After a small hungover delay from the day before, it was time to leave Kennedy Meadows and Tom's Place. Luckily, Tom was not cooking his fantastically tasty pancakes this morning otherwise I might not have made it out until the evening. The general store cooked up biscuits and gravy and after spending the past six months living in the south I wanted nothing to do with that!
I put my pack on with one liter of water...........40 1/2 pounds. I thought it would have felt worse but to be honest it wasn't any heavier than carrying over a gallon of water in the desert at a time. I walked the relatively flat two miles up through the Kennedy Meadows Campground and started to climb. Now my pack felt heavy as shit. While it was heavy, I was beginning to climb into the South Sierra Wilderness and I was surrounded by a river, willow trees, and Sequoias. I was so distracted that I nearly stepped on a rattlesnake and he was pissed...really pissed. After a small uphill I entered a burn area and witnessed first hand how out of control and serious fires can get on the dry and windy west coast.
The first climb took me up and out of the woods to the massive Becks Meadow which sits in front of the edge of the Sierra's mountain range and you can see the high sierras further back. It was one of those "Oh yes, those are the mountains I want to play in" moments. I've trudged through 700 miles of desert sand to see a vast green meadow and huge mountains behind it. I sat for quite there and took it all in for quite a while.
I hiked up the side of the meadow to the South Kern River bridge which was covered underneath with swallow nests. It was nice to rest and get water (upstream from all that birdshit) and watch the swallows maneuver under and around the bridge. I caught up to Shutterbug, a middle-aged woman who got her name because of her constant picture taking, as well as Listener who is a 73 year old woman thru-hiking this year. I've been around her for a couple weeks and this woman us something to admire. A grandmother, Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker, marathoner, PCT Thru-Hiker, an has completed a half Iron Man all after the age of 65! She hikes slow and steady and is quite a trooper. When I bitch about being sore or tired an she end up camping a few miles further up the trail than me it truly readjusts my mental predicament about things.
Anywho, there were a couple miles left in the day to Cow Springs Campsite so I flew up there to get the first campfire of my trail going so when everyone else smelt it down the valley it could give them that " I'm close" push at the end of the day. So myself, Spins, Listener, and Shutterbug prepared dinner around the fire swapping stories and it felt so comfortable and nice. Around an hour later a guy rolled in whom I met at Tom's Place briefly before leaving. Golden Ray is a deaf hiker who is thru-hiking this year and has also completed the AT. We all hung around the fire and conversed, ate dinner then went to bed. It was a solid day of strait uphill with a perfect and relaxing end. A great way to start the push into the Sierra Nevada's.
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