The town after south lake Tahoe is Kennedy Meadows North, where Hummingbirds Cabin is. Even though she went back to college after reaching Canada, she allowed us to stay there. With a free place to stay, we took a zero and we’re able to cook our own meals. Lt Dan cooked a authentic Israeli breakfast called shakshuka. Well fed, we headed back into the Wilderness and soon entered Yosemite National Park.
In the park we passed by huge waterfalls and beautiful meadows. Additionally the PCT merged with the John Muir Trail (JMT). That meant the number of hiker increased dramatically.
Besides just more hikers, more thunderstorms seemed to come with this new section. Almost every day around 3:30 it would storm. This meant if you were about to climb a pass you would have to wait until the storm blew over, which could take the whole afternoon.
The second day out of town, a massive thunderstorm hit. To avoid being in a dangerous place for lightning, we set up camp at an all time early 3pm. The storm raged on and the lighting strikes continued to get closer. There was nothing i could do so i put my headphones in and pulled my sleeping bag over my eyes.
Two days after the first storm another one hit. This time almost at night. I got so cold in the rain I sped up my hiking pace to stay warm. I ended up getting quite a bit ahead of Lt Dan and Curry. When I set up my tent they went ahead of me and we got split up. The next morning was freezing but I packed up in the darkness to try to catch them before they left for the day. I passed lots of JMT tents but never saw there’s all the way to the pass. I knew they hadn’t packed up earlier that me, so i knew they were behind me but i didn’t know where. I waited on the pass in my sleeping bag for almost two hours and then they finally showed up. They too didn’t know where I had been so they had been slow to get up so I would see their tent (which I didn’t). Either way we were all united once again and the weather was good.
In Yosemite the giant rock mountains seemed to be bigger than normal. They loomed over us at every turn making me feel very small. The last day before town we had lunch at a deep blue like with a huge mountain range as the background. Soon after we were in the town of mammoth.
Noel Nelson- pct mile 2530
