This was a much better day. For starters, I just woke up in a better mood. Was worth it to not push myself to get to 20 miles yesterday. I also went into today with the attitude that if I didn’t get to 20 it was no problem, as I’ve got enough food to add an extra day of hiking before my resupply. The elevation changes were more gradual as well, which helped.
I went up and over Muir pass, which has a cool hut built on the top that’s apparently over 100 years old. 19 miles total, leaving me with 9ish tomorrow until the South fork of the San Joaquin River. A bridge that crossed it was wiped out last year, so the official pct route goes around some side trails to avoid it. However, lots of folks have been going a little ways up or down stream from the former bridge site to ford the stream – that’s my plan tomorrow. Going to try and get an early start so the river is at a low volume, it’ll get higher through the day as more snow melts upstream.
I also saw a bear today! It was just a cub, and probably not more than 20 feet from me when I heard a noise and turned around. It must have been lured in by the scent of my peanut butter tortilla wrap. I got up and waved my arms and yelled a bit, but I didn’t want to do toooo much since I didn’t see the mama bear around. Rangers have posted notes on various trail junctions saying bears have been very active and encouraging hikers to try to aggressively scare them away by chasing them while yelling and waving their arms. I was worried though, if the mama bear thought I was gonna eat her cub that she would come barreling in and I wouldn’t be able to scare her away. I moved on from there pretty quick.
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