Day 59

0 (+8) Miles (Kearsarge Pass)

Our bus to Independence wasn’t until 1:15 so after packing up our now super heavy bear cans, we went to the park across the street from the bakery. We had way too much food after realizing we could make it to VVR in 7 days instead of 8. We also wouldn’t need some of today’s food since we could eat town food until we hit the trail later in the day. We gave the excess to other hikers who were walking by the park on the way to do their own resupply. We got breakfast sandwiches again from Schat’s Bakery. Walked over to our bus stop where a couple other hikers were waiting. The bus showed up, we all piled in, and before I knew it we got dropped off in Independence. I might have snoozed a bit. I was dragging and unmotivated so we I got some pop with caffeine at the gas station. We walked over to the obvious hitch spot and stuck our thumbs out. We knew it was gonna be questionable to get a hitch this late in the day (most people would be leaving by now, instead of heading up toward the mountains). We got lucky though and a couple who were headed up for a short evening hike had an empty mini-van. They picked all 4 of us up and took us back to Onion Valley Trailhead. We briefly saw Lego and Maverick before they sped up towards Kearsarge Pass. We saw storm clouds on the south ridge, but our pass was west. We had to dig our rain gear out from the bottom of our packs since we never use them, but might need them for this hike back to the PCT. Only a few sprinkles on the way up, but the clouds were moving toward our pass. Not good. We kept hiking, getting closer to tree-line before making the final decision to push on and try to get over the pass before the storm got there. It was risky, but we made it. On the way down, we passed a couple of hikers who clearly didn’t have any concern about the storm so we made sure to say something in hopes they would treat the danger appropriately. Above tree-line is no place to be during a storm. As we made our fast descent the rain started, followed shortly by claps of thunder and lightning. Officially a bad time to be this high up. We were getting back into the trees when the rain became light sleet, so we stopped to wait it out in a clearing that could be a campsite. We debated just staying there for the night. The storm cleared off about 15 minutes later so we made our move down to a campsite that was just short of where we planned to go. Lego and Maverick had already setup near the same spot. Somehow we struggled to get the pitch right on the tent, but eventually got it standing. The sky looked calm so we skipped some of the guylines and dove into the tent to warm up, eat, and crash. Unfortunately, another storm moved in and around 1:30 I had to get out and tighten the stakes and put in the extra ones to keep the tent from being whipped around. About an hour later the skies calmed again.