Day 53 – 6/19/11 – 15 miles (784)
Wow, and I thought I was exhausted yesterday. We planned to get to Forester pass before the snow turned to mush, as nearly all sources recommend. But a morning of lost trail, slow travel on snow, and sketchy creek crossings slowed our pace to an average of 1 mile per hour. The worst of the creek crossings was Wright creek, with fast moving water that came up to my upper thighs. Ninja, Roadrunner and I crossed together with linked arms for safety.
Around lunchtime, still with 5 miles to go to reach the pass, we felt we had a decision to make. Go on and try Forester late in the day, or cut the day short and try for the next morning. We decided to go on a few more miles and see how it went, and make the judgement call then. As we went on, climbing above tree line and crossing snowfields, camping options became pretty nonexistent, so we went on. We slogged through the slush, postholing about a foot deep all the way to the pass. Forester definitely looks steep and scary, but when you’re actually on it, it’s not so bad, especially after Whitney.

View south from the top of Forester Pass

The final ice shoot had nice footsteps already cut in from those ahead of us. I didn’t even take out my ice axe. It was 5pm when we crossed the pass. I felt, as did all of my group, the soft snow was actually less scary than hard, icy morning snow would have been. The obvious downside was he miles of postholing before the pass, which would have been much easier on hard snow.

The final shoot.

At the top of Forester, the highest point on the PCT (13,180 ft), also the boundary crossing from Sequoia National Park into King’s Canyon National Park

The final ice shoot had nice footsteps already cut in from those ahead of us. I didn’t even take out my ice axe. It was 5pm when we crossed the pass. I felt, as did all of my group, the soft snow was actually less scary than hard, icy morning snow would have been. The obvious downside was he miles of postholing before the pass, which would have been much easier on hard snow.

After the pass we still had to make our way down the other side to camp. This included some very long and fun glissades. However, this also left us wet with the sun quickly setting. We ended up going another 5 miles, and crossing another sketchy creek, completely soaking us from thighs down at sundown. Around 8pm we finally caught up to a group of 5 hikers ahead of us who’d found some flat, though very wet, ground to camp on. The rest of us squeezed in and got into our dry clothes and sleeping bags immediately.