the day before, when I first rolled in they were "Hey you're that guy" and took my picture and were really excited. They weren't nearly as far as I had thought they would have been. I kept passing lots and lots of people. I think for the whole entire day I passed 49 people actually hiking and plenty more that were already camped and had their tents set up or were sleeping etc. Probably by about 8:00 am, clouds started rolling in...not big and puffy, but, I want to call them flat...the flat kind of clouds that encompass the entire sky covered us...it looked like a front was coming on in...and it did actually.
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| The start of the climb after Death Canyon and the spring. |
Once I made that big climb, I dropped down to Death Creek and went to the spring...the spring was really great, I got some good water...then there was another climb....this one I reallly didn't like from 2012....but it's very beautiful...It is where you finally get up into the foxtail pines and the lodgepoles that are gnarly, among big giant boulder and cliffs. That kind of terrain happens a lot, but this is the first instance where you get it, you also get veiws down to Owens Valley, because you are right on the edge of the eastern escarpment of the Sierras....it's really pretty but the climb is just steep and brings you up pretty quickly. It wasn't nearly as bad as I had thought. The clouds were helpful, that's for sure. Had it been sunny, it would have been awful. I made that climb pretty quick, got to the top, chatted with some people...the clouds you could see behind us were actually raining down towards Kennedy Meadows, so I spent the remainder of my 15 miles or so over to Chicken Spring Lake/Cottonwood Pass dodging rain..or being chased by it I guess. It was consistently following me. At one point, by Diaz Creek, it sprinkled for a bit, so I stopped took off my compression socks and got everything ready for it to actually rain on me.. but it didn't. I made it all the way up to Cottonwood Pass before it was proper raining/hailing/sleeting/grappeling on me. It wasn't really rain at that point...we were high enough at about 12,000 ft...so I put on my poncho tarp and continues on to Chicken Spring Lake, where I had to get some water...by that time...it was SUPER windy.
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| Cottonwood Pass, where the rain finally caught me. |
The snow/grapple was coming at me sideways...there were probably 15 tents set up at Chicken Spring Lake...and this is all about 7-7:30pm. So, it was getting close to the end of my day...it was about a 37 for me to get there...so I could have stopped and set up my tarp, but thankfully having hiked the trail before, I knew that right after Chicken Spring Lake, you go behind the ridge and then go a couple miles then drop down to a big flat area with trees...so my thought was that it can't hurt to go down and behind the ridge is probably going to be much less wind...which there was...but for that first half mile......climbing up from Chicken Spring Lake to the backside of the ridge proper....HOLY CRAP, IT WAS SOOO WINDY. I was being blow sideways, probably 30-40 mph gusts with just this kind of hard show battering you...my tarp/poncho, it works great, except for in high winds, because it has snaps on the sides, so air can get in under your arms and down your side, so it billows and flaps.
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| The backside of the ridge after Chicken Spring Lake. |
But, it did just what I thought. Once you get down behind the ridge, the wind died down, the snow came more at a normal angle, from above. I just kept pushing, I knew there was no camping and I knew the further down I got, the better of I would be, so don't stop. After a good 1.5 hours, I got down into the flat area with the trees, where there was no wind whatsoever, WONDERFUL!, no snow, even better! and I made it to a 43 mile day, which if I hadn't had the bad weather, I probably would have been able to do a 46, because there was still more downhill towards Rock Creek...I had about 4 more miles I could have gone before a climb started. When I stopped, it wasn't raining. I found a nice covered area under a tree what wasn't very wet. I excavated down to dry earth, set up my tarp for the first time properly on trail, climbed underneath, which was a tight fit, but it does the job....keeps me from getting wet and went to bed. It was a good day, besides for the last 4 hours or so...but I survived.
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| The beautiful morning just after the bride over the South Kern River, nearing Cow Canyon. |
