You know the drill. Wake up early and start hiking. We had a fun surprise this morning! Some sketchy creek crossings. We started with some easy ones like the ones below.
Finally! A bridge! This river was fierce. We camped here last night and could hear boulders being tossed around by the water.
Then we moved on to a difficult one. (I didn’t take a picture cause my phone was in a ziplock in my backpack. The guy I was hiking with lost his whippet (trekking pole/ice ax.) Then we had to climb almost 4000 feet to Pinchot Pass. It was a tough morning, but the view was worth it.
After the pass we knew we had one big river crossing. Yes, this time it was a river. So we hiked down, passing some frozen lakes and met up with a ranger. He was setting up a ranger station for the summer and was busy digging it of all the snow. He told us if we couldn’t cross the river where the PCT crossed (a log was rumored to be nearby) then we should just keep going upstream until w me found a place since the PCT follows the river. Sure enough, the log was totally underwater and we started hiking upstream. About a mile later, where the river split in two we found a crossing. It was deep, but slow moving.
As we got out of the river it started to sprinkle. Luckily, there happened to be a patch of dry ground surrounded by snow. Three other people were setting up camp and we squeezed our tents into some questionable rocky spots.
Of course it stopped raining minutes later, but we had a good spot for the night. It was a shorter day, but it was tough. It doesn’t look like things will be getting any easier either.