I didn’t take any pictures of Glen Pass. After the pass this is a suspension bridge over the Wall river that was just rapids. I slept here with two other hikers, Ninja Tank and Random. The rapids were continual white-noise.
Can you see the trail? It’s covered in snow. So you carefully, very carefully, walk down the snow covered slope. Can you see the foot prints far far below? Mine will be shortly added to those.
Fording a stream, creek, or river is quite stressful. If you fall you could get hurt, you’ll definitely get soaked, and your pack will get soaked too. A soaked hiker is a cold hiker and you need to worry about hypothermia. Most are just little streams, but some are full rapids. Did I say they are STRESSFUL! Right now I’m camped beside a raging river which hopefully tomorrow morning will be less raging. My shoes are wet and they don’t have time to dry by morning. So I just assume they’ll be wet all day long.
Update: The next morning the raging river was still raging. Although I was told that in the morning the river would be lower, because the source above would be frozen, this was not the case. I should have crossed it the night before. Oh, and my shoes were frozen solid which made getting them on very difficult.
As I was crossing a particularly difficult creek a rock got in the way of my shin.
Update: A don’t need a tattoo to commemorate my PCT hike. Instead I have a scar from this scrape that still remains.
Each pass was a challenge. Each pass had snow on both the south and north sides. More snow was on the less sunny north side.
For Mather Pass I followed two other hikers who were climbing it. While climbing up the south side I was finally able to get to switchbacks that were relatively clear (on left side of picture below). As I approached the top the hiker in front of me leaned over and barfed on the trail. Eww! It was the altitude. We each react to it differently. Luckily I never had a problem that way.
While climbing Mather and Muir the past two days I thought I saw bear tracks in the snow. Nope, they were just dog tracks.
The first picture shows the widest crossing so far. The boulders made the crossing straight forward. On an earlier occasion I crossed Evolution creek. It was deep and the current was strong. For that one I removed my shoes and pants and put them in my pack. Then waded across facing the current and using my poles to brace myself. Brrrrr, it was cold too. On average I have 3-4 serious crossings like these each day. Where serious means I have to wade, carefully step from rock to rock, or cross on a fallen tree.
Eating my afternoon snack during a break in my climbing of Silver Pass. I was worried. It was very late in the day (around 4-5 PM) and the snow on the other side of the pass was soft which would cause me to posthole a lot.