Day 60 - Muir Pass — Vive ut Vivas

Start: 0745 - along Middle Fork Kings River
End: 2100 - next to Tule Lake
Miles (today): 23.5 (23 PCT, 0.5 Alternate)
Miles (cumulative): 914 (774 PCT, 90 alternate, 50 off)

10 hours of pretty solid sleep makes for a great day of hiking. Also contributing to the great day of hiking was my strict attention to eating and drinking - I made sure to eat snacks and drink water regularly. Last night, Nick was surprised to see how much food I had. It's not that I'm intentionally not eating it - I know I need the calories - but sometimes I get so focused on the task at hand that I forget to eat. Also, I think I'm subconsciously rationing the food because I'm so worried about running out. Anyway, Nick made a good point - he said it's far better to eat the food so you can hike well than to save it and not be able to hike at all. Ok, point taken. It's amazing how much of a difference sleep, food, and water make. (I know, I'm stating the obvious here.) Actually, the difference COULD have been the dehydrated beets my awesome mother-in-law/resupply guru sent - Mary, I love all the dehydrated veggies you send (and those power bite cookie things) but I really love those beets!!!

It's a good thing we saved Muir Pass for the morning - a most of the trail was covered in snow. Walking on the snow when it is frozen is so much easier than when it's slushy, so I actually wished the sun wouldn't be quite so warm (it felt wrong wishing that, though). It was a race - get past the snow before the sun made it too soft. By 1000 I could already tell the snow was softer, but we were on our way down by then so it was ok. I had a lot of fun hiking Muir Pass - looking for the trail when it wasn't so obvious was a fun challenge. Plus, it was stunning - definitely my favorite pass so far.

At the top I ran into Walkman who says he remembers me from Lake Morena back on day 2! It's so crazy how you can go almost two months without seeing someone and then, suddenly, there they are.

a frozen lake on the way up to Muir Pass

apparently 9 hikers slept in the hut last night - I can't imagine what it smelled like in there!

on the way down from the top of Muir - if you look closely you can see another hiker ahead of me in the snow

another frozen lake - it was so beautiful!

a lake on the way down from Muir Pass. Note: Nick threw away the maps before I could identify all the lakes (Note from Theresa-Good going Nick, argh!)

another lake - I just can't help myself, they are all so pristine and stunning!

Muir Pass took us all morning and as soon as we got out of the snow and to a lake, we stopped for lunch. Nick thought for sure we had gone 10 miles; I was sorry to tell him we had only traversed 7.5. (Walking on snow really slows you up!)

After the pass, though, the trail was mostly downhill/flat and we were able to make up the miles. There were a lot of stream/river crossings but we were able to find a way across all of them but one without having to get our feet wet. Consequently, I had fun trying to find the best way across some of them - it was like solving a puzzle (ex. walk on the boulders on the right side, slide around the tree, walk across the log, jump to that rock over there, hop over to the other side).

The one creek we DID have to ford, Evolution, was actually enjoyable. The water was cold but it felt so refreshing (I'm saying this a lot, I know). We decided to take the alternate route to cross Evolution at a milder spot- even so, the water was up to my mid thigh. The crossings seem to be getting worse, and some of the southbounders I saw today said some of the stream crossings up ahead are pretty intense, so I have those to look forward to. Let's hope I think they are refreshing, too.

where we would have crossed Evolution of we didn't do the alternate.  It looked a little deeper and the water was a lot faster here — where we would have crossed Evolution of we didn't do the alternate. It looked a little deeper and the water was a lot faster here

While I do love a good challenge when crossing streams, sometimes it's nice to cross on an actual bridge. We got to cross three bridges today (although none of them were as fun as the suspension bridge we crossed the other day) :)

Finally, after a long day of hiking, we found ourselves in the Muir Wilderness.

Since Nick is almost out of food (hmm, maybe rationing isn't such a bad idea) and since we are still trying to make up for the time we lost when I got dehydrated, we decided to hike until 2000. Unfortunately, neither of us paid close enough attention to the water - usually it's everywhere - so 2000 came and still no water source near the trail (no water = no rehydrating meals). We finally crossed a small stream around 2015 and, along with finding water, we found mosquitos (or perhaps I should say they found us - it seemed as if they were waiting for us to show up). We got our water and got the heck out of there as fast as we could - those little devils were ravenous! We are now camping about 0.5 miles away from the mosquito swarm at the water but it's still pretty bad here, too.

I'm hearing all sorts of crazy sounds as I write this. Lots of twigs snapping and trees/bushes rustling. Glad I have Nick with me!