[pct-l] Mammoth, T. Meadows, Monstro on a tear

[Joanne Lennox]

Just returned from my sojourn peakbagging Mammoth to North boundery of Yosemite - 19 days off trails and 23 peaks climbed all very near the PCT.  Had three days in a row with memorable cloud bursts at 3 pm .  The first was an hour of large hail followed by 2 hours of hard rain. I was at 11,500 and not much below the constant thunder - my tarp held and I stayed dry, but was scared enough to put everything in my pack, cover that with a large good garbage bag and put it on a large rock (any terrain slightly flat became a lake, steep was running sheeted in water - my site had much needle cast, it remained dry under a very low strung tarp).  There were piles of 12 inches of hail on the tarp edges, which I shoveled away with my pot lid. The next day climbing Shepards Crest, the ground was littered with flowers, petals, leaves, and needles.  5 days later, returning to Tuolumne I would find what these storms had done to the trails for miles around.  Those wonderful rock shin banging water bars so touted and believed by the FS and Parks:  Every bit of fine material was washed out of the trail, the PCT and all the other trails I was on were converted to creek bottom, the sand and needles flowing down the trail to the water bars and transported off the trail and down slope to form a sand table below.  The areas without waterbars kept the sand on the trail.  Both areas were just as eroded.  I wish that these agencies would stop planting rocks in the trails.

I have been climbing and hiking in WA, Or and CA for 40 years and have never had a bear problem.  Been from Mexico to Canada 3 times and have never had a bear problem .  I always choose my campsite carefully.  The Park ranger made me sign my permit which read "do not hang or guard food" which I did not.  She also admonished me to not sleep with a candy bar in my pocket and to put my collected soiled TP in with my food in a bear cannister.  I can not support stupidity in the belief that I should "save the world".  If you want to save the world that is your perogative.  My concepts and beliefs may be very much the same or different than yours, and how I choose to act on them may also be the same or different  - but ethics should not be made into regulations. This ecosystem of ours includes both humans and bears, not just bears.

I had supplied at Tuolumne and after the last climb lite out for Tuolume to get a shuttle for a shuttle to my flight home, and wearily trudded through the afterrnoon rain, and crossed a very swollen Virginia and McCabe creek, and was ascending the 500 feet to Cold Cyn in wanning light, when I was greeted by an apparition in pumpkin colored clothing (shoes, shorts, figured shirt, and hat).  Even in the reduced light, The whimsical natty attire was not missed, and my first thought was this cannot be a thruhiker.  MY second impression was a little deeper .Bodies on a thruhiker seem to respond in two ways - probably related to whether your body is mostly fast twitch or slow twitch muscles.  Mine becomes more bunchy.  Last year a guy at a party asked if he could photograph my calf muscles - He had seen them 30 years ago! ( And he has not seen them since either).  Others respond by getting longer and leaner and tight - marathon runners who only run an average  of a few hours a day at the most, look flabby compared to these guys. This guy was the epitome of the latter type,  and I said " a thruhiker? Huh?"  We exchanged trail names, and Monstro from Reno said he had thruhiked in 2006 and was just seeing what his body could do, and that he had started on June 20th.  WHen I mentioned that the PCT avoids some of the fragile and prettyist areas (lakes, meadows, etc),  he said that after getting to canada he planned to do the TRT with a friend...... He laughed, and had been concerned when he first saw me - thought I was this little old lady, very lost. Hum!  A new attire might help -- maybe whimsical, pumpkin colored. (Hopi's colors!)

Lets see, he had been out exactly 25 days, and the data book gives 950 miles to where we met.  950 miles divided by 25 is.............

Goforth