Tag: snow travel

Cabin 140 on the North Rim
2019.05.20
Hayduke, Hiking
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 […]

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Dear PCT Class of 2019
2019.04.01
Hiking, Opinion, Pacific Crest Trail
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 […]

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High Sierra Access Passes & Transportation
2017.04.15
Pacific Crest Trail
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 […]

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More PCT high snow tips
2017.04.12
Hiking, Opinion, Pacific Crest Trail
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 […]

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Suiattle Soak
2013.09.27
Latergram, Pacific Crest Trail
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 […]

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