I slept in this morning waiting for my friend to catch up. The first people I saw weren’t my friend. It was a couple from New Zealand that I haven’t seen since day 4. They hiked past my camp just as I was finishing packing up. I hiked down with them, glad to not be alone on the next couple creek crossings.
They were pretty uneventful. The first had a nice big log. The second, Paiute creek, had a log spanning the whole way that was underwater. The current was slow and the log was big. It was nice to only get our feet wet.
Next we had a pass to content with. It was still early and the snow was firm and good for traveling. As we neared the top, a voice called out. It was my friend, Splash. Somehow he had avoided the creek I camped next to and hiked past me the day before. While I thought he was hours behind, he was actually ahead of me.
Our next big creek, and what may have been the last dangerous one was at the bottom of the pass. Reports talked about snow bridges a couple weeks before but those were all gone. It was raging and we weren’t sure what to do. Then, we saw a log just a little upstream of the PCT crossing. It was nice and easy. Only 3 creeks to go.
It wasn’t just walking through rivers today, we had a few decent climbs with some amazing scenery. We even got to enjoy some snow free trail since much of the trail was south facing. Then we got to our first deep crossing of the day. The last report said they swam across. Lucky for us, it was only chest deep and we could cross with our packs over our heads.
The next crossing was knee deep and easy. The third crossing would be a bit more interesting. Wide Creek is well named, it was probably the widest creek we’ve come across. It was also the deepest. We walked up and down trying to find the shallowest spot, but it looked like we would have to swim. It was really slow, so we weren’t concerned about safety, just being really cold.
There were other people at the crossing and we all made it across fine. We tried making a train to break the current for the people in back. It worked about halfway across before it got too deep and we had to swim for it. It was soooo cold.
We took a break for dinner and let the things in our packs dry out. Thank goodness for dry bags and Ziplocs. Then we hiked a few more miles. There is still lots of snow on the ground so I’m camped on a rock. The sun warmed it all day so it kinda feels like I have a heated floor.