In Nov 2022 Abby and Cordis attempt to complete the grueling ~130 mile L2H in under 53 hours.
woof, was looking at the elevation profile on L2H (click the red line and click “Profile”) and realized the first 14 miles from Badwater to Telescope Ridge in Death Valley NP are a deal breaker as I don’t reasonably think I can do 10k elevation gain in a day… did several thousand feet less on my biggest day on the PCT which I was in shape for and took a nap and I was still exhausted the next day. love the area and it feels… slightly uncomfortable to realize I’d be out of my league.
It is difficult, but its such a rad hike tho. I did it H2L as a side trip on my PCT thru and it was a huge highlight for me.
that’s a hell of a sidetrip! i have so many questions. how did you decide to do it? did you team up with anyone? did you cache water?
It was honestly kind of on a lark. I was (very) late season sobo, and had been planning to go over whitney to resupply in Lone Pine, and had considered H2L as a side trip, but not very seriously. As I was coming down from whitney we got a big snow, so I was considering staying in town for a day or two to see if it would melt like previous snows had.
A friend of mine texted me in town saying that they were leaving Vegas for Death Valley (on foot, because they were doing a coast to coast walk) and wanted to know where I was at in my thru. It was so perfect that I just had to go for it. I downloaded the gps track onto my phone and cached my snow gear at the gear store in lone pine and went for it.
I didn’t cache water, I carried 2 gallons of gatorade out of lone pine in addition to my 2L bladder and 2x 1L plastic bottles, refilled in Pannamint Springs. I did find a water cache but I had carried enough that I only grabbed like a liter from it.
So I did it solo, but I did meet my friend in furnace creek after we had missed each other in badwater basin proper.
That is awesome! So you carried 12 liters total? How was hiking in Death Valley? Which route was your friend taking? And how did your SOBO PCT thru go?
Yeah I think that converts out to 11 or 12ish Liters.
Hiking Death Valley was awesome, I was happy to be doing it late season when things are generally much cooler. We got a tiny bit of rain near furnace creek while hanging out with my friend which felt really lucky. I got approached by a tiny kit fox (I think, based on NPS’ list of carnivores in the park, it looked more like a cat to me, but not a bobcat) who I think was mostly checking out my headlamp, which was very cute and smol. I hit Pannamint Springs on thanksgiving, and they had a free thanksgiving buffet so and I went full hiker trash gorging myself on that and it was awesome. All the abandoned mine stuff in the Inyos and around Death Valley is super cool. The ways up into the Inyos and up and down telescope ridge are tough, but didn’t seem like anything that would’ve been totally out of place on the CDT.
I wish I could give a concise answer for that, his route was kindof esoteric. It was predicated on walking thru all the states and he had already done coast to coast twice and had just finished the triple crown sobo on the CDT, and was heading to Alaska haha. I’m not sure he put anything up on the internet about it outside of facebook, but his trail name is Mammoth if you wanna try and find more.
My PCT went great! I started late sobo (August 11th) with a friend intending to do it in less than 100 days, which we failed at, my friend dropped out about 2 weeks in to change direction in life, and I think he felt like he was slowing me down.
My PCT social experience was much more closely aligned to how the CDT is portrayed, (and vice versa too) I didn’t see a single person on trail between donner pass where I saw a trail runner and a late night dog walker, and crabtree meadows where I saw a ranger who was just hanging out “till the snow kicked them out.” and I did get to hike with a guy for most of Oregon who was finishing a flip flop at crater lake. But overall it was mostly solo, I started getting (new) snow in Oregon but it didn’t stick around super well until Whitney, so my progress got pretty slow at times. I got told that the big snow storm that hit whitney when I was starting H2L dumped like 16ft, so I bailed and road walked to walker pass to keep on.
I hitched to LA from Big Bear and flew home for the winter holidays and kinda got stuck back home longer than intended. but I road tripped back out with my then freshly retired and cancer free dad, and he slack packed me the rest of the way over a couple weeks. South of Mojave is kind of a blur for me as it went pretty smooth, and I was mile hounding pretty hard to make my flight (which I originally planned to be from san diego at the end, prior to doing H2L, or even the high sierra at all) and then the slack packing I was a little more focused on the getting to spend time with my dad between sections slackpacks.
Haha that sounds amazing, do you have any pictures from it? Your friend sounds like a trip, I’m not sure I have the mental fortitude to walk through all those states like that, that is something else. Holy crap, you roadwalked from Whitney to Walker Pass? Socially your PCT SOBO sounds like my CDT SOBO. After seeing dozens of people in Glacier, a handful in the Bob and a half dozen in Anaconda I only met 2 other SOBO thrus in the next 2000 miles… I did pass by like 100 NOBOs in the Winds though, that was cool. They were friendly but looked so tired… one of them complained non-stop about Colorado’s thunderstorms and snow and blowdowns and mosquitos. One of them loaned me a knife to perform surgery on one of my shoes which was rubbing on my Achilles… Yeah, SoCal is pretty easy, especially for you after all that you’d been through.
Yeah, I got a fair number of pictures. I’m not great about being an on-trail photog, I kinda remember to do it in fits and bursts. Maybe I’ll get a pixelfed or something and share a gallery here, I have an instagram that I am hesistant about dropping because I haven’t posted on for like 6 years and don’t necessarily want to totally dox myself.
He’s a nut in the best way, he carries a half gallon milk jug with just his pinky finger as his main water bottle.
Yeah, lone pine to walker wasn’t crazy hard, its like 80 miles, only one turn, not too too much traffic, the road up to it isn’t very steep, and I didn’t have to carry 12L of water haha. I think I banged it out in like 2/2.5 days or so, definitely podcasting kinda days though.
The thru hiker camaraderie is so much fun, which years did you hike?