I was thinking about this some more, and I realized I might have a trip report that would be of value. Chris Bailey and Jenelle Wilhelm did the PCT in 1998-99, two of only 9 to make it that year (perhaps 100 do in a normal year) 98 was a big snow year, but not as big as this. For a comparison of may check here:
http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/cgibin/westsnow.plI actually met them on the trail, at Red's Meadow, on July 4th. I remember that they had not seen actual trail for hundreds of miles. Here is their Trip Report:
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"Impassable" is a State of Mind*
By Chris Bailey*
*The High Sierra*
We arrived at Kennedy Meadows on June 10th and spent four nights there
waiting for the weather to improve. By this time, we had decided we were
going to make a foray into the Sierra to see what it was like. The vast
majority of other thru-hikers had decided by now to skip to somewhere in
northern California or flip-flop to Canada and the hand-wringing, nervous
speculation, and endless debates about how to proceed had consumed a lot of
energy over the past couple of weeks. It had grown to be a nauseating topic.
The weather pattern had settled down on the 13th, and on the 14th, with our
new hiking partner, Randy (a section hiker who had started at Tehachapi
Pass), we headed up the trail. We were carrying six days worth of food and
our plan was to go at least as far as Trail Pass and then depending on how
we were doing, we’d continue to at least Cottonwood Pass and, best case,
continue to Crabtree Meadows and head over Trail Crest to resupply (and
decide whether to proceed) in Lone Pine via Whitney Portal. Within the first
half-day, we met two nay-sayers who said we didn’t stand a chance.
We knew of two hikers who had left Kennedy Meadows heading north ahead of
us. One said he was only going as far as Olancha Pass, where he would head
for Highway 395 and begin his flip-flop. The other hiker, we knew, was an
experienced nordic skier and had skis with him. He was a very strong hiker
and we felt certain he was out there ahead of us, which was (somewhat
irrationally) a comforting feeling. He was about a week ahead of us at this
point. We learned about two weeks later that he had only traveled about two
days (to Trail Pass or Cottonwood Pass, I think) before he wisely decided
that traveling solo was not a good idea. He later told us he didn’t think
anyone would come along to travel with, so he decided to flip-flop.
Before setting out from Kennedy Meadows, we had contacted a backcountry
ranger at the Lone Pine ranger station. He informed us that while there was
100% coverage in the high country, the snow was "bomber," i.e., in good
condition for travel. This (and the avalanche danger) was our major concern.
We knew we would struggle (post-hole) badly if the snow was unconsolidated.
The ranger’s information turned out to be quite accurate. While the PCTA
(and many, many others) were telling hikers that the Sierras were still
impassable, we found the hiking strenuous and slow, but quite doable. Here
is an excerpt from my (Chris) journals describing the conditions from
Kennedy Meadows to Kearsarge Pass:
*"We encountered out first patchy snow at around 9,000 feet, on June 14th,
the day we left Kennedy Meadows. The next morning, traversing around Olancha
Peak, we walked on patchy to mostly continuous snow for a few hours (at
9-10,000 feet) and had more of the same north of Ash Meadow that afternoon.
The following day, we found the same snowpack composition as the day before
as we approached Trail Pass and Cottonwood Pass, with solid snow on north
and east exposures above 9,000 feet, especially in heavy timber. This
pattern continued all the way past Crabtree Meadows to just south of Bighorn
Plateau, where the snowpack became pervasive. In all this distance the snow
was of a uniform nature: consolidated enough to hike bare-booted, with only
occasional post-holing around "warming" objects like rocks and logs. We
encountered no sun-cupping yet either, until the north side of Forester Pass
in the Bubbs Creek drainage. One nice thing about this southern section was
that the southern and western exposures below 10,000’ were often melted out
almost completely, so many of our climbs were on bare switchbacks, while our
descents (since we’re headed north) were on snow. One disadvantage of
spring-like snow is that, especially in timber, the snow falls and drifts to
irregular depths, leaving us to climb and descend over miles of one to six
foot hummocks – an exhausting proposition."*
*"Forester Pass, our first major obstacle and the highest point on the PCT,
had worried us for a couple of days. When we first glimpsed it from a
distance, it made us cringe. We hadn’t seen any of the advice posted [on our
website’s guest book] about Forester and had forgotten about Jardine’s
recommendation of a possible alternate pass. When we got close enough to see
the six to eight foot cornice at the top, the steep couloir, the avalanche
debris, and the snow-plastered switchbacks blasted out of the steep rock
face, we decided we weren’t going to risk it, though we weren’t sure how to
proceed. As we ate lunch and stared at this problem, the pass just a short
distance to the east of Forester (and west of Junction Peak), started to
seem like an option, though we only had the topo map to indicate what the
north side might be like. The pass had a bare talus slope for the last 100
feet and no cornice and didn’t seem unbearably steep, so we decided to give
it a whirl. The snow was almost perfect for us to bare-boot up (our only
option as we don't have crampons with us and have found little real need for
them) protecting ourselves from a fall by self-belaying with our ice-axes.
The north side of the pass was steep, but soft and easy to descend."*
*"One word here about avalanches. The three of us decided the risks
associated with doing Forester and the rest of the passes in the afternoons
was reasonably low, based on the conditions we saw and how the snowpack felt
to us. There was evidence of recent slides, but mostly of snow coming off
very steep rock or pieces of cornices breaking off – both situations we
rarely had to traverse under. It also appeared that the majority of the
heavily loaded areas had already slid. We saw no evidence of snowfields such
as the ones we were regularly traversing triggering, even when they were hit
by slides from above. Finally, the slide depositions we saw were very
shallow and the one time we actually saw a slide, it was moving about four
m.p.h."*
*"The snow in the vicinity north of Forester was pretty rotten in the late
afternoon, the worst post-holing through this whole section. Otherwise, the
snow conditions the rest of the way to Red’s Meadow became slightly better
consolidated, vastly more sun-cupped (in meadows and open stands of timber)
and deeper north of Silver Pass (we found snow almost all the way down to
Red’s Meadow Resort)."*
On that first leg from Kennedy Meadows we managed to exceed our expectations
and were able to make it all the way to the Kearsarge Pass cut-off, where we
headed out to the Onion Valley trailhead to resupply in Lone Pine (where we
had sent our drift box). Unfortunately, the Onion Valley road had just
opened and had very little traffic on it. We ended up walking about 8 (of
15) miles down the road before catching a ride the rest of the way into
Independence.
After a couple of days rest in Lone Pine, we decided to continue north along
the PCT rather than flip-flopping, which we had left open as an option. We
made an 8-day leg to Red’s Meadow, where we hitched out to Mammoth Lakes for
more rest and resupply. Continuing with my (Chris) journal entries for the
passes north of Kearsarge:
*"As for the rest of the passes: Glen Pass was steep on both sides, but we
took a line to the right, following some skiers' steps and topped out
through a band of rocks. It was a pretty easy pass, really, as it wasn’t
very exposed. The north side had some pretty rotten snow and a few cliffs to
descend around."*
*"Pinchot was quite easy as well. We took a line to the right making first
tracks. The back side was no problem."*
*"Mather Pass was terrifying. The whole pass was corniced, except for one
tiny spot above the pass on the left through the rocks. We traversed steeply
up the left side, partially exposed to cornices above, crawled through one
rock band, climbed steeply up very rotten snow to the next rock band and
continued on mixed rock and snow, following (roughly) a skier’s steps over
steep rock – quite a challenge! At one point while leading, I sank in to
rotten snow with both feet, up to my waist. I was very off-balance (tipping
backward on a very steep section) and couldn’t get a purchase on anything
with my ice axe (the snow was sno-cone consistency about one foot deep on
top of rock). My feet were stuck and I had to get Jenelle to dig them out
from behind."*
*"Muir, Selden and Silver Passes were very easy and straightforward. In all,
the snow has been hard work and has made route finding slow and tedious at
times. We saw the trail only briefly, except in the valley bottoms. Patience
is the key."*
*"We’ve heard there’ve been a few deaths in whitewater accidents from the
high run-off so maybe a few words about stream-crossings are in order. We’ve
actually had little difficulty with them. A little scouting for a good spot
or log goes a long way. The one that sounded the scariest from the guidebook
description, Silver Pass Lake Creek ("a hair-raising stream-crossing at the
head of a fatally high cascade") was mostly just noisy, but not difficult."*
The snowy trail continued in earnest after Red’s Meadow and the snow level
actually dropped the further north we went in the Sierras. While there was
little snow on the ground in Tuolumne Meadows, there was still plenty in the
Yosemite backcountry and all the way to Sonora Pass. Our worst river fords
came between Tuolumne Meadows and Falls Creek, where we had several very
deep (chest high) crossings. A couple of the guys ahead of and behind us
inadvertently swam on one or two of the crossings. Thankfully, we were able
to scout for logs on a few of these. A few times we bushwhacked on the
opposite banks from the trail for a long way, crossing miles upstream where
it was safer. By this time we had become comfortable with not having actual
tread to follow. We had very little tread for most of the High Sierra.
Our last long stretch of snow wasn’t until shortly before Belden (map M10)
at about 6800 feet, though we encountered drifts and snowfields on and off
all the way through the Marble Mountain Wilderness in northern California.
Despite all the mental stress and hard work, the Sierras in ’98 were
indescribably beautiful, vast and awe-inspiring. The physical hardships, the
exhaustion, and the frustrations of constant route-finding, were rewarded by
solitude, by views that few thru-hikers ever see, and by the reassuring
knowledge that we were still heading north to Canada. We wouldn’t have
traded the experience for anything, and would suggest that future
thru-hikers (with adequate skills) at least consider taking the PCT on its
own terms, even when the conditions are difficult. Not that there’s any
"right," "better," or "best" way to hike the trail, but there is perhaps a
little value in continuity and accepting the challenges of the trail as you
find them.
