PCT Section I September 2023 – Tiltill Valley

Goal for the day: South Tilden Lake trail junction (again)

I didn’t hang around my camp long in the morning. I had breakfast and packed my tent up as I enjoyed a little light from the rising sun.

Then I finished that last mile that I had postponed the day before.

GOAL!!

It had taken me three attempts over two years, but I finished the last mile of PCT section I!!

32 miles plus the 42.4 from last year equals the entire 74.4 miles of PCT section I. It would have been great to finish the entire section in one trek, but it was still great to finish the section to take the sting off the previous year’s failure and the three aborted hikes earlier this year.

I took a chance to celebrate and take a break. Didn’t need one, but I figured I’d take a moment to enjoy my victory.

I also had to decide how to get back to civilization and my Jeep.

Unfortunately, the nearest paved road was 20 miles away in Hetch Hetchy. Doing a direct abort back to my Jeep would take me at least two more nights. Maybe more due to the long slog up through Grace Meadows in the harder direction.

In the end, the decision was mostly made for me: I had decided before the hike to save weight by only taking 4.5 days of food. If I had made it to my goal, like I just had, it would have taken 3 days or so. The only place was reachable with only a single night in the wilderness was Hetch Hetchy. Since it was mostly downhill, it may also be possible to get all the way in one long day.

So, I headed south on a trail that ran south down past Tiltill Mountain, thru Tiltill Meadows, and finally along the north shore of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.

At first, it was a pleasant hike through a new area of Yosemite that I had never seen before.

Unfortunately, after a couple miles I realized that this particular trail wasn’t used by many people. My first clue was how often I lost the trail in the overgrown vegetation, rock formations, and dry streams that looked a lot like trails.

The second clue was not having seen another human for those two miles. Naturally, the PCT had a lot of traffic, even this late in the hiking season. Actually, a lot of people I’d met on the PCT this year had to extend their hikes or skip sections and come back to try and finish as much of the PCT as they could. The reason? The heavy snow pack made some of the central Sierra Nevada portions of the trail impassible until August and also destroyed several bridges causing detours and delays.

But this trail was remote enough that day trippers wouldn’t use it and it didn’t connect frequently used areas of Yosemite, so was not used heavily enough to help keep the trail thru the meadow areas clear and easily followed.

So, it took me longer than I thought to get my first view of Tiltill valley and the waters of Hetch Hetchy in the distance.

The sun was getting pretty low by that time, so I decided to stop and camp for the night. Going further down to Tiltill Valley to camp could subject me to more insects. Stretching the day’s hike to reach the rim of Hetch Hetchy would likely get me there close to or after sunset.

But neither of those options appealed to me after I saw the view from a rock outcropping that overlooked TilTill Valley. While the sun would descend behind the ridge to the west early, I was confident that the wide view of the area would reward my last night on the trail with stunning views.

The sun didn’t disappoint me.

Maybe because I was still high on the feeling of finishing section I (or maybe because I was at a lower elevation and the night was warmer than the previous 3 nights), I even had some extended time to sit outside my tent and enjoy the night skies and take some long shutter pictures.

Somehow, seeing the milky way spread out above me always made the soreness of my hikes go away (temporarily).