We took an easy start this morning. We are convinced to follow our strategy: Fully enjoying the Sierras and not running through them!

10 minutes from our camp spot…

We didn’t make it far until we found ourselves in a marmot colony. They are soooo cute… 😍 I communicated a bit with them and even though I do have a very obvious Austrian/Swiss Alps marmot accent we managed to understand each other. They are very foreigner-friendly marmots here 😂 But it really worked. Marmots use wisthling to warn their colonies. So when I whistled at one of them it immediately went on its back legs and screened the surroundings.

“Erm, are you talking to me there foreigner…?”
Lot of water makes lots of greens makes chubby marmots…😂

 

The making off by Kaylee
It’s hard to capture. But it’s not so much about the single epic views here – it is just all amazing. We are walking through my personal candy land. It’s all alpine terrain and so incredibly beautiful. Hard to explain. We don’t really work and walk for the next view but every step is in the view itself. Peaks, ridges, river crossings, waterfalls, gorges, lakes, flowers, wildlife and much more is just everywhere. It also becomes hard to walk and take photos. Well, it is actually hard to walk since I have to stop every other minute. Just a few highlights of today…

One of the first bigger river crossings. Kings River.

 

If I will ever have a cabin – it’s not going to be at a lake or at the sea. It’s going to be in the mountains…Marther’s Pass was fairly easy. Five minutes of scrambling and traversing snow on the way up wasn’t too bad. Even though we had heard from a few JMT-SOBOs (John Muir Trail South Bounder – Hikers who walk a 260 mile trail through the Sierras and which overlaps witj the PCT for most of the distance) that it was tough. But to be reasonable – we probably would have said similar things without our prior experience. View into the next valley – stunning:

Water. Everywhere. Most of the time the trail is just a river… It’s quite amusing to watch people still trying to keep dry feet and changing shoes for river crossings or sections like this one. My balance today: 40 mintues of dry feet – first 10 minutes when I left the camp spot and the 30 mintues break were I took my shoes off… 😂

We are really trying but we have to force ourselves. We are still in the “crushing miles wearing smiles” mode. But we are getting better. Even though we had a break on the Pass we took another one only 1.5h later. Why? Because it was too beautiful to pass and rush… So proud of us!

Trail laundry:

And then we dropped down 3000ft following a beautiful stream through a gorge.

 


Next highlight. After 17 miles we called it day! 5.30pm and we pitched the tent. Why? Because we wanted to be able to enjoy, eat, edit photos (me) and not fall asleep while doing it. It felt weird. But good as well. We jumped into the raging creek for a quick bath. I like this hiking-thing… 😍