The last of the altitude

Miles: 1017.7 to 1043.2 Mileage: 25.5 Day: 60 The sun hit our tent early and the heat woke me up. Richard soon followed and we packed up. The air outside the tent wasn’t quite as warm as inside, but we got moving quickly enough. Just 100 feet further down the trail, we saw what would […]

Entering Yosemite

Miles: 925.7 to 941.7 Mileage: 16 Day: 56 It rained overnight, but it was the most behaved kind of backcountry precipitation. It didn’t start until we were curled up in our sleeping bags; it was soft and without wind; and it was over well before we had to crawl out of our shelter and start […]

1000!

Miles: 903.8 to 925.7 Mileage: 21.9, plus 0.6 to Reds Meadow Day: 55 Today Richard and I hit 1,000 miles on the trail. This figure includes the 80 miles we slacked at the end of May. Yay! It rained overnight. It’s so nice to be under the cover of a tent in the rain. Hearing […]

We still got it

Miles: 852.8 to 879.3 Mileage: 26.5 Day: 53 Today was our longest day in weeks. It was really hard and exhausting, but really nice to know that with normal-weight packs and not super snowy passes, we still have it! We did just over a marathon. And while it felt like it and we are very […]

A weather win

Miles: 831.2 to 852.8 Mileage: 21.6 Day: 52 The weather was beautiful ALL DAY! I can’t believe it! It didn’t rain or snow ONCE!  Our climb up to Muir Pass was pretty normal until we kept losing the trail under huge patches of snow about two miles before the top. It took us nearly an […]

The Sierras eat my energy

Miles: 809.9 to 831.2 Mileage: 21.3 Day: 51 It snowed overnight. While it’s annoying to think about getting up and moving in the snow, I was so glad to have a tent to hunker down in. Some hikers carry tarps or camp without a shelter. To me, the extra weight is so worth having a […]

Double pass day

Miles: 790.2 to 809.9 Mileage: 19.7 Day: 50! Will we ever get away from the snow? The morning started off beautifully, if a little chilly. We made it over Glen Pass and the snow on the north side wasn’t too bad. We used our microspikes and ice axes, although the ice axes were probably overkill. […]

Back in the saddle

Miles: 789.4 to 790.2 Mileage: 0.8, plus 7.5 up and over Kearsarge Pass to get back to the PCT Day: 49 We’re finally back on the trail! After 6 zeroes and 3 slack pack days we are fully-loaded and heading north.  We took a slow morning in town to make sure all of our real […]

A calorie-rich zero

Miles: 702.4 to 702.4 Mileage: 0 Day: 33 We slept in… until 7:30 a.m. I felt rested and warm in my sleeping bag. I wanted to be up by 8:30 to get in line for the laundry. So, 7:30 was a little earlier than I’d planned, but there you are.  It was a day of […]