HST1

After dreaming for years, planning for months, and bickering for weeks, we finally started out on our fantasy hike - the High Sierra Trail. Armed with crappy disposable cameras and far too much food, we were off to confront destiny - or possibly be spanked soundly by it.

Who can start the hike without the obligatory pose at the trail marker? "71 miles" it warned us. We might have turned back, but it was too late - my brother had already driven off. We had only two choices left: start the hike, or start begging tourists to give us a ride home.

We shrugged on our incredibly heavy packs and began crawling out of Crescent Meadow. Even though we'd delayed ourselves ridiculously at Lodgepole Station, it was still early in the day, and my breakfast of one crappy pecan mini-pie and a banana had filled my stomach nicely. Before we knew it we'd made the first mile, and were officially in The Backcountry. The next photo stop was at a spot called the Eagle's Rest (well, the Eagle's something), which was a far lovelier view than the sorry photograph on the right would have you believe. Breathtaking!

We wove in and out of the sunlight as the day grew brighter; around a ridge, back into a gully... but this was Day One., so we hadn't got Trail Ennui just yet. We looked down into the Kahweah River valley and marveled at the clearness of the trails we saw winding below us.

Nearly every gully had at least a trickle of a stream. Some were lovely, sparkling little flows, but others were no more than boggy puddles. I must confess a fondness for tiny waterfalls, and the first one that made me "oooh" was immortalized in that fuzzy portrait to the left. This was one of a multitude of streams with no names.

The goal for the fist night was 9-Mile Creek. We had given ourselves 10 days to hike the 71+ miles, so we took a more leisurely pace than most folks do on this trail.

The photo on the left shows the trail just after Mehrten Creek, which was a lovely place to stop & refill the bottles. We also met up with a crew of guys from Long Beach, one of which I had met on the Mt. Whitney Portal Store's message board. They were out for 10 days as well, but had an aggressive loop hike planned & were doing double the mileage we had planned.