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"Impassable" is a State of Mind

By Chris Bailey

It is no longer news that 1998 was a big snow year on the Pacific Crest Trail. For many ALDHA-West members, it is no longer news that all that snow had a disruptive effect on ‘98’s north-bound thru-hikers. The Gazette’s editor has asked us to provide a little of the flavor of what it was like to thru-hike in a big snow year.

First, some background. Jenelle and I set out from Campo on April 26, 1998 and finished our hike at Manning Park on September 22, 1998. We became the 4^th and 5^th hikers to have made it straight through from Mexico. Four others finished in late October, for a total of nine who left the Mexican border and hiked straight through to the Canadian border in 1998. Josh Dhasalear, Jason Lakey and Jonathan Breen finished ahead of us, and Jennifer Pittman, Mark Dixon, Jim Horan, and Graham Johnson behind us.

During the winter, we had been following the snow reports from the Sierras and had become increasingly concerned Poring over the data via the internet, we’d have conversations like, "what the hell is snow water content," and "well, 180% doesn’t seem so bad: maybe it will melt." Obviously, we were in denial. Adding to our paranoia was Ray Jardine’s published advice that if the snowpack was exceeding 200% of normal (which it was in most of the High Sierra during April), we’d be better off to postpone our hike for a year, or failing that, "that you not start until late May, that you prepare to hike many miles of snowpack in southern and central California, and that beyond the High Sierra you press ahead with a will in order to finish before the early-winter snowstorms hit the North Cascades." However, we decided to stick with our departure date: we were too anxious to wait until June and go southbound, plus the idea of hiking home (we live near Stevens Pass) was very appealing. Again, we were in denial.

So we read again and again Ray’s advice, which was prefaced with a warning to the effect (I cut those pages out and lost them somewhere) that hiking in heavy snow years was really winter mountaineering and beyond the scope of his book. We just didn’t see how bad it could be.

Our first tangible evidence came on our flight from Seattle to San Diego on April 25^th. Our flight path took us directly over the High Sierra. We could clearly make out Mono Lake and we’re pretty sure we picked out Mt. Whitney. That was where we were going to be hiking in a few short weeks? We took turns with our noses pressed to the window saying things like, "damn, there’s a lot of snow down there," and "yeah, but most of it will melt during the six weeks it’ll take us to get there, right?" Our state of denial rose to new heights.

The Journey Begins

At 9:20 a.m. on April 26^th we set out, excited, nervous, anxious, but confident. There was no snow at Campo – how bad could it really be? In fact, there wasn’t a single patch of snow in the Laguna Mountains, which gave us hope. But there were register entries from a couple of weeks before describing how some PCTers had arrived on snowshoes.

It wasn’t until we climbed over the shoulder of Combs Peak (map B3) that we got our first really good look at the San Jacintos. Gulp! Damn, there was a lot of snow there. Somehow we almost convinced ourselves that we were really looking at San Gorgonio, which we’d skirt around anyhow. But no, that was San Jacinto and we’d be there in about 2-3 days. Yeah, but we don’t go over the top, we traverse around a couple thousand feet below. How bad could it be? This is starting to sound familiar, huh?

Unseasonable storms ran us off the Desert Divide into Idyllwild prematurely and after waiting for 3 snowy, rainy days in Idyllwild we made our way back to our bail-off point and continued north. My (Chris) journal entries for May 8 - 10:

"Finally left Idyllwild today, getting a ride back to Cedar Springs Trail. Jenelle and I spent last night at the State Park Hiker/Biker site in the rain, thunder and hail.  The weather still didn't look great but we were really itching to get hiking after three nights in town.  Jason and Johanna also squeezed into the van for the ride back.  All day as we continued north along the Desert Divide, we remained in the clouds.  We would occasionally catch glimpses down toward Palm Springs.  North of Apache Peak we hit our first steep snow and broke out the ice axes.  They were definitely required as one slip would have sent us sliding over rocks, cliffs in some cases, and into trees."

"The majority of the trail today was snow-free but the snowy stretches were tricky. We camped with Kojac and Jason and Johanna near the head of Andreas Canyon. Our stove sprang a leak in the hose (after only eight days of use) and turned into a fireball. So much for hot food and melting snow for water."

May 9, 1998

"We spent all day today in the snow. Just after leaving our campsite this morning, we were in deep snow after one treacherous traverse on solid ice (refrozen over night). Tracks went everywhere, but we didn't trust any of them because one set were Brian's, who was lost, and another set was Brian and Martina's, who were lost and another was Lynn and Mike's, who were lost, and another set belonged to a ranger, who was lost. We eventually made our way to the vicinity of Deer Springs, but we didn't know exactly where we were. We ended up camping on top of 10 feet of snow (with no stove). It was a long, hellish day during which we would find the trail only about 10 percent of the time and hiked hard all day to cover fewer than ten miles."

May 10, 1998

"After waiting for the sun to soften the snow enough to get decent footing,  we made our way across a really sketchy side-hill traverse before finally finding the trail again just below the crest of Fuller Ridge. We were so happy to be on it again, but it soon disappeared under 15 feet of snow on the east side of the ridge. We picked up Brian and Brian and Martina's tracks and followed them to Black Mountain Road below Fuller Ridge campsite. Finally out of the snow, we found a great campsite and made a small fire so we could have a hot meal for the first time in three days."

We continued to have poor weather on and off, all the way to Kennedy Meadows, including an 18-inch snowstorm in the San Bernardino mountains near Mission Creek Trail Camp on May 13^th and several other days of really lousy weather. All, I’m told, remnants of the El Nino cycle, which didn’t really release its grip on Southern California until mid-June.

The High Sierra

We arrived at Kennedy Meadows on June 10^th and spent four nights there waiting for the weather to improve. By this time, we had decided we were going to make a foray into the Sierra to see what it was like. The vast majority of other thru-hikers had decided by now to skip to somewhere in northern California or flip-flop to Canada and the hand-wringing, nervous speculation, and endless debates about how to proceed had consumed a lot of energy over the past couple of weeks. It had grown to be a nauseating topic.

The weather pattern had settled down on the 13^th, and on the 14^th, with our new hiking partner, Randy (a section hiker who had started at Tehachapi Pass), we headed up the trail. We were carrying six days worth of food and our plan was to go at least as far as Trail Pass and then depending on how we were doing, we’d continue to at least Cottonwood Pass and, best case, continue to Crabtree Meadows and head over Trail Crest to resupply (and decide whether to proceed) in Lone Pine via Whitney Portal. Within the first half-day, we met two naysayers who said we didn’t stand a chance.

We knew of two hikers who had left Kennedy Meadows heading north ahead of us. One said he was only going as far as Olancha Pass, where he would head for Highway 395 and begin his flip-flop. The other hiker, we knew, was an experienced nordic skier and had skis with him. He was a very strong hiker and we felt certain he was out there ahead of us, which was (somewhat irrationally) a comforting feeling. He was about a week ahead of us at this point. We learned about two weeks later that he had only traveled about two days (to Trail Pass or Cottonwood Pass, I think) before he wisely decided that travelling solo was not a good idea. He later told us he didn’t think anyone would come along to travel with, so he decided to flip-flop.

Before setting out from Kennedy Meadows, we had contacted a backcountry ranger at the Lone Pine ranger station. He informed us that while there was 100% coverage in the high country, the snow was "bomber," i.e., in good condition for travel. This (and the avalanche danger) was our major concern. We knew we would struggle (post-hole) badly if the snow was unconsolidated. The ranger’s information turned out to be quite accurate. While the PCTA (and many, many others) were telling hikers that the Sierras were still impassable, we found the hiking strenuous and slow, but quite doable. Here is an excerpt from my (Chris) journals describing the conditions from Kennedy Meadows to Kearsarge Pass:

"We encountered out first patchy snow at around 9,000 feet, on June 14th, the day we left Kennedy Meadows. The next morning, traversing around Olancha Peak, we walked on patchy to mostly continuous snow for a few hours (at 9-10,000 feet) and had more of the same north of Ash Meadow that afternoon. The following day, we found the same snowpack composition as the day before as we approached Trail Pass and Cottonwood Pass, with solid snow on north and east exposures above 9,000 feet, especially in heavy timber. This pattern continued all the way past Crabtree Meadows to just south of Bighorn Plateau, where the snowpack became pervasive. In all this distance the snow was of a uniform nature: consolidated enough to hike bare-booted, with only occasional post-holing around "warming" objects like rocks and logs. We encountered no sun-cupping yet either, until the north side of Forester Pass in the Bubbs Creek drainage. One nice thing about this southern section was that the southern and western exposures below 10,000’ were often melted out almost completely, so many of our climbs were on bare switchbacks, while our descents (since we’re headed north) were on snow. One disadvantage of spring-like snow is that, especially in timber, the snow falls and drifts to irregular depths, leaving us to climb and descend over miles of one to six foot hummocks – an exhausting proposition."

"Forester Pass, our first major obstacle and the highest point on the PCT, had worried us for a couple of days. When we first glimpsed it from a distance, it made us cringe. We hadn’t seen any of the advice posted [on our website’s guest book] about Forester and had forgotten about Jardine’s recommendation of a possible alternate pass. When we got close enough to see the six to eight foot cornice at the top, the steep couloir, the avalanche debris, and the snow-plastered switchbacks blasted out of the steep rock face, we decided we weren’t going to risk it, though we weren’t sure how to proceed. As we ate lunch and stared at this problem, the pass just a short distance to the east of Forester (and west of Junction Peak), started to seem like an option, though we only had the topo map to indicate what the north side might be like. The pass had a bare talus slope for the last 100 feet and no cornice and didn’t seem unbearably steep, so we decided to give it a whirl. The snow was almost perfect for us to bare-boot up (our only option as we don't have crampons with us and have found little real need for them) protecting ourselves from a fall by self-belaying with our ice-axes. The north side of the pass was steep, but soft and easy to descend."

"One word here about avalanches. The three of us decided the risks associated with doing Forester and the rest of the passes in the afternoons was reasonably low, based on the conditions we saw and how the snowpack felt to us. There was evidence of recent slides, but mostly of snow coming off very steep rock or pieces of cornices breaking off – both situations we rarely had to traverse under. It also appeared that the majority of the heavily loaded areas had already slid. We saw no evidence of snowfields such as the ones we were regularly traversing triggering, even when they were hit by slides from above. Finally, the slide depositions we saw were very shallow and the one time we actually saw a slide, it was moving about four m.p.h."

"The snow in the vicinity north of Forester was pretty rotten in the late afternoon, the worst post-holing through this whole section. Otherwise, the snow conditions the rest of the way to Red’s Meadow became slightly better consolidated, vastly more sun-cupped (in meadows and open stands of timber) and deeper north of Silver Pass (we found snow almost all the way down to Red’s Meadow Resort)."

On that first leg from Kennedy Meadows we managed to exceed our expectations and were able to make it all the way to the Kearsarge Pass cut-off, where we headed out to the Onion Valley trailhead to resupply in Lone Pine (where we had sent our drift box). Unfortunately, the Onion Valley road had just opened and had very little traffic on it. We ended up walking about 8 (of 15) miles down the road before catching a ride the rest of the way into Independence.

After a couple of days rest in Lone Pine, we decided to continue north along the PCT rather than flip-flopping, which we had left open as an option. We made an 8-day leg to Red’s Meadow, where we hitched out to Mammoth Lakes for more rest and resupply. Continuing with my (Chris) journal entries for the passes north of Kearsarge:

"As for the rest of the passes: Glen Pass was steep on both sides, but we took a line to the right, following some skiers' steps and topped out through a band of rocks. It was a pretty easy pass, really, as it wasn’t very exposed. The north side had some pretty rotten snow and a few cliffs to descend around."

"Pinchot was quite easy as well. We took a line to the right making first tracks. The back side was no problem."

"Mather Pass was terrifying. The whole pass was corniced, except for one tiny spot above the pass on the left through the rocks. We traversed steeply up the left side, partially exposed to cornices above, crawled through one rock band, climbed steeply up very rotten snow to the next rock band and continued on mixed rock and snow, following (roughly) a skier’s steps over steep rock – quite a challenge! At one point while leading, I sank in to rotten snow with both feet, up to my waist. I was very off-balance (tipping backward on a very steep section) and couldn’t get a purchase on anything with my ice axe (the snow was sno-cone consistency about one foot deep on top of rock). My feet were stuck and I had to get Jenelle to dig them out from behind."

"Muir, Selden and Silver Passes were very easy and straightforward. In all, the snow has been hard work and has made route finding slow and tedious at times. We saw the trail only briefly, except in the valley bottoms. Patience is the key."

"We’ve heard there’ve been a few deaths in whitewater accidents from the high run-off so maybe a few words about stream-crossings are in order. We’ve actually had little difficulty with them. A little scouting for a good spot or log goes a long way. The one that sounded the scariest from the guidebook description, Silver Pass Lake Creek ("a hair-raising stream-crossing at the head of a fatally high cascade") was mostly just noisy, but not difficult."

The snowy trail continued in earnest after Red’s Meadow and the snow level actually dropped the further north we went in the Sierras. While there was little snow on the ground in Tuolumne Meadows, there was still plenty in the Yosemite backcountry and all the way to Sonora Pass. Our worst river fords came between Tuolumne Meadows and Falls Creek, where we had several very deep (chest high) crossings. A couple of the guys ahead of and behind us inadvertently swam on one or two of the crossings. Thankfully, we were able to scout for logs on a few of these. A few times we bushwacked on the opposite banks from the trail for a long way, crossing miles upstream where it was safer. By this time we had become comfortable with not having actual tread to follow. We had very little tread for most of the High Sierra.

Our last long stretch of snow wasn’t until shortly before Belden (map M10) at about 6800 feet, though we encountered drifts and snowfields on and off all the way through the Marble Mountain Wilderness in northern California.

Despite all the mental stress and hard work, the Sierras in ’98 were indescribably beautiful, vast and awe-inspiring. The physical hardships, the exhaustion, and the frustrations of constant route-finding, were rewarded by solitude, by views that few thru-hikers ever see, and by the reassuring knowledge that we were still heading north to Canada. We wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything, and would suggest that future thru-hikers (with adequate skills) at least consider taking the PCT on its own terms, even when the conditions are difficult. Not that there’s any "right," "better," or "best" way to hike the trail, but there is perhaps a little value in continuity and accepting the challenges of the trail as you find them.

Chris and Jenelle reside in Leavenworth, Washington, where, when not hiking, they work for the Forest Service seasonally. You can read more of their journals and view other information about their hike at http://www.skydivenet.com/pcthike/. Their email address is hikertrash@earthlink.net. For excellent up-to-the-minute snow information on the Southern Sierra, point your browser to http://missoula.bigsky.net/mdixon/snow/pct/southern/.