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-- Ryan T., Assistant Senior Patrol Leader, Life, Jun. 2016
This was my first Sierra, I had no idea what to expect. Of course I had gone on the smaller backpacks like Deepcreek and thought that it was easy. However, a five day backpack just seemed long and hard, especially with 60+ miles of hiking. In the end, it was fun. It was not as difficult as I thought and I was able to see the beauty of the Sierras.
I remember I went up a day before the hike started with Brandon, Nathan, Patrick and ASM Chen. We did some small hikes to get ready for the weeklong trip. These hikes were fun and interesting. We visited places that were only open during the summer such as Devil’s Postpile and Rainbow Falls. It was a nice hike to relax before going on my first Sierras. We saw the hexagon rocks at Devil’s Postpile and swam under Rainbow falls. These hikes got me somewhat excited and ready for the Sierras.
Day 1 and 2 went by as a blur. Hiking up the mountain on the first day was not as hard as I thought it would be. By staying at a constant pace I was able to reach a point where I reached a runner’s high but for hiking. I felt like I could just keep moving without stopping, but the feeling would go away when I took a rest. The most interesting event during the first two days was when we hiked on a glacier for about 30 minutes. It was my first time ever seeing a glacier. The glacier gave everyone lots of laughs as many people slipped and fell on the snow/ice. Since it was only the first two days, nothing bad had happened yet. My lips were still normal, my body was still clean and my muscles weren’t sore.
By Day 3 my body was starting to give way. Luckily, Mr. A told us it would be a short day. People could choose to hike to a peak or to go down a pass to the campsite. Obviously, I chose the campsite. This was the all cross country and going down the pass was the scariest thing I remember. The path was filled with loose rock and snow. There was no definite way to go down. I remember everyone split up into groups of 2 to try to go down. My dad and I decided to slide down the snow which was really difficult and potentially dangerous. At one point, I remember reaching a cliff and hiking alongside it in order to reach the campsite. Finally, the last obstacle was getting down the cliff through a narrow opening. I remember accidentally kicking down a rock which almost hit my dad. The short hike down which should’ve taken us 30 minutes really took us more than 1 hour to hike down. Because of the difficulty of the hike down, his day was a day that I would not forget.
Day 4 was also a blur, except I started to focus on how much my body hurt. My lips become really dry and started to scab up. My legs and arms was covered in dirt and had random cuts over it. I remember how the we started to name all the Pokemon or all the cartoon characters from a certain show in order to pass time. Day 4 was just a normal hiking day.
Day 5 was the second most eventful because it was the last day. Everyone woke up with excitement, ready to hike out of the mountains and into the cars. We cleaned up camp as fast as possible and started our hike. By the end, some scouts, including me, ran to the end with excitement. We were finally done. Yet, we had to wait for around one hour because our end point was not at our start point so Mr. A and some other adults had to hitchhike in order to get their cars to pick us up. While resting/waiting at the parking lot, I realized how much fun the hike really was, even though my body said otherwise. Because of this hike, I decided to go on every Sierra I could go on.
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