As I was reading a little before falling asleep last night, the wind came up in a few determined gusts, pushing against my tent walls, but after that it quieted down and the night was peaceful. Or at least I slept through any commotions caused by weather or otherwise. My dreams have been growing stranger and more vivid as these days wear on, as though colors are stirring deep in my psyche. On my second day out (26 days ago!) I encountered a hiker who, when I told him what I was setting out to do (and who knew of all three high routes, a pretty rare occurrence), remarked that it was like a vision quest. Steve Roper, the author of the Sierra High Route which occupied me for the first twelve days or so, writes that “traveling solo along the High Route can be an enjoyable, almost mystical, experience”. Perhaps I am entering the mystical phase of my long journey now, and dreams are the portents by which I will orient. In any case, I won’t go into detail, but as I travel far during the day, so too I seem to be at night.
I had two passes today, Thunder Ridge Pass and Longley Pass. To travel from my snug camp in the bowl beneath Talus Pass, I climbed for some thousand plus feet along a cheerful brook, Table Creek, along granite slabs and meadow grass to two beautiful aquamarine tarns, a color I associate with glacial runoff. A short climb, then descent, then climb up talus and I was on Thunder Ridge Pass, looking down on a steep, talusy descent. Descending talus is slow, and getting slower every day I’m out here as my knees and ankles seem to creak more and shake more. I carefully plod down, supporting my weight with my arms whenever I can to relieve the burden on my legs. Eventually I was down a few hundred feet and the grade became gentler, and then the talus was covered in a snow field for a time which is a gracious use of all this snow lingering around here. I passed a couple lakes, bobbing up and down over humps, and then contoured around a ridge. These are the days: bobbing on humps, contouring around, ascending blocks and descending blocks, swinging one leg from the hip and then the other. In this very manner I made my way up along Cunningham Creek, almost misidentified Longley Pass but then got it straightened out, and climbed for a good while in soft sand until I stood on its top, looking down at a massive corniced snow field blocking the length of the pass.
Aquamarine tarn
The view looking down at the descent of Thunder Ridge Pass. Note the considerate snow patch.
Corniced snowfield on Longley Pass, taken from the chute.
I did expect as much. Longley is known to be a walk-up pass on the west side, and to often have a large, lingering snow field on the east side early season. Well, it’s not early season but the entire Sierra range is decorated in lingering snow anyway. Anywhere that is likely to have troublesome snow ‘early season’ will almost definitely have troublesome snow now. And this corniced, steep snow field was definitely troublesome. Both Skurka (author of the current high route) and Secor (author of The High Sierra: Peaks, Passes, and Trails, which is a kind of bible for cross country travel in the range) recommend looking north of the pass. Secor in particular suggests a Class 3 chute that can be downclimbed, and indeed I found exactly that chute and had a fun little down climb, wedged into a crack and looking over at the astonishing thickness of the snow blocking the pass. The climb was over fast, and then I was sand-glissading down a steep and soft hillside. Passes can sometimes go quick, despite all the labor involved to arrive at them. I was grateful that during my passage, the weather was relatively stable, with only a few sharp wind gusts and clouds but no rain. On the descent the rain came in small flurries, and continued on and off throughout the afternoon, but overall the weather patterns have improved dramatically over a few days ago.
Longley Pass from below. The class 3 bypass is the crack on the right side of the photo.
After passing a snowy tarn and then eating lunch next to a sparkling, limpid lake, I began a long descent down to Lake Reflection. I was expecting to, per route directions, follow a creek all the way down to the lake, fighting some willows along the way, knowing that sometimes willows simply must be fought. But only a short time after joining the creek, I saw some cairns leading across a granite rib, away from the creek.
Looking down on Lake Reflection. I followed this chute down for a bit before leaving it for the cairns.
Cairns, a pile of rocks too composed to have landed together by chance, are a rather primitive kind of sign. They contain almost no information other than that ‘a person was here, and you could be too’. When one sets out to follow a cairn trail, there are many questions: are these marking the route I want to take, or a different route? Will they continue or strand me somewhere? Will they lead me more true than if I didn’t follow them? Because the fact is, following cairns can sometimes take you somewhere you wouldn’t necessarily choose in their absence, and that may be because cairns, like a trail, are future-knowing and anticipate unseen obstacles (like cliff bands), or it may because they mark a bad route. After all, anybody can build a cairn. I’ve sometimes wondered if people ever build bad cairn trails to nowhere just to mess with others (which would be very mean). Following cairns is about trust: do you give over some authority to the cairns and trust their wisdom? Do you trust the cairn builder? Trails can be that way too, but so many people use them that the question of trust is placated by the numbers of trusters, all those hikers out following the path. With a cairn trail, it can feel like a relationship solely between you and the mysterious cairn-builder.
At first the cairns were great: frequent, easy to follow, and clearly giving a superior path to staying down in the bushwhack by the creek. But after a while, long after they led far away from the creek and high up on the north slope next to Lake Reflection, they petered out. At first they grew scarce, and then just when I was ready to abandon the cairn trail one would come back. Like a little cairn tease. So I would recommit, follow along, until they disappeared for good and I was in a place I wasn’t too excited to be. I could tell there were cliffs all around, and it took me some time to figure out how to go from there/ all options sucked. This is the trouble with following someone else’s trail: you commit, but then the trail disappears and you find yourself in a place you would never be otherwise.
I crossed some talus, then I crossed back. I descended then climbed. Eventually I could see enough of the slope ahead to plan a route across without hitting too many cliff bands, and from there I was able to make descent progress and eventually arrive at the outlet of the lake. I cursed the cairns a couple times, then laughed when suddenly a few reappeared right as I was near the end of the lakeside traverse.
I was offered two different fording options in the guide to cross the outlet of Lake Reflection and access the rough trail on the other side: either hop across the outlet on partially submerged logs, or go downstream and ford. But after the outlet, the water ballooned out again into a mini lake. I started to hop the logs, but they were unstable and too submerged to keep my shoes dry. I started to ford barefoot just past them, but the water there was deep and the bottom was actually silt-covered logs, and seemed treacherous to try to walk across. So I split the difference and forded at the partially submerged logs barefoot, carefully walking along the huge underwater trees as fish swam around my feet. Falling off seemed like a bad idea, into that tangled mass of logs. They were very slippery. Carefully, carefully. When I reached the other side, I raised my arms and gave a cheer. I was done with cross country for the day, because the lightly maintained trail led from there down to Bubb’s Creek. I survived the confusing cairn trail and cliffy shore of Lake Reflection, and I made it through one of the more interesting river crossings so far.
The submerged log jam I crossed at the outlet of Lake Reflection.
Making the crossing.
I made good time down to East Lake on the trail, arriving there at 3:30. I had planned to camp there, but it was so early that I decided to push on. My legs were eating up the fast trail, and less than an hour later I was fording Bubb’s Creek (upper thigh deep, fast water, forded with shoes on) at the bottom of the very long descent from Longley Pass (over 3000 feet).
Again, it was only 5pm. I chatted with a camper I met there briefly, then jumped on the Bubb’s Creek trail and headed east towards Lower Vidette Meadow. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because I was here before, some 12 days ago or so, while I was on the Southern Sierra High Route. I’m now entering the twilight zone part of the hike, when I will occasionally revisit places I’ve already been. From here to the Kearsarge Pass Trail I’ll follow the JMT, which I did before headed south, and this time I’m headed north. Also, in a few days time, I’ll follow the JMT north from LeConte Ranger Station north up towards Helen Lake and Muir Pass, a section I hiked south just before exiting to resupply in Bishop. My roundabout route overlaps itself some. I get to find out if in the intervening days I’ve become a different person.
Looking east up Bubbs Creek Canyon, the direction of my evening hike.
Evening hiking, setting sun.
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