Day 8- Silver Pass and Bear Ridge

 Tuesday, June 24

"Tired puppies drag their tails. Tired hikers drag their hiking poles."

Beginning: Fish Creek (Mile 78.7)
Ending: Bear Ridge (Mile 93)
Daily recorded distance: 16.7 miles
Total recorded distance: 105.6 miles
Daily recorded elevation gain: 4,081 feet
Total recorded elevation gain: 25,105 feet

Today was mostly uneventful, but it was hard. Looking back, it was the hardest day of the whole hike. In the first four miles, we climbed two thousand feet to the top of Silver Pass (10,754 feet). The climb was strenuous, but no harder than our earlier climb to the top of Donohue. The last fifty yards to the top was covered in snow, but we managed to cross without slipping or postholing. On the long descent to Edison Lake, we hiked with two southbound hikers for a short way. One was just out to see how far he could get in two days of hiking, and the other was hiking at a slow pace. He had started several days before us, and now he was trying to get to Vermilion Valley Resort before his knee gave out on him. After hiking eleven miles, we were hiking along a nice creek close to Edison Lake that had several nice camp sites along it. From there, we could have taken a ferry across the lake to VVR where we would have had hot showers and real food. We never planned on stopping there, so we decided to keep going even though it was getting late. We had been going downhill since the top of the pass, and our legs felt good so we thought we could make it another five miles to the next good creek marked on the map. Unfortunately, we did not realize that another climb, as big as the pass we had climbed in the morning, lay between us and that creek. We started climbing to the top of Bear Ridge. Then we kept climbing, and then we kept climbing some more. That climb, coming unexpectedly at the end of the day, felt harder to me than anything else on the trail. And there wasn't even any view at the top. The entire Bear Ridge is covered in thick pine forest that doesn't leave any way to see the view surrounding the ridge. They should cut down all the trees. Except for the junipers. Some gnarly big junipers were growing along the northern slope. They looked like sequoias that didn't quite grow up. As we neared the top, the climb began to level out, but we weren't finding any place to camp. We needed water, and the top of the ridge was bone dry. Footsore and weary, we continued on hoping we would find a place to camp on the way down. The descent from the ridge was steep, but there were small places for tents scattered along the trail. They already had tents so we kept going. Finally, we found a small flat area right beside the trail with only one tent on it. Bryce (northbound PCT, from Texas) invited us to set up camp with him so we set up in a small campsite between the trail and a steep drop off.  We had access to a small trickle of water. Soon a group of northbound PCTers added their tents to the collection, and we spent the night in an impromptu PCT village.

The nice creek we could have camped by.

Day 7- Lake Virginia and the First Golden Trout

 Monday, June 23

Beginning: Upper Crater Meadow (Mile 64.5)
Ending: Fish Creek (Mile 78.7)
Daily recorded distance: 13.8 miles
Total recorded distance: 88.9 miles
Daily recorded elevation gain: 2,556 feet
Total recorded elevation gain: 21,024 feet

Today was "just another day of hiking," at least for the first part of the day. Bryson spent most of the day ahead of Casey and me, collecting stories from the line of northbound PCTers. Casey seemed to have decided that a slower, steadier pace would be better for his ankle, so we ambled along behind at a comfortable pace. Around the middle of the day, we all stopped for lunch beside a small creek. There I cooked some potatoes while Bryson caught us up on the stories he had been hearing from other hikers. 

"Porter" had earned his trail name by reuniting unfortunate hikers with their lost gear. Every time he found a piece of gear, he would take it town on his next resupply. Surprisingly almost all the gear he found was eventually returned to the original owner. Another elderly hiker was carrying the police badge of his friend who had been killed in the line of duty. They had always dreamed of hiking the trail together, but the hiker was now carrying the badge to Canada in honor of his friend. When he had to leave the trail due to an injury, he asked Porter to carry the badge the rest of the way to Canada.

Another man, whose trail name is unknown, was collecting rare and unusual rocks. Every time he went into town, he would empty his bear canister of the extra weight and ship the rocks back home. Bryson gave him a little yellow duck to add to his collection.

We just happened to be eating lunch right beside the trail junction to Duck Pass. Someone got a kick out of leaving another little yellow duck on the trail sign. Later in the afternoon, it started getting colder, and we were worried that it might start raining. We put on our rain jackets to ensure that it wouldn't rain, but we did encounter a few snow flurries.

At Purple Lake, the outlet had too many fish to pass by. I caught a couple of rainbows before moving on. The steep climb after Purple Lake led to another of my favorite sections of trail: Virginia Lake to Fish Creek. Virginia Lake is high (10,300 ft.) and set in a small basin surrounded by craggy, snow-covered peaks. I really wanted to stay longer to take it all in, but it was starting to get late. After Virginia Lake, there was a steep, chaparral-covered descent to Fish Creek. Every now and then, a pika would dart under a rock or a PCTer would trudge up the trail. This was one time I was glad to be going down and not up.

At the bottom, the trail ducked under the forest right beside Fish Creek. There was a perfect campsite there, but Casey and Bryson were nowhere around, so I had to pass it up to find them. This part of trail was a dream (have I said that before?), smooth, level, beside the perfect creek. I really wanted to stop and fish, but I didn't know how far I would have to go to catch the others before dark.

After another mile, I caught up with them. We found a nice, secluded camp a short ways off the trail. Bryson and Casey, like responisble hikers, set up camp and did their laundry. I, like a fishing addict, dropped my gear at the campsite and headed for the creek. The creek was not as peaceful as it had been further upstream, but it still had perfect pools to fish separated by small waterfalls. I caught a couple small trout, one of which was a golden-rainbow hybrid. That was unsurprising. I have found rainbow trout with a diluted golden strain in several different creeks throughout the mountains. These fish look like a rainbow, but they have more spots than most rainbow trout. Where the true golden has a brilliant yellow belly, the hybrid will have a pale yellow belly. I cleaned the fish, and left them in the creek so I could return to cook them for supper.

Continuing up the creek, I fished several different pools, clambering over boulders and up waterfalls as I went. Somewhere up there, I caught a pure golden trout that was around twelve inches long. I let it go, and caught a few more small brookies for the frying pan.

Virginia Lake

Golden Trout

 Golden Trout are the only trout that are actually native to the Golden State. The headwaters of the Kern River in the southeastern Sierra Nevada are the only native habitat of this special fish. They are not big, but they are beautiful. Their back is dark brown like most other trout, but it is almost completely free of spots. They have a mottled pink strip running the length of the lateral line, and their belly is usually a brilliant golden yellow. In the Sierras, they rarely get any bigger than eight inches. Along with several other species of trout, they have been introduced in lakes and creeks all throughout the Sierras, but they today they only survive in a few places because they can rarely coexist with others trout species. Brook trout are voracious feeders and will outcompete the golden. Brown trout are cannibals and will eat goldens into extinction. Because the golden trout is a subspecies of the rainbow trout, they will hybridize and eventually lose their distinctive gold color. They can only live at high elevations, in waters that other trout can't access.