Day One: I had one friend flying into Los Angeles from the east coast, and another few coming up from San Diego. I planned to pick my east coast friend up at the airport, drive up to Onion Valley, sleep for a few hours in the campground, and then get hiking. This did not work out as planned. I took a short nap before going to pick up my friend, woke up with a familiar soreness in my throat, and realized that I had picked up a cold from my daughter. The saving grace was that I knew it wasn't COVID. The next wrinkle was a flight delay, which led to us arriving at Onion Valley at 5 AM, after driving through impressive monsoon lightning in the desert. We immediately laid down and went to sleep al fresco... only to be awoken by rain an hour later. And then I realized that I had left my hiking shoes back in Los Angeles, necessitating an emergency trip to Bishop to buy some trail runners. I finally got on the trail at 10:30, sick, having slept one hour, and with a brand new pair of shoes. The hike quickly turned into a very cold uphill trudge into rain and then snow as we ascended. As we climbed, we passed a huge number of PCT hikers, all abandoning the backcountry in the face of the weather. They were all carrying tiny ultralight backpacks and seemed shell-shocked. As we reached the top of the pass, though, we had a stroke of luck -- the weather broke less than a quarter mile from the top, and by the time we reached the pass we had some blue sky and beautiful views of cloud-wrapped peaks and dustings of snow on the higher ridges. We dropped down to Kearsage Lakes and were able to get camp set up before a thunderstorm rolled through, which led to an early night. The combination of weather, cold, and illness pushed me into a fully sleepless night, not an encouraging start to the trip.
Day Two: Morning broke with blue skies studded with white puffy clouds. We took a bit of time to dry out some gear before heading down the trail past Bullfrog Lake and the JMT, and then north toward Glen Pass. I was really dragging up what should have been a pretty easy pass -- beat down by sickness, altitude, and two nights of very little sleep. Nevertheless, we made it before the clouds built up too heavily, and were about fifteen minutes away from Rae Lakes when the rain came back. We waited out the rain before setting up camp and enjoying the late afternoon and evening in this beautiful place. As dusk approached, massive hordes of PCT hikers started passing through and what had been a quiet campsite turned very busy. I didn't expect anything approaching solitude at Rae Lakes, but the sheer number of neighbors still managed to surprise me.
Day Three: More blue skies and white puffy clouds. We put together some day packs and headed off on the trail to Sixty Lakes. After climbing a bit, we veered off the trail and started scrambling up the ridge dividing the two basins. We climbed to the high point of that ridge and enjoyed the view, which is particularly beautiful facing south toward Fin Dome, with Rae Lakes on one side and Sixty Lakes on the other. We messed around for awhile, scrambled over some rocks, and slowly made our way north along the ridge, crossing the Sixty Lakes trail and continuing on to the base of Fin Dome. By this time the clouds were building up again, so we dropped down the ridge back toward Rae Lakes, crossed the valley to rejoin the JMT, and headed south back to our camp. The rain came back shortly thereafter and we all hung out and stayed dry until it broke that evening. We did get to enjoy a beautiful sunset. Even more impressive was watching the trout hammer mosquitos in the evening -- the number of trout leaping out of the water looked like something out of a nature documentary. I wished that we had David Attenborough to narrate it.
Day Four: Back over Glen Pass to Kearsarge Lakes. By this time I had adjusted to the altitude, gotten a good night's sleep, had moved from the "fever and sore throat" to the "obnoxiously congested" portion of my cold, which was a huge improvement. I practically ran up the pass, in contrast to the slog of two days ago. Clouds built up early and ominously today, but we managed to avoid the rain all the way to Kearsarge Lakes, and as the day went on the clouds broke up and treated us to blue skies. Our only dry day of the trip was well-timed. Of all the easily accessible lakes in the Sierra, Kearsarge Lakes might be the most beautiful, for my tastes at least. We had plenty of time and nice weather to wander the shorelines, climb up a few ridges, lay around in the grass, and just enjoy ourselves. Getting a day of good health and dry weather at the end of the trip was a treat.
Day Five: The hike out.
A few observations:
I had not anticipated the sheer level of PCT activity I would encounter. I had assumed that most PCT hikers would have moved through this area by late June, particularly in a drought year. Maybe we were at the tail end of the wave, but it was still a wave -- we probably saw at least 100 thru-hikers a day. The first night we spent at Rae Lakes was particularly busy. I think that this was probably because a lot of PCT hikers headed out Kearsarge Pass to avoid the monsoon, then hiked back in and over Glen Pass the day after the worst of it had passed. The level of competence and etiquette of the thru-hikers was mixed. Some were incredibly professional and others were not. One night we were hanging around camp, most of us sitting and one person standing. We heard someone start yelling "can you hear me???" from about fifty feet away. We didn't respond at first, assuming that he was looking for a friend of his or something like that. He kept yelling, though, and sounding more and more frantic. We eventually responded with "yes, we can hear you, do you need help?" His answer was "no, thank god, I thought you were a bear!" Apparently he had mistaken a camp of five people for a bear... and his response to seeing a bear was to yell at it and hope that it would respond. Then, after dark, another PCT hiker rolled straight into our campsite and started asking about places to camp. (It's Rae Lakes, there are plenty). It turned out that she and her friends had not brought any food for dinner, as they were relying on fishing, but they didn't show up to camp until dark and the fish weren't biting. We gave them some spare food and I've never seen people be so grateful for some extra tortillas. Basically, it seemed like there were a lot of people out there who might be very impressive athletes -- completing the PCT takes some real fitness and stamina -- but had essentially no wilderness skills and only slightly more common sense. It was also notable that virtually everyone carried the exact same gear and seemed to be hitting the exact same paces, as if everyone had just googled "how to hike the PCT" and was following identical directions. It recalibrated my view of the PCT. It seems less like a wilderness experience and more of an extended endurance sport. Kind of like running a marathon that takes you several months instead of a few hours. It did not increase my desire to hike the PCT, or to spend more time on the JMT during PCT season.
Speaking of bad wilderness etiquette, we also had someone flying a drone over Kearsarge Lakes on our last night while a dozen or so groups were dotted around the lake during golden hour, quietly relaxing. Fortunately, those other groups all came together to loudly boo the drone, and it quickly descended and its owners slunk off back to camp, restoring the peace of the wilderness.
On the plus side, the scenery out here was as beautiful as advertised. I've only been to Rae Lakes once before, and that was a hurried rush through in bad weather. They might be overly popular, but they are stunning. In some ways it was also pretty cool to hike through the monsoon weather. It was particularly beautiful to be out during and immediately after a bit of late-season snow. And the last night -- when I finally felt healthy and got to enjoy beautiful weather with my friends while relaxing at one of my favorite lakes in the Sierra -- was a lovely and fitting capstone to the trip. Next time I will do something a bit more remote, but my streak of never having had a bad trip in the Sierra continues.
