JMT Day 15 — 8/18/24
Bench Lake Ranger Station to South Fork Woods Creek
Living In A Haze Camp to No Stakes For You Camp
JMT miles: 11.8 miles
JMT total: 146 miles
Elevation change: 2,142ft gain, 3,720ft loss
It was a weird day. Although Flower Power and I started with an awesome pass in the cool of morning, that experience felt like a sidenote, or a different day entirely, after an afternoon of crunching steeply downhill. For most of this, I was trapped in my head, worrying worries that needed no figuring out. As with most things during a thru-hike, all the answers and the way forward exist on the trail and in the act of taking one step after another. Yet sometimes the brain is cruel, and even knowing this, it torments itself with what-ifs and how-tos. I finally did find mental quiet, but it took a big lunch and an exhausting descent to get there. Worn out. There are few better ways to stop caring about stupid shit than through prolonged physical exertion. A full day on the trail takes care of that better than any other way I know.
With ice in my water, it was clearly the coldest morning we’d experienced all trip. As you might expect, this meant that getting up was a challenge, and I stewed in my fart-soaked quilt for an extra fifteen minutes before dragging on my cold leggings. In the end, it was the sunrise orange staining the northern peaks that got me up and out. The air was clear again, I was thrilled to see, and the mountains were brilliant. The wind must have shifted in the night, and hopefully it would stay that way.
Flower Power and I were both shivering by the time we hefted our packs after regretfully stripping off our warmest layers. I still wore my wind jacket, but the thin garment was kind of pathetic in the alpine freeze. Still, it would hopefully be just enough.
After half a mile, we finally escaped the huge shadow of Striped Mountain and broke into the sun. The warmth was immediate, and I pulled back my hoods to feel it on my bare skin. The low-angle sunshine poured into my ear, like someone had dripped warm olive oil into the canal. I was injecting sunshine directly into my brain, and it felt good. A short distance further, we pulled onto a granite slab overlooking Lake Marjorie and finally dressed down into our hiking layers. The world was warm again. All was good.
Meanwhile, the water of the magnificent lake sparkled endless shades of clear blue. Sheer cliffs of granite rose a thousand feet on the far side. Pinchot Pass, our morning goal, lurked amid the black rock that piled subdued next to the flamboyant red that spilled in heaps of talus above the lakes.
The pass started off playing hard to get. The trail was steep and rocky through the lower benches of flowering meadows, but the grade mellowed precisely when it looked like it would turn vertical. No complaints here though. The switchbacks, though rocky, made the ascent easier than it looked from below, when the tiny silhouettes of hikers balanced on the ragged edge between earth and sky. I spoke to one gregarious fellow on his way down, then boosted to the saddle just as Flower Power was topping out.
Either because we smelled bad or were too cool for school, the pair of hikers that were already there skedaddled when we showed up, leaving the best spot on the ridge to us. It was nice to see the clear morning version of the hazy view we saw from Mather the afternoon before. Things looked closer with the extra detail, and there was something cool to look at in every direction. Well, except for Mount Baxter, which had given me enough heebie-jeebies on the SoSHR to take the long way around. Without plans to climb over it today, the gray lump didn’t look so intimidating, but I didn’t welcome the reminder that I’d chickened out, which was the unkind way of saying that trusting my gut had avoided disaster in some way. So I focused on the Palisades and the red stripes to the south while munching on Kendal Mint Cake, the favorite mint cake of the successful 1953 expedition to Mount Everest (allegedly). It was the mint cake of heros, and I was glad to have the glorified sugar cube on my side today.
However, the jolt of glucose was almost my undoing, prompting the aforementioned mental distress as we began the loooong descent to the suspension bridge at Woods Hole. Jacked up on mint cake, I was ready to fly, so when the pace didn’t increase to match, I was left anxious and exasperated. I imagined the day slipping away. There was no way we could make our goal like this. How much could we shorten lunch? I should have been enjoying cruise, but instead it was driving me batty and my sentences grew terse even though I was surrounded by a dreamy landscape. Flower Power, ever in awe and ready to talk, deserved a better conversation partner.
The heat and wind rose as the morning faded to afternoon. And even though the trail followed Woods Creek down a verdant valley, it remained rocky and steep. Progress was steady, however, so that by the time we stopped for a late lunch, I was starting to find a mellower state of mind. The sugar must have been wearing off.
A big lunch helped balance my juices further, so now I crunched happily down the trail, marveling at the steepening walls of granite and the thick aprons of crumbly talus at their bottoms. Woods Creek was also beautiful as its bright blue water slid and churned down the bottomless waterslide.
The hot wind blew in the afternoon smoke and rushed through the pine needles. It was loud and aggressive, the kind of hot wind that makes people lose it, the kind that made living in Mojave, CA unbearable for weeks at a time during the summer. The smoke burned my eyes and clogged my nose, but it still left me in a better place than that damn mint cake. To the contrary, my smoke-fuzzed brain was as blissfully unmotivated as it had been yesterday, perfectly happy to chug along while pondering the tall ponderosa and not drink enough water.
Finally we reached the bottom where the JMT took a hard left turn towards Rae Lakes. While they would have been an ideal place to camp, it was out of reach for us today. However, any progress in that direction was a bonus worth earning. It was 3,500ft up to Glen Pass, and we now planned to take care of the first 500.
A quarter mile of avalanche debris had obliterated our intended stopping place, which was a bummer, but as always, the trail provides. A small flat spot appeared just before we dropped, so we dropped our packs without a third thought. The tough ground then rejected our tent stakes, so cowboy camping it was, and we spread our clear groundsheet with the help of a light breeze. The day was finally done.
Flower Power’s slightly swollen and bruised ankle (she rolled it yesterday, remember?) surprised us both because there had been no discomfort all day. Yet even now that we knew about it, there wasn’t much to do besides rest, elevate, compress, and monitor — all things she was doing already. Hoping that it would look better in the morning, or at least not feel worse, we shared our dinner of ramen and spanish rice while recapping the day. Both of us were beat up, but with a night to sleep and Rae Lakes in the morning, I wasn’t worried about Glen Pass just yet. As long as I stayed away from the mint cake, everything was going to be okay.
Hike For Days 