Kerrick Canyon

The afternoons aren’t as hot this week, but still I prefer to make the climbs in the mornings (not that more don’t pop up throughout the day)…. And this morning began with one, up four and a half miles and 1700’ to Benson Pass…. I crossed the small and handsome Wilson Creek three times on the way up and found likely campsites at all three crossings…. I get it in my head that I might have difficulty finding a place to camp, but it hasn’t happened so far. And there are many more spots than are noted in my guidebook, The Pacific Crest Trail Atlas (in addition to the maps, it lists landmarks—distances between and elevations of—includes a graphic showing the rise and fall of the trail, and notes water sources and campsites—some—but provides no narrative description of the trail).

I reached the pass (10,150’) about eight and had my breakfast. Not nearly as dramatic a height as most of the passes further south. Dry and dusty, a narrow passage between chunks of rough, yellowish rock; it looked to me more like the mountains down in the Mojave Desert than the Sierras….

I descended steeply a couple miles down to Smedley Lake, where I passed an old man with a long beard making a pot of tea over a fire. He had camped near me the night before, and he’d had a big fire and cooked over it then too. This was unusual; other hikers use a canister stove, as I do, or an alcohol stove. But generational differences do manifest on the trail, in the equipment and in camp practices. Cooking over a fire was old style, and this man looked like he’d been wandering around the Sierras for some decades. But he didn’t look like he wanted any company, and I moved on past….

A couple miles later, still descending, I came upon a middle-aged couple having a rest beside the trail. The man was squeezing peanut butter from a tube onto a tortilla; the woman had already rolled her tortilla up and taken a bite…. They were from Orange County and were hiking from Echo Lake south to Whitney, a three or four week journey. The man said that they had passed several thru-hikers earlier in the morning, and he referred to them, in a pleasant but bemused manner, as “the dirty people.” There is a breed of thru-hiker that assiduously avoids washing…. They are younger, what some might call hippies, and they seem to cultivate a distinctive trail griminess. At Tuolumne one such young man was in front of me in line at the post office. His shorts, which had once been white, or maybe khaki, were impressively filthy, and I thought, come on, you could wash those out occasionally.

On the other hand, anyone who had been on the trail for long was grubby, his or her clothes stained with sweat and dirt and food. But most made an effort to clean up occasionally. The back of the neck of the young man in Tuolumne was black with grime, and that too seemed unnecessary. Apparently, he hadn’t met Flagman and learned of the great value of a sponge.

Later I came upon a small piece of paper pinned to a tree and addressed to “Baboon.” “Catch up soon!” it read, and was signed “Spins.”

The trail dropped nearly three thousand feet from Benson Pass down to Benson Lake and I crossed  a patch of bottomlands crosshatched with recent downfalls. It took some time to clamber through and around the jumbles of trees…. And then I was climbing again, up towards Seavey Pass…. On the way up I stopped at a small pond and sat on a rock in the sun and soaked my feet and read a chapter of Hardy and ate an energy bar. My feet were threatening blisters in a few spots, so it was good to get my shoes off and the swelling down….

From the pass the trail dropped down to Kerrick Canyon and then headed down canyon, but far up on one side. Somehow the trail continued to climb even though I was going down canyon…. This was frustrating…. All through the day the climbs had been precipitous, and I was looking forward to a respite. Eventually the trail did drop to a creek at the bottom of the canyon. I’d planned to make one more climb before camping, but I was worn out and settled for eighteen rather than the planned twenty miles.

The site was more open and sandy than usual, fifty feet from the stony creek. I put up the tent in a brisk wind, taking care to tighten down the fly, then found a spot in the lee of a nearby boulder and made my dinner, while listening to a weekly podcast episode from The New York Times Book Review. Ramen and tuna tonight.

Down at the creek afterwards I washed the pot and myself, filtered water for the night….

A lone young woman with dreads appeared and set up her own camp not far downstream. She might’ve been Baboon but I doubted it. I thought about going over to say hello, but it felt a little weird—one has to be careful with women traveling solo—and plus I was too tired so I got in my tent and went to sleep.