Toulumne to Sonora Pass

Toulumne:
Toulumne is a small stop with a general store, grill and PO attached in one building in Yosemite National Park.  We stayed with 10 other hikers in the hiker/biker camp. This included the Buffalo 6 pack. They got in earlier and had found a ride down Yosemite Valley to see Half Dome. They said there were so many people down there that it was like Disneyland, they where overwhelmed. While they were touring the park Tiffany and I enjoyed a hot dog in a tortilla dinner with Kip and Backup. That night we had a fire, drank wine, and shared more stories and brain teasers.

The next morning we packed up early enough to be at the Toulumne post office as soon as it opened. We picked up our food package and found we also had two additional packages. Thank you to Beth and Shannon for the birthday food and the XL glasses. Also thank you to Linda and the Metro gang for sending a care package too. It was so fun to hear from you.

We organized and re-packed our food so that most of it would fit in our bear vaults and into our packs. We had another 8 day stretch ahead of us which means a lot of food. This was also our last stretch with the damn bear vaults. They are required in both national parks.

Yosemite and beyond:
Despite what little most others see, there is a lot more to Yosemite than half dome. The hike out of Toulumne Meadows is so beautiful. Some of the trail is a few cairns placed over one massive rock.

On the third day out of Toulumne the rock began to change. Instead of the huge white rock slabs we started to see dark brown and red rock that looked like one big conglomerate of all sorts of other rock. I call it the trash rock, but I would guess it is some kind of sedimentary formation. The rock is very erosive and this makes for some pretty cool looking shapes.

The fourth day out marked two major milestones; Tiffany's birthday and passing Mile 1000. I wish we could say we celebrated mile 1000 with at least a photo, but we sailed right past it without even knowing it. We got to a trail junction we knew was mile 1002 and both looked back wondering were under the snow on Dorthy Pass had mile 1000 been.

Tiffany's birthday was supposed to be more exciting too. In Toulumne I had coordinated secretly with the Buffalo 6 pack and Texas Grit to meet at Sonora Pass to camp together and celebrate. The location changed to 1012 the first day out when Double-It said they wanted to take it slower on the first half of the stretch. 

On her birthday T and I didn't break camp until 9am and I tried to go slow in order to ensure that we would be behind someone in the 6 pack. Although throughout the day I didn't see anybody's footprints. After a long rest, drawn out by me to stall, it was time to climb to the crest and up to mile 1012. Tiffany couldn't understand why I didn't just dump the extra 3 liters we filtered. She didn't know I was hauling it to spend the night up high. I was slow on the climb, in part due to the water weight and part to stall. When we got to the spot I stopped for a break. Tiffany looked at me exasperated, "here!". It had been a very windy ridge walk and the wind was not better here. I could tell just sitting around was not going to work. It was already 6pm, as far as I could tell no other Buffaloes were anywhere near us and Tiffany wanted to keep moving. So I had to tell Tiffany about the whole plan. "Is that why you were so slow, and always looking back, and carried way too much water?" She said that was nice, but there was no way she was spending the night on this windy ridge. As disappointed as I was I cannot say I was too keen on spending the night up there either. So we left a note and carried on.

We made our way to a nice camp spot on Sardine Creek just before Sonora pass. The trail down was a bit more tricky than I was expecting. We crossed several large snow fields that were beginning to ice over for the night.  By the time we got to camp we had just enough light to set up the tent and throw back a swig of the Crown whiskey I had brought for the party.

Happy Trails!

Trail Statistics
Mile: 1,018
Days: 64
Showers: 11