Day 77: Rancheria creek - Mile 1000 (mi 979-1000)

Starting out with the first hike out of Rancheria Creek.

Chittiden Peak across the meadow and the fish-laden Falls Creek after the PM thunderstorm. Sadly, running too behind schedule to fish. 

So many fish, so little time. Falls Creek and the meadow. 

Smiles hikes through Grace Meadow. 

Smiles scooting through the pass and out of Yosemite National Park. 

Looking back at Forsyth Peak and the edge of the National Park. 

Smiles just uphill of mile 1000. She's not wearing a wig, just wearing a mosquito headnet. 

The easy days never turn out to be so easy! Last night, poring over the elevation profile while eating dinner, today was definitely deemed to be easy in terms of elevation. A few shortish, steep climbs, then a long, soft run up to a pass, then downhill to the 1,000 mile mark and beyond. Today started out with a drenching ford, followed by a steep climb which quickly caught our attention. Thereafter we dropped down into a thicket of mosquitoes, and were rewarded with a completely unexpected 1,400-foot climb on exposed granite on a very hot morning. We saw thunderheads growing quickly for the second time in as many days, and were resolved to get low before they opened up. Smiles had a difficult go with the climb, and was emotionally quite low as we descended through an angry and hungry horde of mosquitoes near Wilma Lake and Falls Creek. The skies clouded over, but never opened up on us at our relatively low elevation. We saw T-Rex, Rocky and King Street taking cover from the potential storm while lunching at a Sierra snow survey hut just upstream of Wilma Lake and joined them. After lunch, satisfied that the threat of getting zapped by lightning had passed, we started up the Falls Creek drainage properly. The weather was fairly undecided, as it was hot and humid underneath the gray skies. Eventually the cloud cover broke, but for some reason we were feeling drained. In retrospect, it was probably from underestimating the earlier climbs. Had we been more mentally prepared, we would have fared better in the afternoon. C'est la vie. We were pushing hard to get past the 1,000 mile marker tonight, and as a result I missed out on some fantastic fishing in the creek. So many trout... We were tempted to pitch camp at Dorothy Lake, a few miles short of our intermediate goal, as the lake was beautiful and the fish were jumping, but it would have left too much on the plate for the next day, where we absolutely had to finish at Sonora Pass. We clambered up the modest Dorothy Pass and saw a vastly different geology ahead of us: the days of domes and granite dominance were ending. The peaks we saw in the evening light bore the oxidized red color of volcanic talus, and were nearly devoid of trees. We followed Cascade Creek down a short ways, past a few small lakes, until we reached the oddly-unmarked 1,000 mile point on the Pacific Crest Trail. T-Rex, Rocky and King Street set up camp on a flat river bend thereabouts, and we learned that Tears for Beers and Toots Magoots were also there, in their tent (a Tarptent Double Rainbow - three out of four tents at the site were TT DR's) hiding from the worst mosquitoes yet on trail. I threw the line out and quickly hooked four minuscule brook trout. Not wanting to be bothered with cleaning them, I threw them back. These were easily the greediest fish I have ever seen. Despite having guts full of midge larvae, to the point that they were basically falling out of the gills, they took my elk hair caddis readily as I let it float on the outside bend of a pool at the base of a riffle. I smoked a fine Punch cigar that evening to ward off mosquitoes, which I shared with Rocky and Smiles. T-Rex reviewed King Street's guidebook for the hike the next day, which included a long, exposed ridge run which expressly warned against getting caught up top during a thunderstorm. We all took heed and set early alarms for the following day.