Mile 808ish: Pinch it, Pinchot (12,130')!

We got rolling at a reasonable hour this morning, stoked that we'd be able to finally break the cycle of late mornings and evening passes.

We had a couple hairy fords in the way, and an estrogen spat, which ended in Carmen and I laughing and agreeing that we don't hug each other nearly enough. Then there was the climb of a thousand stairs, which were really big step ups and made our butts sore. There was the very cute park ranger who stopped us and asked to see our permit, a 2" wide handwritten slip of paper that I must have lost somewhere between here and Julian.

Then there was the approach. We've heard things about Forester, Glen, Kearsarge, and Sonora, but nothing about Pinchot. We figured there was maybe nothing notable about it. Wrong. We had about 4 miles of snow and scramble to get over, which took forever and we were at the top of the pass around 7:30. Again.

Tonight we camped at the first possible spot we saw, sick of dancing over the snow with occasional hip-deep postholes, watching the sun set. It's nice, actually. We're surrounded by snow and mountains, and that's it. No trees, no trail, no wildflowers. Carmen and I watched the full moon rise while we drank our miso and hot cocoa after dinner. It was nice. We were really stressed out about doing yet another pass in the evening, and wanting to get to tomorrow's big river ford early in the morning, but what we've got right now is nice too.


- Typoed on my iPhone