Days 54 to 56 – Planning and Resting

Two zeros in Bishop, plus a drive to Reno – No Hiking

I wake up in our stuffy hotel room in Lone Pine and check Instagram – a bad habit I’ve fallen into during our town stops. I see a post from Bean Dip showing an excited looking Moonshine, her pack loaded down with the extra gear required for early entry into the Sierra’s – bear cannister, micro spikes, and an ice axe. An ice axe that’s fastened to her backpack backwards.with the pick pointed towards her back meaning that if she falls with her backpack on, she’ll likely impale herself with her own tool. I quickly message her “turn your ice axe around or you’re going to stab yourself in the butt!” I hope she sees it. I’ve known these people long enough to care what happens to them, but not long enough for our words of caution about entering the Sierras in a snow storm to have any clout. They don’t know what they don’t know, and I haven’t earned the right to do anything but watch and hope they’ll be ok. It’s an impotent and frustrated sort of feeling, one that I’ll feel a lot over the next few days.

I can see the storm rolling across the mountains as Keith and I pack up our bags, getting ready for the hitch to Bishop – the bigger town to the north where we’ll spend the weekend resting, ditching our Sierra gear, and renting a car for our drive north. We get a ride just as it starts to rain, it’s already snowing on the peaks surrounding the deep valley through which we’re now driving north. Our driver today is a woman named Mary, a school teacher from Reno who has just gotten back from a group trip to Channel Islands National Park where she learned that despite being a 70 year old hiker she detests the sedate nature of group hikes consisting of fellow 70 year old hikers. The best way I can describe Mary is spunky, the kind of young rad septuagenarian that I aspire to be. The 40 minute drive to Bishop passes pleasantly as we discuss what it is to make a life. How to prioritize what is important to you. “Don’t spend your life chasing things that don’t light you on fire.” Well said, Mary.

When Mary drops us in Bishop I’m sad to see her go; I’m beginning to miss conversations with folks who aren’t PCT hikers.

Predictably the hostel in Bishop is full of other hikers. Though, this early in the season there are only a dozen or so, most familiar faces. A friend who thru hiked the PCT in 2017 told me that the first day of the trail is a lot like the first day of middle school. Everybody is nervous and new, trying to figure out who their friends will be, who they fit in with. After being on the trail for close to two months I can say the parallels between hiking the PCT and middle school don’t stop at the first day. By this point on the trail cliques have started to solidify and while there is some permeability, some common ground of being hikers, there is a definite sense of who is in your group and who isn’t. The sense that we’re walking away from the rest of the pack is heightened by the other hikers milling around, planning their return to the Sierra. Lady is here! Her and Treeline are total speedsters crushing the trail and whom Keith and I had the pleasure of hiking with out of Scissors Crossing. These folks have already done 90 miles through the high alpine, their faces scrubbed and pink from the exposure and bright sun; sharing wild stories and images of granite slabs covered in snow with hikers like ants down below. I remind myself again and again that I’m making the right choice, that their type 2 fun is my type 3 fun. It’s one thing to tell an epic story and another thing to live it and I only want the story, it’s not a good enough reason to push into the mountains early.

The next two days pass in a rush of planning, cooking and eating. Outside wind and rain gust through the afternoon and the towering mountains lose their heads in the dark clouds. The whole sky is a bruise. Come Monday we’ll find ourselves in a rental car pointed towards Reno and eventually Redding, Castella, and a return to the trail. Come Monday the rest of the hikers at the hostel will be heading back into those brutal rustling winds, facing the pattering wind turned snow by elevation. I hope they’ll be ok.