Trail And Errors

Encompassing Days 66 & 67 (Ethan refers to these as Days 56 & 57 'on trail'), the team awake in Lone Pine, where, as usual, they struggle to escape the town vortex and leave in good time. Eventually getting a hitch back to the trail they are taken the wrong way and left stranded in the middle of nowhere! Luckily before too long a friendly local gives them a lift up the 22 mile dead-end road to Horseshoe Meadow, where they help a stranded motorist get his car out of the deep snow. Hiking up the few sludgy miles of Trail Pass back to the PCT, the weather is forbidding, but the beauty overcomes the cold wet conditions as they make a few miles past Cottonwood Pass to Chicken Spring Lake. The next morning they awake to frozen socks, frozen shoes, frozen gloves; frozen everything! They start out with a big climb in threatening weather, and soon realise that 20 miles days are but a pipe dream in the Sierras at the moment. After such a heavy winter they will be lucky to make 10 miles a day through the snow. D