Home - Friday, June 6th

Home. Where the heart is. Toledo is the place. Where our lifelong friends are, where we raised our family, built our house, had our careers and built our memories. No doubt about it. But, if home is where the heart is then we are home today. The Sierra steal our hearts. Breath taking weather, magnificent mountains, streams, trees, granite walls, solitude, quiet and new acquaintances. It feels like home.

We left our camp at Rock Creek and encountered our first stream crossing. I was able to rock hop across while Sally slipped into her tennis shoes to wade the ford. She is now hiking in sandals which she finds very comfortable and uses her tennis shoes for stream crossings.

We had 1200' of climbing to get out of the Rock Creek drainage. This is old trail. We know because it did not mess around. New trail (built in the last 40 years is a 10% grade-gentle up and down. It takes forever to gain or lose elevation, but it is not strenuous.) It steeply climbed the hillside and we were quickly on the ridge separating Rock Creek from Whitney Creek, our lunch destination.

As we made our way north the west branch of the Sierra towered to our left with magnificent granite peaks highlighted with remaining winter snows. The walking is a joy, my head swiveling back and forth like a tank turret to take it all in as I move up the trail.

At Whitney Creek we caught up with Sunrise and sat in a perfect meadow next to Whitney Creek to eat lunch with Mt. Whitney and Mt. Russell looming above us surrounded by lodge pole pine, marmots and nascent wildflowers just emerging from the ground.

While eating, a woman in her late 40s joined us. This was her third time on the PCT, having also done the Appalachian Trail twice. She has a rental house that provides the modest income she needs while she makes the mountains her home for 6 months of the year.

Waterfall and Backup were climbing Whitney this morning, an eight mile long side trail to the top. We were hopeful we would meet when they rejoined the PCT, now the John Muir Trail (JMT) for the next 160 miles. We reached the trail junction where they would rejoin the JMT, but they must have already passed as we did not see them.

We met Landslide, a late 50's gardener from San Francisco and Handbrake, a retiree like ourselves as they passed us, having summited Whitney earlier in the morning and now making for a resupply in Independence on Sunday, a day before we would get there. I walked with them the last mile to Wallace Creek, sharing stories and talking about our kids. Sally arrived shortly and we wadded Wallace Creek to find camping on the other side. We encountered our first mosquitoes of the trip, but they were not too bad.

We pitched our tent near Wallace Creek, cooked dinner, watched another marvelous sunset and snuggled under our down quilt atop our inflated sleeping pads inside our cocoon of a tent. It was another marvelous day in our "home", the Sierra.