PCT Section Hike 2022 – Day 8 – Wandering the Earth

Goal for the day: Reach Dorothy Lake Pass

Unfortunately, I awoke to the smell of smoke and a haze in the sky. It wasn’t particularly thick and it did add a little color to the sunrise. I enjoyed the morning light as I ate breakfast.

One option I had considered when planning this trip is that I would hike cross country up to Mary Lake and then rejoin the PCT up above Dorothy Lake Pass somewhere. While I had GPS tracks and some info on that route, I didn’t think that was a good choice upon seeing the route in person and given my current fatigue level.

So, I hiked along the south shore enjoying the views as I went.

I reached Tilden Creek, which ran down the steep edge of the bowl that kept the lake’s water from totally escaping. There were small falls and cascades all along the way. The switchbacks descending along the creek weren’t horrible, but still took time to get down to the junction with the PCT.

Then I took a break and had a decision to make.

While there were some trails by Rodgers Lake and going down Bear Valley that I could have used to abort down to Hetch Hetchy during the last couple of days, I had only brief momentary urges to use those.

I was having a little more urge at this point. For one thing, I had reached one of my major goals for this trek: Tilden Lake.

Continuing north on the PCT would be a great adventure, but didn’t have a huge goal at the end like Mount Whitney on the John Muir Trail.

The extra day it had taken me to get to that point meant that I was down to two night’s food remaining (and the second night’s food was only due to splitting one of the ramen packets in two to spread out the food). To reach Sonora Pass, it should only take two more nights, but I did have the worry that I might take three. I may have trail snacks to handle that and I could ask some other PCT hikers for spare food if worse came to worse.

My dislocated finger still hurt and was swollen, but really hadn’t been much of a problem for this hike.

My tent fly had stopped zipping closed properly, but I had been fortunate to choose good camping spots that didn’t have swarms of mosquitoes that would get in past the rain fly and the open gaps in the netting. So, that wasn’t a big deal.

The smoke in the air was a potential issue. It would affect the views and the previous day I felt that the smoke in the air was already affecting me, but that could just be the exhaustion of the previous 7 days hiking from Tuolumne Meadows.

So, it was a combination of all those reasons that caused me to make the sad decision to abort down to Hetch Hetchy. 🙁

It would take another night to reach Hetch Hetchy, but that was fairly sure bet. Generally downhill, but one significant climb up to Moraine Ridge from the southern part of Jack Main Canyon.

As I turned south, I had a couple points where I almost turned back, but gravity eventually took hold and I kept going down towards Hetch Hetchy. There were some nice lakes and ponds along the trail as I went, so it was a pleasant hike.

Before the trail started the climb up to Moraine Ridge, I stopped at a good campsite sandwiched between the trail and a large pool formed by Falls Creek. Not much of a view, but after 11 miles taking a swim in the pool of water felt very good.