Day 55: going up and up and up...

Tuesday 6/12/12
Miles 707-722 (15 miles)
Elevation 9,900 ft

Dang I'm almost at 10,000ft! Holy crap it's chilly once the sun goes down. I'm so grateful the weather is so nice, I think there is usually snow all around here. If that was the case it would be waaaaay more cold. Yuck. Lol.

So...I lost Kyle. Again. >.< Or rather, I think he took the wrong trail junction and got lost. He was ahead of me not too far, and I asked another hiker if he saw Kyle pass by and he said no. That was around the same time I didn't see his footprint anymore. Bah, what a goober! Lol. I think I know exactly where he took a wrong turn. Hopefully he figures it out before he goes too far. I left him a pinecone note on the trail, I took a pic of it. Lol. I'm camped right next to the trail so hopefully he'll roll in tonight or sometime early tomorrow.

Today was quite a hike. We are truly in the sierras. :) we started this morning going through some huge burn areas. I took some pics of it. It's crazy we've walked through so many burn areas on the PCT. holy cow. There must've been a lot of fires in SoCal the last few years or so. :(

After the burned forest we went across a huge meadow. That was cool. When I say meadow I don't mean a grassy rolling plain, it's more like a large area with no trees and lots of small shrubs. I took a pic of the huge meadow we walked across.

I caught up to Kyle at the bridge that goes across the South Fork Kern River. Theres a pic of him sitting on the bridge. This is the river that we've been hiking next to for a while, and it's also the same river that flows next to Kennedy Meadows. We hung out there most of the afternoon and waited for the temp to cool down. A bunch of other hikers came too.

The hike out of there was pretty cool. I genuinely feel like we're in the sierras. The trees are big! And there's lots of water, and the whole energy of the trail is different. It's so cool. I took a couple pics of the trail. The one pic taken from way up high, with the meadow in the background, that's where I'm camped out right now. The meadow in the picture is where we came from earlier today. Pretty awesome huh? Gosh the view is incredible from up here.

Well it's almost 9:30pm right now and no sign of Kyle. Bleh. :( I hope he rolls in sometime in the morning. Anyhow its naptime! I'm going to stop typing now so i can put my gloves back on. Brrrr! :)