May 19
Mile 631 - Mile 656
It was chilly in the morning and we got up early, about 5:30am. We were all hiking by 6:15am to tackle the uphill and the cold wind kept us cool and hiking fast.
We got great views of the morning light on the ridge we had tackled last night as we re-gained the 1500' we lost dipping down to the campspot.
Back up at around 7000', we were back into the treeline and we left the barren desert down below us. It's hard to see in the above picture but there were these incredible colorful meadows with small purple and white flowers, green sagebrush, red paintbrush, and orange and green trees.
The rest of the day after the climb was fairly easy, mostly "flat" and downhill. There was a 2 mile dirt roadwalk halfway through our day where we found the beautiful moth below.
After the roadwalk we went through more meadow areas.
Rock outcropping that had a carpet of purple flowers spreading out before it.
Clouds collecting again this afternoon.
So many shades of green and grey.
We got our first glimpses of the Sierras as we hiked today. We are all in slight disbelief that we are only 50 miles or so from Kennedy Meadows. This signifies the end of the Southern California section and the end of the desert (for the most part). We're very excited and a little nervous to start this formidable section.
Road crossing after we got trail magic(!!) at a campground. Bellies stuffed with multiple hot dogs and multiple PB&Js, we climbed up the incline pictured above until we found a campspot about 5 miles later up on the ridge.
We had a small campfire that we later learned may or may not have been legal, but was responsibly enjoyed and put out at the end of the night. Another hiker named Tortoise joined us at our campspot for the night and we all stayed up past hiker midnight (9pm) chatting about the Sierras.
Beautiful sunset tonight. G'night!
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