Hi all
We just had an amazing day trip from the portal.. We awoke at 1:30 AM or should i say Tracy awoke and started brewing her coffee, as i lay there wondering if it was really time already? why can't I sleep just 5 more min... The reason we had a plan to make it from the portal to onion valley in under 18 hrs .. So at 2:00 AM we were on the trail right on schedule..
It was an interesting morning as there were very few cars in the lot and no other head lamps visible on the trail odd i said.. Maybe the cougar has folks freaked out, or maybe it is just how thursday's are right now, any how as we kept on our goal and pace I was observing the sky, remarkably dark and the stars beaming, however as we reached trail camp there was an obvious cloud cover over the summit and the surrounding areas..
We kept on pushing, keeping a close eye on the sky to see if we might see some lightning. From the bottom of the switch backs we could see a set of headlamps but they really were not moving a lot.. We pushed on and got to the crest right as the sun was rising , oh boy was it spectacular something right out of a dream looked like we had gone to heaven, so spectacular I will share the photos also..
Any how we changed into our warmer clothes as the wind was strong and there was hail falling up ahead, we met up with the guys we could see and they were high tailing it back down , they said lightning on the summit we are not continuing to the summit.. I always stay quite when people have made a decision that is a safety issue.. I kept a close eye on the sky and never saw lightning anywhere so we kept on..We made the summit right on schedule fairly slow as planned 4:50 min..
We had a quick snack and off we went. The weather was about 38degrees and socked in not your average july day but a welcome to us.. We pushed on down the trail .. It was amazing how many folks were headed up the backside from crab tree we must have passed 50 plus people, we were running flat out for this section super fun..
We headed to the JMT over to Wallace creek, then to Tyndall creek , our goal was to be there by 12:30 we were an hour ahead of our schedule stoked, then we kept the pace strong up over Forester pass , we had anticipated 2 hrs from Tyndall creek, we made it to the pass in 1:31 on the money, stoked... again we have cut off an hour and a half from our goal so we pushed hard on the 7.5 mile descent making the junction at 4:00 PM to start the climb up Kearsarge pass ..
Again we had planned on 2hrs to the pass we were there in 1:30 min perfect.. That push was brutal, We never broke our pace except to say hey to our friends from Sierra Mountain guides who were guiding a group from europe always a pleasure seeing good friends.. That was short and they were encouraging us to push for our time..
Now we have taken off two full hours from our goal, see it helps to watch the tour de France for inspiration to never give in to the pain..
We dropped down and kept our 3 mile an hour average actually3.2 miles per hour we arrived at our pick up car right at 6:38 pm .. Our mission complete total miles 48 average moving speed 3.2 average speed 3.0 total time 16 hrs 35 min. total moving time 14:55min .. We broke our time by a lot and we feel that due to the weather never really getting much higher than 60 degrees and cloudy skies we were able to move a little easier than if it were 80 plus degrees..
MW85
