Post by RedDoug on Dec 10, 2015 22:15:06 GMT -8
Edited on 12/12/15 to correct a few of the facts.
The day started with a simple crossing on the Woods Creek suspension bridge heading nobo towards Pinchot Pass. I'll say this about that bridge, at least it was close to level and I walked across it fairly quickly. On the north end of the bridge there was a mileage sign that indicated Pinchot Pass was like 8.2 miles ahead. Plan was to met up with the Katz just below the pass and spend the night there. It wasn't noon yet, 8 miles, all up, to me that is 8 hrs. Turned out, with breaks to be all of that and then some.
Wow! I think that was the longest, slowest 8.2 miles I have ever packed in my life! On the way up Todd caught up to me. He had been into the TH on Kearsarge to meet someone who was bringing in a resupply box for him. Now Todd and I hiked together long enough to look at the map to confirm a campsite for the night just below the pass where we would meet- the one Katz should have been at.
I did reach the designated camp site we had discussed earlier. Todd was already set up and was preparing his dehydrated meal. I set up my tent, got out my bear canister about the time Todd was ready to eat. And I can't exactly explain how this happened, but I ended up eating about 1/3 of this meal which was very good.
About that time rain started to come in and Todd and I got into our tents (with a good 30 min of light left) and settled down for the night. But very shortly thereafter we heard two new campers move into our camp space, drop packs and set up tents just before night set in.
In the morning sun we got to meet our camp buddies: Moses and Pop Tart. What a pair!! There must have been about 25- 30 yrs difference between them, Moses was the older. The two of them had hooked up on the trail and were now pushing each other forward. They had completed two passes the day before and set up camp very tired. But that was gone in the morning. Moses and Pop Tart began to break camp, make breakfast, do some camp chores and in the mist of this carry on a lively conversation about the large almost aggressive chipmunks one encounters daily on the JMT. It was from these two I learned that what we packed our food in was NOT a bear canister- no one had even seen a bear- but were actually mini-bear canisters. Mini bear being the chipmunks.
And as this transmission of knowledge is taking place, Moses and Pop Tart spread out all their mini-bear canister holdings and began to barter with each other. Pop Tart had pop tarts to trade, but he wanted equal caloric return for his trades, and what fun it was to listen to their bartering go back and forth about the real worth of each food item. Moses was actually hard pressed for time and needed to summit Mt Whitney and be on his way to catch a plane in, I think, like 5 days from that morning. I wonder if he made it. But Moses was interested in lightening his pack. While all this going on two things happened, no, 3 things.
All of us were defending our food supply from attacks by minibears.
I ended up with some food items from Moses (I was still 4- 5 days from our resupply at Vermillion Valley Resort and running a bit low) and Todd looked at the minibears and my new food items and probably thought about his shared dinner the night before and then he called me Mini Bear. And the name, for some reason, stuck.
