July 13, 2017
Across Wide Creek to 1001.8 (15.7 from Sonora Pass)
Pacific Crest Trail Thru-Hike: Day 70

Today was a slog.

The Good

One

This morning we got early sun at our campsite. It let us finish drying our clothes from yesterdays wide creek ford and eat breakfast in warm glowing light.

Two

Our campsite this evening is beautiful with a nearly panoramic mountain view, a sequoia tree, and a fire pit with a great backrest rock. We got extra rest time since we can’t be at Sonora Pass until July 15, so we stopped at 4:45 today, at least two hours earlier than usual.

Three

We hit mile 1,000!

Four

We didn’t have to cross Cascade creek! We avoided by going down around the left side of Bonnie Lake, and the ridge descending wasn’t bad either.

Five

We got ahold of the friendly Sonora Pass Resupply folks at the top of Dorothy Pass and were able to tell them both that we’d be late, and that we needed more food.

The Bad

Dorothy Pass is bullshit. It’s one flavor of frustrating to climb up a snow bank and walk on a snow field for the rest of the day. It’s a whole other flavor of frustrating to walk up a snow bank just to walk back down a snow bank, up and down like climbing over moguls. With snow banks up and down and muddy or water-covered ground, it’s impossible to stay on trail so we had to pause and check our map every 60 seconds. Swarms of biting flies when we wanted to rest. A group of antagonist hikers following us around every corner, telling us how to hike our hike. Generally just shitty and frustrating. But that’s it.

We’re over Dorothy Lake Pass, on the home stretch with 15.7 miles to go of the impassable wilderness. We made it through the Yosemite Meatgrinder, just the two of us solo crossing every single river except Spiller, finding safe places to do it, swimming where others took logs.

We saw/met two girls today who said they saw us yesterday evening on the other side of Wide Creek and wanted to shout to ask how the hell we got across. They said they tried to start crossing and couldn’t do it, so they waited until morning when a big group came by and they made a chain across the creek.

That made me feel really good, because I was so comfortable crossing that huge ominous creek. Thinking about it as an entity it feels like the creek is a black nightmare of a crossing, but when you separate it into its parts—current, flow, depth, speed, and runout, it isn’t scary anymore. It’s just a task or chore to get taken care of.

The Meatgrinder

We were talking to those two girls on and off as we continued to pass each other, and one of them mentioned that we were almost out of the Meatgrinder.

Huh? What’s the meatgrinder?

It’s this section. It’s called the meatgrinder because it’s known for being so fucking hard with all the passes and creek crossings. It’s called the Yosemite Meatgrinder.

I had no idea. Funny to go into a section thinking it’ll be smooth sailing, have a hell of a time with challenges around every corner and then, at the end of it all, find out it wasn’t supposed to be easy. That it’s actually notorious for being one of the worst sections on the entire trail. How different the experience may have been if we were expecting a meatgrinder instead of a stroll through the canyons.