Author: Fancypants

Maybe you think you’ve seen lots of mosquitoes before. If you’ve been to Alaska or northern Minnesota at the right times, maybe you have. But, otherwise…the experience we’ve been having the past couple of days is probably unlike any other you’ve had before. Imagine great clouds of mosquitoes, hovering above the trail, just waiting for…

We continued pressing north through Yosemite today, making our way through some surprisingly — and impressively — strenuous hiking. I’m honestly not sure whether it just feels strenuous because there are fewer Big Goals to conquer (like all of the high passes from earlier), or if it really is just that difficult. Although our ascents…

We didn’t get to fully appreciate Glen Aulin until this morning, as we were leaving. We left by going through the main camp — something we bypassed on our way in last night — and oh, man, is it ever amazing. It’s not so much for the facilities as it is that you wake up…

Today we launched ourselves back out onto new trail, leaving behind all we knew of the John Muir Trail for all those points Further North. It’s exciting to be onwards to new things. (Oh, and in case I didn’t mention it: since yesterday midday, we’re now in Yosemite National Park…which, judging by the crowds here,…

This is the longest day of the entire year. (It’s also Hike Naked Day, but that’s another subject.) I’ve always been highly sensitive to sunlight — I love being out in it, need lots of natural light even when indoors, and rue the decreasing daylight hours in fall. Every winter, I think: next year, I…

For nearly the entire length of the John Muir Trail, the PCT is coincident with it — in other words, the two trails follow the same path. But for fourteen miles, the two diverge. Today was the day we encountered that path, and, because we’d already done the JMT, we decided to take the PCT…

So far, everybody I’ve spent time with out here has been other PCT hikers. But that changed today, when my good friend Peter — from back in the “real world” (or maybe just the “alternate world”) — came out to meet us. It’s been truly wonderful to have his company on the trail (along with…

Every time we leave a hotel, I feel like I just want to stay in bed for hours longer and continue eating at restaurants and sleeping in a real bed. Yet once I’m hiking for even a half-hour, I get excited to be back on the trail, outdoors, and look forward to sleeping in our…

Vermillion Valley Resort (VVR) is a place completely unto itself, especially these days. While it used to, as far as I can tell, thrive primarily on people coming to fish on Lake Edison, these days it’s clearly overwhelmingly a way station for hikers on the PCT and John Muir Trail. So what’s it like? In…

We woke up this morning just the other side of Selden Pass, our last pass before we got to the outpost of civilization called Vermillion Valley Resort. Selden Pass is the first pass northbound that’s noticeably lower than the others — it’s 11,000 feet instead of 12,000 feet. That might not sound like a big…

After yesterday’s show of every kind of beauty you could ever find out here, everything we saw today seemed to pale in comparison. Yet that’s only by comparison; the places we were today are still part of the most beautiful stretch of the entire PCT. We’re camped tonight on a small hillside above a gorgeous…

Today was the most beautiful day of hiking of my entire life. That’s not exaggeration, that’s simple truth. I almost don’t want to even write about it, because it was so perfect. I want the photos alone to tell the whole story. (If you click through to only one set of photos at the bottom…

Our days are absolutely defined by passes: going up, being on top, and coming down them. They’re our landmarks, our goals, and our nemeses, all at once. This section of trail has a mountain pass every 10–30 miles; most passes are at or over 12,000′, while the valleys in between range from 8,000′ to 10,500′.…

It’s incredible how much more tiring it can be hiking up and down these Sierra passes compared to everything we’ve done before. We’re doing two-thirds or three-quarters of the mileage we used to do, yet end up utterly exhausted at the close of the day. Part of it’s quantifiable: we climbed 3,600′ today to reach…

The stretch of trail we’re entering now may just be the most beautiful backpacking I’ve ever done in my life. (The PCT follows the JMT — the John Muir Trail — for the next roughly 200 miles, and we’ve hiked the JMT, so I’ve been here before.) We’re camped tonight at Rae Lakes, three incredibly…

It sounded like thunder, only it just kept going on and on for a full minute or so, just after we’d made camp for the evening. It took us a few moments to realize what we’d just heard: part of a mountain falling down! The Sierra are full of faces that are just loose scree…