So here we are at Katie's U.C.S.B. orientation. She's pretty excited. And like good parents we're paying some attention to some of the stuff designed to orient us. And last night, in the middle of a presentation by one of the university deans (a wonderful lady with a proper English accent), a mom asks, in essence, "if you're such a prestigious school why can't you guarantee that my son will be accepted to med school." I'm not making this sh#t up; it can't be made up.
Am I allowed to throttle people down here? Was it OK to guffaw? Will there always be such clueless people out there, whose stupidity is matched only by their unjustified sense of entitlement? Maybe I like climbing so much because, in Darwinian fashion, it tends to weed out most such idiots.
Anyway, back to the PCT. Hair maintenance is always easy for me, but takes the girls some time:
Once done with such chores, we headed out quickly down Palisade Creek and then up LeConte Canyon. On the way up we passed under The Citadel (what I'm pretty sure was the Edge of Time Arete was very easy to see - wow!) and past Grouse Meadow:
We only had a little over six miles to reach the Bishop Pass Trail junction where our friend Phil and I had planned to meet. We made it by just before noon and were a little worried that Phil wasn't there yet. Still, we'd talked about a time range, not a specific time and so we settled down to wait. We watched the North Face team jog by on their way to a just-over-three-day, 211 mile speed record for the JMT. We made sure our water supply was full. We ate lunch. We visited with another backpacker who was hiking in to meet his brother. And then, just as promised, 12.5 miles from the Bishop Pass Trailhead, Phil showed up:
He had with him another 15 pounds of food (my girls eat a hell of a lot). This was obviously good, but it meant that I was back up to full weight now and the hiking was harder.
We visited with Phil for quite a while (he brought good messages from Vicki and we sent one out to her too). Then we swapped loads and saddled up. And, then, just a minute before we set off, Bill and Reid showed up, hiking up the trail behind us. The girls were visibly pleased to see these two and they were happy to see the girls too. Now we caught up with them, made introductions (to Phil) and then finally set off up the trail (this time hiking as one group by consensus).
Little and Big Pete Meadows were very pretty:
By the time we'd made two more miles, we were coming to the end of the day. All of us knew we'd have to tackle Muir Pass in the morning, and we thought we'd like to get up a little ways on the trail as a head start, but it was getting late enough to camp. We started looking at possible camp sites. At one point we asked a south-bound hiker about camp sites. We got a strange answer from her to the effect that "The Rock Monster" had good camping and it was only a quarter mile ahead. OK, we liked the quarter mile part, but what is "The Rock Monster?" All she gave us was a quick "you'll know it when you see it," and she was off down the trail.
We wondered at these seemingly less-than-helpful directions, but we thought we'd keep an eye out. And, a quarter mile later, there it was, we DID know it when we saw it and we knew immediately that it would be home for the night:
We set up camp. The girls did some "laundry" by rinsing out shirts and pants in the stream (Katie almost lost her pants downstream which caused her to laugh and me to choke - she did finally find them). Meanwhile Bill got out his fly rod. Bill almost always catches and releases, but when he and Reid learned that Katie had almost never eaten fresh-out-of-a-stream trout and that Tricia never had, they offered to keep a few:
These fish were golden trout and were prepared perfectly. Three fish among five people are really only appetizers, but they were ideal in the circumstance. Although Tricia's always been a bit picky about her food, we've never indulged this and always encouraged her to try new stuff. She's lately become much better about this and, in here on the PCT, willingly tried the crisp tail fin from one fish (she liked it - similar to a potato chip):
And with that we got ready for bed. This had been a lighter day (in terms of milage at least). It was one where we got plenty of rest, and on which Katie seemed to get caught up emotionally. She was hurting, but the pain was manageable; now we were past the only trail where she could exit and she seemed committed to finishing her days on the PCT in good style. We'd also linked up with two new friends who added a lot to the conversation and to the fun, and who we enjoyed thoroughly.
