What the heck have we gotten ourselves into?

Days 4-6 on the Sierra High Route

SHR Day 4 - 13.8 mi, 3704 ft ascent

Today was a great day on trail. We did 4 passes! The first ~6 miles of today we were on the PCT/JMT, and we went over Mather Pass. We had tons of fun chatting with both JMT and PCT hikers. We then left the trail and headed to Cirque Pass. We met a hiker near the top who had come over all three of our next passes. He said they were all relatively straightforward and similar to the one we were on. That boosted our spirits. And he was correct! After Cirque Pass, we went over Potluck Pass and Knapsack Pass. They all had big, smooth rock ledges, almost like shelves, with some grassy spots. They weren’t easy by any means, but we enjoyed working together to find a route up/down each one. At the end of the day, we made it back to another trail, Bishop Pass Trail. We’ll follow Bishop Pass Trail to the JMT/PCT. We’ll be on trails for the next ~20 miles. We’re definitely behind schedule, but we hope to make some big miles tomorrow since we’ll be on trails for most of the day. We are getting concerned about food (and fuel and power). We haven’t done an exact count yet, but we think we have enough food to make it 5 more days. We have 79 miles to our resupply, so we need to average almost 16 miles per day which we haven’t been close to hitting yet. We think/hope we’ll be just fine though—our packs are getting lighter every day as we eat food, we’re getting more comfortable with the off trail hiking, and we’re getting more acclimated to the high elevation (we are still getting shorter of breath than we should be on the climbs). 🤞🤞 -R

SHR Day 5 - 19.3 Miles, 4,036 ft ascent

We did a lot more miles today than we have been doing, but that’s because 99% of today was spent on a trail! First Bishop Pass Trail, and then about 15 miles on the JMT/PCT over Muir Pass. The change of pace (literally) was welcome, but we aren’t fooling ourselves into thinking things will be this easy when we're back off trail. We spent the morning climbing to Muir Pass, which has a cool hut, and we met some friendly people there who we chatted with for a while (Julie and Phillip). As we descended we couldn’t figure out if we were on the right trail — we were 50 feet above a lake, and a parallel trail ran right along the trail. We realized the trail we were on was new and pondered how much fun it would be to be on the trail crew building it… then we turned a corner and saw the trail crew building it! They were super friendly and explained that the re-route is to protect the lakeshore and to protect an endangered frog. Apparently a crew of 20 people spent three months doing the majority of the work last summer. Trail building is hard work! Thank you to everybody who does it! We moseyed on for a few more miles before hitting the spot where we depart the trail again. We decided we were ready to call it a day, so we started looking for a campsite right when we got off trail and found an amazing one in just a few minutes. We’re camped below Darwin Bench and above Evolution Valley on the side of a mountain. For dinner we had peanut butter pasta. Yum! -T

SHR day 6 - 15.8 miles, 3925 ft ascent

Today started with Snow Tongue Pass on the Glacier Divide. Getting up to the pass was relatively easy, but when we got to the top and looked at the descent on the north side, we considered turning around. It was 200’-300’ straight down with loose dirt/sand and rocks. We scoped it for a while and found a safe looking route. We took it really slow/carefully and made it down the steep part safely. We then had a couple of miles of boulder fields—piles of rocks of all different shapes and sizes from fist size to car size. Tim is relatively quick on the boulder fields, but I am slow. We were exhausted when we finally made it through the boulder fields, so we stopped for lunch at a beautiful lake and went for a swim. We looked at our maps and decided to take some trails around the next off-trail pass, Puppet Pass, due to our dwindling food supply and slow speed off-trail. We made it back to the SHR towards the end of the day. We are camped at a beautiful lake surrounded by rocky peaks about 3 miles from our next pass. Even though the trail is hard, we are absolutely loving being high in the mountains and feel like we have them all to ourselves. We only saw one person today, Walt, and that was on our detour on trails. We have 45 miles to go and 3 days of food (which we could maybe stretch to 3.5 days). 🤞 -R

PS: We’re launching a line of backpacking cookware! Sign up for the waitlist here and get it first.