Days 10-12 on the SHR: Unpredictable weather

SHR Day 10 – 10.8 miles, 3,758 feet ascent

We camped overnight in the Reds Meadow Campground’s backpacker site with lots of PCT and JMT hikers. Tim woke me up early and convinced me to head straight to the hot spring close by. It was big and hot!! We made/drank coffee and relaxed for a while. It felt great on our sore muscles. Eventually we got out, packed up our backpacks, and headed to the restaurant. We ate breakfast burritos and drank tons of coffee. We were the first hikers to wake up, but the last to leave Reds Meadow. 😅

We got back on the trail at around 9am. The SHR took us right through Devils Postpile National Monument. We then followed some trails to the base of Nancy Pass. It started raining, so we set up our tent for an hour to wait it out. The sun came out and there was a break In the rain, so we went for the pass. We could see more rain was coming—there were plenty of dark clouds in the distance. We did the pass as quick as we could because we did not want to be caught in the rain off trail on slippery rocks. The pass was pretty straightforward. When we got down from the steep, rocky part of the pass and onto some grass, it started to sprinkle. Our next pass was supposed to be Deadhorse Pass (which wasn’t too far from Nancy Pass) and then we were supposed to get onto another trail. We saw that we could keep going down and around Deadhorse Pass to intersect the trail early and skip the pass. We decided to do that rather than attempt the pass in the rain. We had some extra bushwhacking and water crossings, but we felt it was the safer option. We made it to the trail, and the rain picked up so we set up camp early at around 5pm in a stand of big trees near a stream. The weather forecast looks like we might have some rain again tomorrow afternoon. -R

SHR Day 11 – 14.6 Miles, 4,018 ft ascent

Today was Opposite Day: the passes were easy and the trails were hard, relatively speaking. We woke up with damp everything so we took an extra 30 minutes getting ready in the morning. We thought we’d have an easy start with several miles of trails before the off-trail passes, but it turned out those trails were barely built, unmaintained, and brutal! We took several hours to do four miles of trails before officially heading off-trail for White Bark Pass and Garnett Pass. Both were much easier than expected (and definitely easier than the morning’s “trails”). We aren’t sure if these were easy passes or if we’re getting stronger.

We took a 3:30 pm lunch break at the base of Mt. Ritter. Weaving through a cluster of mountains around Ritter should be our next off-trail segment, but the mountain still has a lot of snow that we’d have to traverse and we didn’t bring microspikes. Plus, rain clouds loomed above the mountain and we don’t want to get caught at the top of a sketchy pass in the rain. So, we opted to detour around it. It’s a bummer to miss this part of the Sierra High Route, but we’d rather be safe than sorry. We’re camped a couple of miles outside Yosemite, where we’ll reconnect with the SHR at Tuolumne Meadows. For dinner we had chili mac. Yum! -T

SHR Day 12 – 22.2 miles, 3,074 ft ascent

Today we continued on the PCT/JMT on our detour around the Mount Ritter area of the SHR. We went over Donohue Pass and entered Yosemite National Park. We kept looking back and noticing how snowy it looked around Mount Ritter. We bumped into multiple other groups of hikers who said they got hail and then heavy rain for a bit yesterday. That made us feel better about our decision to drop down to the trail for a bit. We somehow managed to only get a few sprinkles yesterday. We hiked into Tuolumne Meadows and ate some veggies burgers while talking to PCT and JMT hikers. We then met back up with the SHR and hiked up to a beautiful lake where we set up camp. We have less than 30 miles to go, including one of the three hardest passes, but the weather forecast is looking great going forward and we have plenty of food. -R