After a few heavy days we wanted to slow back down and do 20 mile days as my toe has been bothersome, T-Rex’s feet need to heal and we want to make sure to take our time and enjoy the upcoming scenery.

It's official.

We had a great breakfast at the campground up the trail and headed into the hype. You may notice an increase of photos on this entry, because as time passes the scenery just gets more ludicrous and we aren’t even to the good part.

Even the bridges are nice in the Sierras.

Our morning water source, mile 707.

As we gained elevation and left the desert behind, it almost felt fake…too nice. I half expected a Disney cartoon bird and rabbit to be frolicking around the next corner.

Weather can be extremely fickle in the High Sierra.

We ate lunch on the banks of the creek. I sat in that rock chair and had a standoff with local rodents as birds flew by....ridiculous.

It was all climbing, but at least it kept you distracted. We camped at 10,000 feet after 20 miles and settled in for a chilly night. The next morning we continued on for 20 more and things only improved on the scenery front.

Climbing in the morning.

Gomez meadow.

This is basically a road map for where we are about to go, right to left.

Raining in the Oleawala Valley

We ate lunch at 10,500 feet in the sunshine, with a great view and oddly, light snow flurries falling. We both agreed we had officially entered Backpacker Magazine.

Can't really see the snow, but not a bad place to eat lunch.

We found a great campsite at 742.2, near Diaz Creek, but trouble was brewing. T-Rex had blister issues and apparently was short on food. My left big toe was aching pretty badly, we decided to get some rest and see how we felt after hiking some in the morning.

Good way to wake up in the morning.

That's pretty.

After a couple miles, it was clear…we would not be setting ourselves up to do Mt. Whitney tomorrow. My toe was an issue that had to be dealt with and with other issues we decided to bail at Cottonwood Pass, mile 750 and hitch to Lone Pine. This required us to take a side trail to Horseshoe Meadow and hope someone was there and heading to town, as it is a popular day-hiking portal.

From Horseshoe Meadow, kindve depressing, we should have been going there today.

At the trailhead, we met Nomad Max, the father of a current hiker and overall great person. He gave us a ride into Lone Pine and we spent an additional day just resting and eating.

Alot of this.

Now we head back up and prepare for Mt. Whitney tomorrow and Forrester Pass the day after that, my toe will have to fall off before I stop on this section, but thankfully it is feeling much better.

IMPORTANT note:

Feel free to ask questions in the comments, preferably related to what we are currently doing (hiking the PCT). We plan to start posting small videos answering questions from this site, “Ask a Thru-hiker” or whatever. So ask away and you can see how weird our faces have gotten in video form.