Kearsarge Pass

It was a town day so I packed up early. Unfortunately, I missed a trail junction soon after I started hiking and didn’t realize it for over a half mile. I got back on trail though and headed up and up. It was only a mile and a half to the junction to go over Kearsarge Pass (not including the extra mile or so I walked), and then it was 7.5 miles from there to the trailhead. The side trail was gorgeous and went past many alpine lakes.

It was very hot and all I could think about was getting to food. I had one bar left in my pocket, and a few drink mixes, but otherwise I was out of food. Once I went over the pass, I was practically running down the switchbacks.

I happened to stop and check my phone for signal and discovered I had 4G! Not having had a signal in ten days, I was excited to download my messages and upload my blogs. That slowed me down a little bit.

We made it to the trailhead and quickly found a ride to Independence with some weekend hikers. It was Sunday and I had a box at the post office so I needed to stay there overnight, despite there being not much in town. We decided to relax at the Courthouse Motel bunkroom for the night and hitch forty miles to the larger town of Bishop tomorrow.

I feel very accomplished after this section, especially doing Whitney, Forester, and Kearsarge three days in a row. I’ve been starving the whole time though. All we talked about was whether we had enough food, whether anyone had extra to share, whether we could somehow get more food, etc. The next section is even longer and I definitely need more food per day so I don’t know how that’s going to work out. I would need at least two bear cans to hold it all and I am obviously not going to carry more than one bear can.