After leaving Chicken Spring Lake, the trail was covered with patches of snow. We used our trusty Halfmile app to show us where to go. It slowed us down, but not too much. After going downhill and entering our first national park, we came to Rock Creek, the first significant creek crossing of the PCT.
Lucky for us, there was a log across the creek that we could shimmy over. We watched one guy fall off the log and lose his trekking poles and sunglasses. When he tried fording the creek he fell in again, having to be pulled to safety by two people who had successfully crossed.
After the excitement at the creek, we headed uphill to our next creek crossing. It was much smaller and we could rock hop across no problem. After cresting the hill, we came upon a huge meadow, still covered in snow. The views were breathtaking.
The forest here is like no other forest I’ve ever seen. The only plants are the huge pine trees. There wasn’t even any grass. It made travel easy though, since we could just walk around the random piles of snow.
Eventually we made it to one last creek crossing, Whitney Creek. With our feet wet from snow travel earlier in the day we decided to ford this one. It was about thigh deep and moving slowly. It was really strong! We all made it across with no issued and we took a side trail that goes to Mt. Whitney.
We hiked up the Whitney trail catching an amazing view of the mountain we would be climbing. We skipped rocks at Timberline Lake and hiked on, trying to get as close as possible to camp before summiting in the morning. Some people coming down from he summit told us that our goal, Guitar Lake was almost entirely covered in snow and there was little, if any, camping. We stopped for the day and made camp along a stream just past Timberline Lake.
In the morning, we’ll climb the tallest mountain in the lower 48.
A lot of the people we talked to before entering the Sierras were planning on skipping it. The creeks were too dangerous or there was too much snow were the usual excuses. I don’t know how anyone could skip this section. It’s absolutely incredible. One hiker, who summited Whitney today, told us we probably didn’t even need our ice axes. Things change fast out here.