Wild

It seemed absurd to me that I’d been hiking in that snowy range all along—that the arid mountains I’d traversed since the moment I set foot on the PCT were technically part of the Sierra Nevada. But they weren’t the High Sierras—the formidable range of granite peaks and cliffs beyond Kennedy Meadows that mountaineer and writer John Muir had famously explored and adored more than a hundred years before. I hadn’t read Muir’s books about the Sierra Nevada before I hiked the PCT, but I knew he was the founder of the Sierra Club. Saving the Sierra Nevada from sheepherders, mining operations, tourist development, and other encroachments of the modern age had been his lifelong passion. It’s thanks to him and those who supported his cause that most of the Sierra Nevada is still wilderness today. Wilderness that was now apparently snowbound.

I wasn’t entirely taken by surprise. The authors of my guidebook had warned me about the snow I might encounter in the High Sierras, and I’d come prepared. Or at least the version of prepared I’d believed was sufficient before I began hiking the PCT: I’d purchased an ice ax and mailed it to myself in the box I would collect at Kennedy Meadows. It had been my assumption when I purchased the ice ax that I’d need it only occasionally, for the highest stretches of trail. The guidebook assured me that in a regular year most of the snow would be melted by the time I hiked the High Sierras in late June and July. It hadn’t occurred to me to investigate whether this had been a regular year.

I found a phone book in the bedside table and paged through it, then dialed the number for the local office of the Bureau of Land Management.

“Oh, yes, there’s lots of snow up there,” said the woman who answered. She didn’t know the specifics, she told me, but she knew for certain it had been a record year for snowfall in the Sierras. When I told her I was hiking the PCT, she offered to give me a ride to the trail. I hung up the phone feeling more relieved that I didn’t have to hitchhike than worried about the snow. It simply seemed so far away, so impossible.

The kind woman from the BLM brought me back to the trail at a place called Walker Pass the next afternoon. As I watched her drive away, I felt both chastened and slightly more confident than I had nine days before when I’d begun my hike. In the previous days, I’d been charged by a Texas longhorn bull, torn and bruised by falls and mishaps, and had navigated my way down a remote road past a mountain that was soon to be blown up. I’d made it through miles of desert, ascended and descended countless mountains, and gone days without seeing another person. I’d worn my feet raw, chafed my body until it bled, and carried not only myself over miles of rugged wilderness, but also a pack that weighed more than half of what I did. And I’d done it alone.

That was worth something, right? I thought as I walked through the rustic campground near Walker Pass and found a place to camp. It was late but still light, June in the last week of spring. I pitched my tent and cooked my first hot meal on the trail on my newly functioning stove—dried beans and rice—and watched the sky’s light fade in a brilliant show of colors over the mountains, feeling like the luckiest person alive. It was fifty-two miles to Kennedy Meadows, sixteen to my first water on the trail.

In the morning, I loaded my pack with another full supply of water and crossed Highway 178. The next road that crossed the Sierra Nevada was 150 as-the-crow-flies miles north, near Tuolumne Meadows. I followed the PCT along its rocky, ascendant course in the hot morning sun, catching views of the mountains in all directions, distant and close—the Scodies to the near south, the El Paso Mountains far off to the east, the Dome Land Wilderness to the northwest, which I’d reach in a few days. They all looked the same to me, though each was subtly different. I’d become used to having mountains constantly in sight; my vision had changed over the past week. I’d adjusted to the endless miles-long panoramas; become familiar with the perception that I was walking on the land in the very place where it met the sky. The crest.

But mostly I didn’t look up. Step by step, my eyes were on the sandy and pebbly trail, my feet sometimes slipping beneath me as I climbed up and switched back. My pack squeaked annoyingly with each step, the sound still emanating from that spot only a few inches from my ear.