Resupply and Small Party at Woods Creek Junction

Trail Maintenance Crew Near Pinchot Pass

First poop since being sick, bit of a struggle and not much shelter in this area, it's high and there aren't a lotta trees, the trail is always in sight.

It's only a short jaunt up to Pinchot Pass, on the way up we pass a trail maintenance crew reinforcing a part of the trail, one of the workers is maneuvering a huge rock down onto the trail, it looks a bit scary, can't help thinking the thing is gonna roll down on top of the other workers.

On top and there are a couple of hikers there, an English lady who turns out to be a writer, and young guy who calls himself Jojo, she asks about Trump and mentions that she hiked for a while with a guy who was a Trump supporter and how odd she found it that someone could be out in all this beauty and support Trump, knowing some of the hikers back in the DC area I wasn't so surprised. Jojo and I have a discussion about Fascism, what it is and how to fight it.

Switchbacks on the Way Up Pinchot Pass

It's all downhill now to Woods Creek Junction, we stop at Sawmill Pass Trailhead for lunch on a rock by Woods Creek, it's just off the trail and we see Mary pass by, a nice spot with a friendly rock to sit on and relax. It's only 3.9 miles from here so we got plenty of time to roll downhill.

There's a beautiful rock slide on Woods Creek not far from the junction so we stop for a quick break and some pix, then onto the Junction, a bit nervous about the resupply being there, no sign of mules or driver at the junction itself so we push on a bit, there's a suspension bridge across the creek and some Park Service maintenance workers on the other side, then we spy a horse and two mules tied up nearby, a good sign but where's the mule driver?

There are some other campers nearby and plenty of camp sights, the large group from UC Davis is also there and they're kinda noisy so we pick a spot as far away from them as possible and ask if they've seen the mule driver, he's the guy in the genuine cowboy outfit with the maintenance workers, we walked right by him and didn't see him, he kinda blended in.

His name is Blake Johnson and he's super friendly, we get our resupply repacked into a plastic trash bag, and our bottles of wine and brandy, plus he has fresh apples and salad, very nice. We unpack our food and start out with wine, cheese, crackers and sardines in tomato sauce, makes a great change from freeze dried, and we eat some apples and snack on the veggies.

Chilly on Top of Pinchot Pass

After a bit of a snack and some wine we start to organize the food into meals and notice there seem to be some things missing, there was supposed to be another group sharing this resupply, Bruce Rossi and co., I'd be on the lookout for them ever since we left MTR thinking they'd be on the same schedule, no sign at all.

Back to check with Blake and we look at the other bag and it's the rest of our stuff, what a relief, it wouldn't be much fun doing the last 50 miles or so on half rations, especially up Mt Whitney. Since we're all done and no one else is coming, we invite Blake over for some brandy which he gladly accepts. He's been out in the area for 4 days, got another gig with some other hikers and had an extra day, wasn't worth it to go back down the mountain to Cedar Grove. He's camped with the maintenance workers a couple of hundred yards down the creek if we need anything.

Sarah rolls up and asks if she camp close by, maybe she smelled the wine, no worries for us and we dig back into the wine, cheese, crackers and sardines, yum.
We'd included some quick cooking pasta in the package, thinking we could make a dish with sauce and sardines, it's a disaster however, the pasta just gels into a big lump so we skip it and just eat the sauce with the sardines and crackers, the excess get's shipped back down the mountain with our trash, another nice thing about this resupply.

As usual I've packed too much, always put in some extra just in case, I take the excess over to the UC Davis crowd and they gladly accept, they have a lean and hungry look.

Beautiful Rock Colours on the Other Side

Sarah is a former airline pilot, she lives on an island with her husband somewhere out in Puget sound a bit of ways from Seattle, gotta take a couple of ferries to get there. She also knows horses and talks about riding the JMT at some point, apparently a horse and 2 mules can carry enough of their own food for quite a while, plus of course food for the rider. We ask about the difficulty of controlling the animals and she says "oh it's no problem, the mules just follow the mare".

As we've been cooking dinner, I start to notice that the fuel canister seems to be getting a bit low, it's hard to tell exactly how much is left just by holding or shaking it, when I talked to mule packers they told me that they'd bring an extra fuel canister up for us, Blake hasn't mentioned it so go back to ask, no problem he says, I don't have a full one but you can have what's left of mine in the morning, be about half a canister.

It's a rather large camp area so we scramble around in the woods to find fire wood, bit scarce but enough for a blaze to help us relax before going to bed.