Sherman Pass Road to CS716 via Kennedy Meadows – 6-15

Our camp by the road was cold, windy, and noisy. It was hard to sleep. We broke camp, and started the half mile walk down the road to the Kennedy Meadows General Store.

The Store is famous as a stopping place for PCT hikers. It is where equipment for the Sierras is generally shipped, such as the mandatory bear can (you’re required to store your food in a bear-resistant canister in most of the Sierras). Hikers also often end up taking many zeroes here, while they wait for the Sierra snow to melt enough for the passes to be passable.

When we were getting near the store, two dogs jumped out of the undergrowth by the road, barking loudly and chasing us. They were cowards, however, and would back off whenever I looked at them. They tried to nip at our heels whenever we looked away, though, so we got into a pattern of walking a few dozen feet, turning to stare, walking again, staring again, etc.

We rounded a corner with the dogs at our heels, and suddenly about 30 hikers were applauding us.

This is a tradition – you clap when people make it to Kennedy Meadows, because they’ve finished the desert.

The dogs, however, are not tradition. They wandered off as we walked up to the store.

The store was closed, though, so we had to wait until opening. Bobber was there, and we talked about the usual things – resupply plans, campsites, Breanna’s location, etc. Bobber had slowed down a lot in the past week or so – he was making camp early, and even took a zero at the Walker Pass trail magic. He was going to go slow to Independence, where he had an appointment to meet family, then turn around and start hiking south.

A pickup suddenly drove up, offering to shuttle us to Grumpy Bear, a restaurant nearby. The General Store wouldn’t open for another hour, so we decided to risk captivity in a strange restaurant, and hopped on board.

It was a rustic wood building with a large porch. Inside, hikers lined up and placed their order. There was one breakfast available: Two eggs, bacon, potatoes, and all-you-can-eat pancakes (with a few sides and options). When my turn came, I told the waitress my order:

“I’ll have the veggie breakfast.”
“HowDoYouWantYourEggsCooked?”
“Poached.”
“No.”
“Over-easy?”
“OK. Drink?”
“Iced tea?”
“Yes.”

The order was fast, but the wait was unbearable. An hour and a half. They had one cook today (the other wouldn’t get out of bed), and they were bringing in customers by the truckload. So there was a long wait for food. And for the first time on this trip, I’d skipped breakfast in camp.

But then the pancake arrived: Bigger than a regulation-size frisbee, and an inch thick. Conversation stopped as we dug in. It was much larger than the paper plate it was served on, so I tore off and are pieces around the rim as quickly as I could, before they sagged down and developed condensation against the tabletop.

We finished the meal, and hopped into the back of the pickup to return to the store.

My rent-by-mail bear canister had arrived at the store, a Wild Ideas Bearikade Expedition. (Wild Ideas still hadn’t gotten around to asking me to pay them yet.)

The Expedition was surprisingly light. Bear canisters are generally regarded as an infuriatingly cumbersome penalty of hiking the Sierras, due to their high weight and awkward shape. I had to rearrange my pack to fit the Expedition, but it’s weight wasn’t particularly bothersome.

Altogether, I had no trouble fitting everything in my Osprey Exos 46 backpack. I don’t understand why it’s standard to bring packs almost 15 liters bigger than mine – people tend to be surprised when they hear my backpack’s capacity. But, this is the heaviest part of the trip, and I’ve got plenty of room to spare in my eyebrow-raisingly small pack.

Of course, although the bear canister fit, my pack was not light at this point. With the bear canister, microspikes, heavy jacket, and more food than I needed, my back hurt. I was worried about how I would fare on the long stretch to VVR, where I’d potentially need to carry 140 miles of food.

With our bear cans filled and packed into our backpacks, it was time to head out and enter the Sierras.

The scenery after Kennedy Meadows was mostly meadows and mountains, but there were still some cacti. The desert was still having its fun with us.

We camped on the slope above a bridge over the south fork of the Kern River. The slope was flattened into terraces at points, as if it were made to have flat spots for tents (or for rice paddies).

Some other hikers made a campfire, and played an amazing playlist of songs I didn’t recognize. I crawled into my tent early to escape the cold, worked on this blog, and went to sleep.