July 7, 2017
Ridge at mile 917 to Yosemite Valley (mile 933)
Pacific Crest Trail Thru-Hike: Day 64

Well, I’ll start out by saying I wish we had maps for this section. It’s fun looking at them at the beginning and end of the day to see where we are and what we’ve been around or seen. We have seen way more JMT hikers today, the numbers are going up which I didn’t expect. Seeing the JMT’ers is funny though because they are all very green. I didn’t realize that the first pass on their hike (and 2nd & 3rd passes, except Silver) are very long, broad passes for which you don’t seem to need an ice axe. So, asking them for information is pretty useless. It is good to see so many JMTers coming through though because Yosemite Valley is basically a clusterfuck of creek crossings, many of them major. Lots of hikers heading towards us means they haven’t been deterred.

It’s just so freakin WET in this valley.

Lyell River Fork

We avoided our first major crossing unintentionally, by following the footsteps/snowpath and coming down the wrong side of the pass. This ended up with us descending down the face of a waterfall. That was stupid. OH! Today is the first time we did two passes in one day! Island and Donahue, both broad and mild.

It’s still pretty buggy out. I’m a little concerned we’re going to run out of deet!

And Yosemite doesn’t really look how I thought it would. I know this isn’t all of it but I pictured it to be more canyon-y. But it’s more valley-ey.

Alex postholed today ascending Donahue. It was scary because he went all the way to his hip and fell forward. I’ve twisted my same foot 3 more times. It feels like we’re flirting with injury, so I gotta be careful!

Yosemite Valley

Ok I just looked at Guthooks and we’re not in Yosemite Valley, but we are in 1) a valley and 2) Yosemite. In order to get to Yosemite Valley (where all the cool shit is) we need to take the YARTS bus from Tuolomne Meadows, but Tuolomne Meadows is CLOSED!! So, what if we won’t get to see the valley because there’s no way to get there?! That would be a real bummer. We will have to ask a JMT hiker if the bus is running, or just find out when we get there.

We are drying our sneakers by the campfire, as we have done every night, but they’ve started getting holes burnt in them (and in our socks) as we get too liberal or eager with our drying placement on the rocks around the fire.

We did two passes today with crampons on our sneakers and I think we are ready to ship our boots home. If we can get to the valley they have a post office, so we could maybe even do it tomorrow!