Mather Pass

Day 10  Deer Meadow to King's River

In every person’s hike, there seems to be one pass that ruins their whole day.  It might be the elevation, the time of day, the heat of the sun or a lack of calories, but one pass or another will kick your butt.  Ours was Mather Pass.  We had high hopes for Mather.  Not having heard anything about it from other hikers, and with Mark not really remembering it much from his last hike, we weren’t expecting much of a challenge. At last night's camp a hiker had passed by and stopped to visit, strongly suggesting we get up early to attack the Golden Staircase while it was early and cool out and we were fresh.  He said that  he had descended late in the day, and even people coming downhill were just dying- stripping off their shirts and wetting them, resting in the brush, withering in the heat of the full sun.  So we were up early, well fed and hydrated, and mentally prepared for the challenge that was The Golden Staircase.  And we dominated.  I have to say I was very grateful for all those Zumba classes and squat workouts that I had been doing over the past few months.  I approached each switchback as if it were an interval  of a mega workout, and though my gluts were burning, made it to the top in very little time without having to stop much at all.  We were very proud of having conquered this obstacle, and whooped and high-fived when we got to the top.   The lake would be just around the corner, and then we would approach the steep ascent to the pass.  But the lake wasn’t just around the corner.  We walked and we climbed.  We switch backed and we backtracked.  We consulted the map and the guidebook and looked for an alternate trail.  Our “just over the next rise” joke was no longer funny.  It became difficult to see all the beauty surrounding me because all I could see were more miles, and Mark was stopping and panting every few minutes.  That wonderful feeling of accomplishment at having aced the formidable Staircase had quickly faded away to utter exhaustion and an overwhelming sense of despair.   

But the trail, trusty as it is, took us to the lake, and when we finally reached the Shore of Palisade Lake we dropped our packs and collapsed.  After some cool water and a granola bar I began to feel revived and thought I would take a quick swim in the lake.  Glacial lakes are cold. I changed my mind.  Instead I watched trout swishing their tails downstream and got out my journal, sat in the sun on the sandy beach and wrote a little.  In seemingly no time at all Mark had recuperated and was ready to move on, so I pulled on my socks, stuffed my poor, sore little blistered feet back into my shoes, shrugged my shoulders into my pack straps and dropped into formation.  The nice break helped and I was once again able to notice the deep green of the meadow leading up to the edge of the lake, the beautiful clarity of the lake below, the deep blue of the sky that extended out to the edge of the pass above, and the amazing reflective shine of the granite above the lakeshore.  It didn’t last long.  Soon we were lagging again, stopping every few minutes to wipe our brows and catch our breath.  By now the lake was sparkling far below under the hot sun, but we didn’t feel so sparkly.  Spying a shady little grove of cedars, we slipped off the trail and onto our sleep mats.  Mark turned on the audio book and soon we were snoozing away in the shade, worlds away from the misery of the hot, dry trail.

It was over an hour later when we emerged from our oasis and felt ready to attack the summit.  We were rested and ready to go and thrilled when we quickly came upon a trickling creek.  Nice, clean cold Sierra water always refreshes me and this was no exception.  I plunged my Sierra Cup into the nicely aerated bubbles of the water falling over some rocks, loving the coolness of the water on my hand.  Getting up I slipped a little, and forced my left knee into a very deep bend.  With the extra pounds on my back I got a little unbalanced, and had difficulty getting back on the trail, straining my right leg in the process.  I was, therefore, limping a little when we came upon an older gentleman with a very big pack, sitting on a rock. He was splendid. Pots and shoes and water bottles all dangled from places on the back of his pack, which was wider than the old man himself.  It came up above his head, the sleeping back towering above the man’s floppy brimmed hat. We visited a few minutes, offering to give him a hand off his perch. We were very impressed with his fortitude, being out here with his “71 year old cardiovascular system” and all that stuff in his pack.  We left him behind as we hit the first few switchbacks and started up the hill, but we worried about him all the way up.

And here’s where Mather really got us.  Usually covered with snow, the rocks, boulders, stones and gravel were bare and hard and sharp.  The talus was loose and hard to manage as we stepped forward and then slid back.  As we climbed we kept looking at the ridge of the mountain ahead and tried to imagine where the path was and where we would pop over the top.  The path was so steep and the steps so high and irregular it was mentally difficult to want to continue. We weren’t exhausted any more, but we were definitely working hard. That strained leg muscle was aching and pulling with every contraction. We finally saw someone coming down, and then we were able to figure out where the path led. I developed a mantra of “one step at a time” which became a tune after just a little while and I started to write verses for each of the passes. This kept my mind distracted, which was good, though sometimes when it got hard again my mind reverted automatically to the simple "one step at a time" mantra. Stopping now and again to watch the others behind us, especially concerned about the older guy, we watched as the North bound hikers became smaller and smaller dots of color zigzagging down the mountain.  And then we were at the top!  We toasted with a little Vitalyte and visited with another hiker who was up on top, taking pictures of one another. 

As steep and loose and hard as the uphill was, the downhill seemed like a walk in the park-a steep and windy park, to be sure, but so much easier than the other side.  It had taken us four hours to do four miles coming up the mountain, and we were down the other side in just an hour.  We passed through a rocky landscape that held a few lakes and not much else, but at least the tread was even and the slope downhill. It was whistling, singing, striding along time, and we made good time as we headed toward the night’s camp.  A few miles later we stopped at a nice creek under some shady pinyon pines. I took off my shoes and socks and cooled my feet (ignoring my earlier prohibition of getting the moleskin wet) drank some water and consumed some much needed calories.  I even closed my eyes for a few minutes and listened to the water parading by.  After we started back up, I felt a pretty sharp pain in my left foot.  The blister that had been bothering me earlier in the day was now screaming at me.  Each step was like a knife poking me, and I had to stop a few times to adjust my sock and shoe to relieve the pain.  I popped some Advil. At one point when I checked, it looked like the whole ball of my foot was one big blister, and we were beginning to worry about me continuing on at all.  I covered about a mile this way, and we decided to make camp much sooner and see how my feet were doing in the morning.  Mark was busy thinking through how he would get us out of here quicker if I couldn’t continue on, coming up with plans b, c and d, I think. 

We stopped to chat to a young PCT couple who was just starting to make camp.  I was still wincing in pain from the blisters, and she and I had quite a conversation about them.  They had hiked so far  about 8oo miles, and she had been struggling with blisters the whole way. I don't know how she had the fortitude to carry on. She had just gotten back on the trail from town and had bought new shoes to try to combat the problem.  Along with telling me about sewing a string through the blister to let it drain and changing socks often to keep the feet dry, (which I already knew) she showed me her blisters and their subsequent callouses.  Having come in from Taboose Pass they had experienced some difficulty in finding the trail again, and had a really hard time fording the creek.  We could really see what they meant when we got down to the river- there was no clear way across.  We were either going to have to get our feet wet or hike way up the trail to find a narrower crossing.  Mark and I chose different routes across this time, I didn’t care about the wet feet because I knew I would be able to let them dry in camp.  We watched through the afternoon as other hikers came through, trying to find the way, and wondered if we should do some signing or something, but we found a nice little spot to pitch our tent (lots of mosquitos) and just let everyone work it out for themselves.

In camp I washed my feet well with soap and water, peeled off the nasty moleskin, and dried them thoroughly.  There was a tiny sliver or thorn lodged right in the center of my blister, and when I removed that, I felt instant relief.  The balls of my feet weren’t blistery, just really pruney; I would be able to hike on after all.  But not until we did some laundry, had a nice meal and relaxed for a while.  This would have been a nice night to have a camp fire, but there was a fire ban in this part of the woods, so even though there was a huge, safe, old camp fire ring in our site and a river rushing by, we passed on the fire idea and made hot tea and cocoa over the much less romantic Esbit flame.