Tag: snow travel

Cabin 140 on the North Rim

Hello from cabin 140 on the North Rim! I’m sleeping on the floor next to a heater that came on sometime in the night when the generator was at last repaired, and have been sizzling all night. The six other people in the cabin are snoozing away; they were up late drinking and celebrating their Rim to Rim hike, which somehow ended just before the snow hit. They had foresight to send a stranger ahead with a credit card to reserve this cabin and good doing. It was chaos bordering on riot yesterday evening in the main Lodge, with folks having pushed in despite the weather only to find no respite from the cold: 29° outside and no electricity in the Park. I was not as lucky as these six; first of all, I had to travel 4 times further continue reading…

Dear PCT Class of 2019

I’m getting ready to go on a hike of my own, but I wanted to drop you a note to let you know it’s still snowing in the High Sierra. My 2017 blog post “Dear PCT Class of 2017” with tips about snow travel and whatnot definitely, definitely applies, since we got more snow (* see footnotes) this year than we did overwinter 2016/2017. I spent the winter shoveling, plowing, skiing, and snowshoeing in the Sierra, and I’ll tell you what: nobody who knows anything about avalanches or snow conditions (in brief, they suck) is going back there behind the Crest right now. I hope you read my 2017 letter and do all the other research and preparation you can, and don’t rush a thing. There are a lot of us who are very concerned for your safety. Remember that continue reading…

Walk to Vipassana

Just walked from Mammoth Lakes to North Fork, CA east-west across the wet wet wet Sierra and am now sitting Vipassana in silence for ten days. Thoughts? Push them aside.

High Sierra Access Passes & Transportation

Minor updates to this snow report and trailhead access information page were made Spring 2023 because of the high snow (water content) year. Basically what I’m pointing out is that hikers should plan to carry extra food as they might have to spend an extra day or two just accessing trail towns from the trail. In other words, be prepared to WALK MOST THE WAY TO TOWN. In snow. PCT/JMT High Snow Alternate Route I mapped out a bypass route which I myself would gladly hike (and which I have indeed hiked and explored a lot of) instead of hiking in the High Sierra summer 2023: https://caltopo.com/m/ER3HU. The Owens Valley is wet and green, something some of us might not see again in our lives, so this is THE time to explore. There are so many cool things to see, continue reading…

View of Yosemite Falls and Half Dome from the West

More PCT high snow tips

In my last feverish post, I totally missed some really good points about hiking in snow – really crucial stuff like navigation. A 2011 nobo thru-hiker made me aware right away (but doesn’t necessarily want to be credited). So without further ado here are more tips from someone who has gone through the difficult and uncomfortable, but very survivable process of trudging through the High Sierra in a high snow year: “GPS/phone = major time saver. THERE IS NO TRAIL. Forget the trail being avalanched away. It’s just not there” (until many people walk it first). Learn how to read a map and navigate by it (that is an invaluable link to a precious map-reading resource, BTW). “Carry a paper map back up, because you know, if your GPS takes a dive in a stream crossing… Navigating in trees as continue reading…

Dear PCT class of 2017

2017 snow pack is the biggest whomper we have seen in 20 years. Forget about 2005 and 2011, we are entering new territory with just about as much (well, more) snow but more heat from our warming planet. Snow is not only STILL falling in the Sierra, but has begun to melt, with significantly high and early – dangerous – runoff.

Whitney with Snow

Current status. Except for the fact that wind drifts removed most of it, the crest got about 3 feet during October’s big storm. The ice on rock was the scariest part.

Lakeview Ridge

…The morning after. Lakeview Ridge

Mile 2626.8

More ridge walking. Mile 2626.8 of the PCT

Mile 2605

How the Pacific Crest trail looked in the morning. A team had gone the day before, so the trail was cut. No new snow was falling. Mile 2605

Suiattle Soak

My adventurous birthday “novice backcountry” hike got a little hairy when someone took a dunk in the Suiattle River. This is sopping wet Cherub after her successful log crossing of that ferocious glacial river, on the old (disused due to a bridge washout) PCT. Happy birthday to me! Long story short, we couldn’t find the log crossing when we arrived at the River. Cherub decided to give a crossing a go. I wanted to let her do her thing, but also a nagging voice in my head made me hand her a stick with a length of Dyneema cord tied to it. She took a few steps in and quickly hit hip-depth. Cherub is not very tall. At that point she gave me an alarmed glance and abruptly slipped and fell all the way into the water. Luckily she had continue reading…