Palisades Lake to upper Le Conte Canyon
One full week on the trail. In planning, I never really imagined what this would feel like. I knew where we’d be, but only in vague terms and locations on a map. Palisades lake was just another day on the trail, someplace I’d never been, and something less important than figuring out the million little details that come with planning a thru hike.
But what it feels like in the moment is something all together different.
Trail life is so remarkably easier in some ways than what Keith and I have started to refer to as “the real world.” Since we’ve left I’ve read no e-mails, social media is irrelevant, I haven’t had to put gas in my car, and the only social interactions I’ve had are either incredibly brief, or are with the one human who I like spending most of my time with anyway.
Conversely, it takes 5-10 minutes of waddling around camp every morning before the tendons in my legs and feet warm up enough for me to walk comfortably, and already I’m starting to fantasize about what types of foods I’m going to eat once we get into town. Mostly I want things like salad, grilled chicken, fresh strawberries. Anything, really, that hasn’t been dehydrated and vacuumed into a plastic bag. But we still have four days including today before we have any option to get fresh anything, so I ignore my salad cravings and try not to eat too many of my M&M’s for breakfast.
We start our day walking into the lush green valley that we can see spread out below our campsite. The novel thing about today is that there will be no passes to climb. We’ll simply walk on calm, flat, mellow, nicely graded trails that are soft! The kind of sigh-inducing soft of fallen pine needles and dirt, the kind of soft that I didn’t know I wanted until I spend the previous six days walking almost entirely on granite.
I know that after this trip is all said and done people will ask me how it was. And even only seven days in I have no idea what I’m going to say. The truth about thru hiking, and backpacking more broadly, is that you’re in some moderate form of discomfort all of the time. Too cold, too hot, runny nose, itchy, sore, hungry, bloated, chafe, thirsty, tired and a hundred more feelings. And then it’s hard you guys. Climbing up mountains is hard, down is hard, exercising every day for 6-10 hours is just as hard as I thought it was going to be. I knew all of this was going to happen, and yet I cannot stop from remarking on it. The low-level suffering of a thru hike is remarkable.
These are the things I think about as I drift through the forest today following the little brown path that will lead me all the way to Yosemite.
Our day is punctuated with snack and water breaks, the last one coming at the Le Conte ranger station where we eat snickers bars while sitting in wooden chairs. Maybe that’s a better illustration of what thru hiking is like: sitting in an unpadded wooden chair will be the most comfortable I am all day until I get to roll onto my glorious sleeping pad, surrounded by my ultra fluffy down quilt and sleep. Thru hiking is the least glamorous, most romantic thing I’ve ever done, and I’m totally in love with it.
My revery at Le Conte is interrupted when several weekend hikers come by to ask if we are the ranger (we’re not), if we know where the ranger is (we don’t), and if we knew why the helicopters were circling this area yesterday and today (again, we don’t). I can sense they’re disappointed in our lack of knowledge, and more disappointed when we can’t get properly excited about the idea of a rescue taking place near by. Shortly after the weekend hikers depart so do we.
Later Keith will tell me that he resents people like that. Only interested when things go wrong, wanting to know the intimate details of some strangers bad day, curious without the ability to be helpful. I have to agree with him.
The sun is dipping behind the ridge of the valley we’re walking through and I know we must be getting close to camp. The problem is that each campsite we pass is full of people, or it’s not really a campsite at all – set up too close to water or the trail. We keep climbing up towards Muir pass, frustrated at others for camping where they so clearly shouldn’t. Frustrated at myself for holding myself to a high standard, why can’t I just be a jerk who ignores the rules like everyone else? But then, where would I garner my elevated sense of superiority from? We keep hiking.
The trees are gone, and now it’s only rocks and uneven patches of dirt as the sun begins to set in earnest. We’re starting to get frustrated when we pass another hiker: It’s Limpy Perkins!
Limpy was a girl we met on our second day, and whom we’ve been leapfrogging ever sense. She told us earlier that she’d injured her achilles tendon (hence Limpy) and was considering getting off the trail at her next available opportunity in a few days (but she’s just so damn cheerful – hence Perkins). Now we see that she’s lost her trekking poles, and has had to erect her tent using a big stick. I feel bad for her, but her camp spot is barely big enough for one tent, and so we march on. Goodbye potential trail friend!
Finally we find a spot atop a big flat rock and set up camp. Technically we’re a little too close to the trail, but at this point we are so close to the pass that we don’t want to keep hiking, and it’s unlikely that we’ll see another person come through this late.
As we’re getting ready for dinner we see our first SoBo PCT hiker! So much for no more hikers coming through.