Last night's camp was a beautiful spot. But - time to pack up and leave once more. We had no more rain overnight but the skies were cloudy when I got up during the night. Almost right away this morning we crossed a substantial bridge over Piute Creek. Judging by the distance between the creek and the bridge, the water is running pretty low.
The creek crossing is the dividing line between the John Muir Wilderness in Sierra National Forest (leaving) and Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia - Kings Canyon Wilderness (entering). FYI, we will not be seeing a sequoia tree on our trip - we're up too high.
We then hiked for a while through a canyon of the South Fork of the San Joaquin River. The trail traverses the canyon wall and is, at times, up quite a ways from the river itself. Very pretty though. It's amazing to see these huge trees growing out of so much rock!
Along the way we found Alex sitting on a rather large rock just to the side of the trail. Turns out the rock had an inscription on it - Muir Trail 1917. One of the books surmises that it commemorates the construction of a new bridge across Piute Creek as funding for the JMT first became available.
It was fairly flat-going through the canyon section. We crossed the river a few times and after the second footbridge we took a sharp turn to the east and followed Evolution Creek. We started climbing immediately, about 800 feet in total. It was a bit of a grunt at first but once we got beside the creek we got to appreciate the beauty - a good excuse to stop and catch my breath. Overall, we were seeing more sunshine than I was expecting today. Nice day all around.............
After following Evolution Creek for 1.8 miles we finally had a water crossing where we could not rock-hop. Most people just took their boots off and went barefoot. A few folks put on their (or borrowed) water/camp shoes. All things considered, it was pretty tame. Only up to about our shins (or thighs, depending on where you crossed). It wasn't very far across, but it was cold!
We stopped here for lunch and then resumed our hike - beside the creek again as well as through Evolution Meadow.
Just before camp we hiked by a large meadow - McClure Meadow
And just as we hiked by, a large yellow bird descended from the sky.
Seems this is your ticket out if you injure yourself and can't walk out. In this case a hiker had injured his knee a few days ago and had been hanging out at the nearby ranger cabin to see if it would improve enough to let him continue hiking. It appears that the answer turned out to be "no".
Our camp was just down the path from all this action. We were in to camp by 2:15 today. The clouds and thunder arrived shortly after we did and the temperature dropped. It didn't start raining (lightly) until about 5:15, though, and it was done by 6. It was 9 days into the trip and some of our guys were starting to feel the effects of too few calories. Alex ("Professor") did one massive catch-up tonight - potlicked the rice along with almond butter, honey & cinnamon. A few others finally stopped being polite about taking seconds & thirds and started to help clean out the pots on a more regular basis. This is really doing everyone a favour, since there is no place to dispose of food. Either it's eaten or it has to be carried out. Certainly no one gained weight on the trip, but some lost more than others. I think I only lost about 2 pounds by the end.
Stats for the day: about 9 miles, 2160 feet up, 520 feet down. Elevation at camp is about 9600'.
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