I woke up feeling tired and worn down this morning. Today’s itinerary primarily consisted of a downhill hike towards Muir Trail Ranch. I didn’t send a resupply there but I heard that they had hiker boxes overflowing with discarded food from JMT hikers so decided to check it out.
Evolution Lake
Around 10:00 am I was starving and cooked some risotto on my stove. It’s the first time I’ve cooked a dinner-type meal in the morning and it improved my mood considerably. Most of the day I my headphones on and didn’t take many breaks as I was motivated to get to Muir Trail Ranch.
A group of riders on horses camped at Evolution Lake. I stepped on horse poop the whole rest of the day.
I crossed Evolution Creek at noon. It’s known as one of the biggest creek crossings when in early season, but now the water only came up to just under my knee.
Evolution Meadow
Evolution Creek
I reached Muir Trail Ranch around 4:15 and scored a few things from the resupply buckets but they didn’t look very exciting. The good stuff was pretty picked over. A posted weather forecast predicted a 20% chance of snow on Thursday/Friday so I’ll be closely monitoring the weather.
Bridge over Piute Creek
Exiting Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and Entering the John Muir Wilderness
I hiked out of MTR when they closed at 5:00 pm and followed the trail back to the PCT. I decided to stop hiking early as I was feeling tired today and the trail leads uphill from here towards Selden Pass and I don’t want to camp at a high elevation again.
Muir Trail Ranch
Muir Trail Ranch
So I had a nice early evening and ate some mystery “adobo pork” from a packet I found at Muir Trail Ranch. It was actually pretty good.
PCT 2017 Stats
PCT Day 159 – Tuesday, September 19
Evolution Lake Mile 843 to Mile 859.5
PCT Miles Hiked Today: 14.7
Non-PCT Miles Hiked: 2.2
Total PCT Miles Hiked: 1729.8
Feet Ascended Today: 1277
Feet Descended Today: 3726
Current Elevation: 8420
Steps: 53108
For more on my experience hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, visit my Pacific Crest Trail Blog page.
0 Comments