June 14.

12 miles on Piute pass side trail to get around the destroyed San Joaquin river bridge.

Yesterday was one of the best food days so far on trail. I had a Cubano sandwich with carne asada fries from a tremendous food truck. For dinner we went to the bowling alley with anvil and his new crew, and ordered a FANTASTIC prime rib.

It was without question the single best meal I have ever had at a bowling alley. A risk seeking hiker ordered an ahi tuna steak and found it similarly delicious. What is going on in this town??

In the morning we resupply at the grocery store and then stop again at Schat’s bakery. We are reminded of our hiking companion Sunshine who would keep a tally of bad things that happened during our last stretch of trail. Whenever we met a hardship she would say “that’s another cinnamon roll!”. When we saw her in town she had two huge suitcase sized bags from the bakery that she took into her hotel room.

It was quite a week, and we are all coping with it in different ways. Mostly with food.

We get a ride back to the trailhead with 2 local search and rescue volunteers. They tell us of a rescue performed yesterday of a hiker on the Taboose Pass trail that Golden and I took to exit the Sierra. The hiker pressed her SOS button after running into stinging nettles. She had believed that she was bitten by spiders, and reported that her legs were numb. This is surely the very inexperienced, unprepared, hiker that injured Golden. We were happy to hear she had exited safely.

Back on the trail we cross over our easiest Sierra pass yet- Piutte pass. Leading up to the pass is a gorgeous series of lakes connected by waterfalls.

We are so thankful, after the past few days, to not even have to use our ice axes or micro spikes to get up and over the pass. Maybe the worst is over?

It seems like the primary concern for the next stretch will be raging water crossings. We descend from the pass into an absolutely lovely basin.

The trail is constantly flooded with snow melt. While filming some mini waterfalls that are flooding the trail I bash the absolute shit out of my shin on a boulder. I fall flat on my face and completely douse myself in the ankle deep snow melt water that is flooding the trail. I shiver and limp for the next few miles.

At 8 pm we find a nice little campsite at 9,500 feet. It is the lowest elevation we have camped at for quite a while. The campsite is chosen deliberately as we will have a large creek crossing in the morning.