Saturday started out beautifully (and stayed that way all day). As always backpacking, I was up a little early for my breakfast while the girls slept:
We hiked up Crag Canyon for two pretty miles, gaining 1,000 feet of elevation (this was the first of a lot of elevation gain today - part of one of the biggest, hardest PCT days we've had):
After reaching the top of this drainage, we started down into Beck Meadow. This meadow joins with Monache Meadow, which is the largest meadow in the Sierra Nevada:
Continued easy hiking eventually led to an idyllic setting at a bridge over the South Fork Kern River, just under seven miles from our start:
Note in that last photo, the big peak on the horizon? That's Olancha Peak, one of the more prominent mountains in the south-most Sierra. More than ten more miles of hiking, 3,500 feet of elevation gain, and the rest of the day would take us to a point on it's shoulder where we'd eventually just crap out for the day near the only source of water we could find.
Meanwhile though, lunch at the river was very nice;
That last photo, by the way, shows the effects of eating freeze dried blueberries.
From the river we started up gradually. This part of the Sierra is flatter than what we're used to up north. At least it is in some places:
As we got higher the scenery became more alpine:
Here's the view looking back into Beck Meadows from up high (if it looks like a long way to have hiked, well, it felt that way too):
By the time we'd gotten up onto the Olancha Peak massif, we were getting close to tired. Lots of uphill, warm temps and full packs made this a significant hike. Finally, after 17.3 miles, we came across a small stream and a nearly flat spot. The sun and our energy levels were very low on the horizon. We dropped packs and made camp (with a nice view to the west):
And that was the end of the second day. I've known for years that the girls can do long, hard day hikes, but on those they've carried little or no weight. Now I know now that they can also do the same hikes with weight (and, here, the difficulty wasn't just the distance of 17.3 miles; we gained almost 5,000 feet total in those miles, up to an elevation of 10,500 feet).
In a way this was a critical test. In a year, when we can get back on the trail, we'll likely do seven or eight days of similar distances in a row, with weight and with lots of serious passes.
Up next: more wonderful, beautiful Sierra Nevada hiking. And a reminder that water isn't everywhere in the southern Sierra.
