[pct-l] Early Season Fording Techniques?

[kdpo at pacbell.net (Ken Powers)]

Here is a link to a few pictures in the high sierra taken early in 2000.
http://home.pacbell.net/kdpo/pct/high_sierra.htm
At the bottom of the page is my picture. I am wet up to my arm pits and
crossing Evolution Creek (really a lake) for the 9th time. We tried to cross
the creek at the normal crossing. Semper Fi left a note saying the water was
to fast to cross there and to go back up the trail to the meadow. The note
was 2 days old so I thought maybe the creek had gone down.

I tried the creek with no pack. It was to swift and cold. The bottom of the
creek was washed out so it was just boulders. No way I could carry our packs
across there. We walked up stream along the banks. Nothing looked better, so
I crossed back and we went up stream.

I crossed over and back 2 more times before finding slower and shallower
water. Even then Marcia stepped into a hole that put her eye deep in the
snow melt. As I crossed the creek for the last time with my backpack I
thought I would like a picture of this. The camera was in the top of the
backpack on top of my head. I had to dump the pack on the creek bed. Marcia
got the camera out and handed me the backpack again. I waded back into the
creek and Marcia took the picture.

After I finally got out, we put on our fleeces over our wet shirts, ate what
snacks that were handy, and started walking briskly to warm up. In a short
time our shorts and shirts were dry.

We had so many water crossings (what is a creek?) that we usually just
plunged into them. Marcia was asking "Where are all the log crossing we did
last year on the John Muir Trail?" They were buried in the snow. We just
wore our trail runners thru the water. Our feet were wet from all the snow
and snowmelt anyway. As long as we kept walking our feet were fine. But if
we stopped they got cold pretty quick.

This is the only picture we have of the stream crossings. We had probably
6-8 other that were at least as scary. Usually the water was moving lots
faster. And the mosquitoes were fierce. As we finished a crossing we would
look down at probably 100 mosquitoes drawing blood from our arms. One
memorable one is Bear Creek, a few hours south of Edison Lake. It was really
fast and scary.

We learned not to cross the creeks late in the day. We crossed the Tuolumne
River just north of Donahue Pass just before dusk. We immediately set up
camp and crawled into our sleeping bags to warm up. That didn't work as well
as hiking to warm up. We were cold for much longer even though we ate a hot
dinner.

I have seen pictures from of other hikers who were a week or less behind us.
The authors of your book were just probably within a week behind us. The
snow levels and water levels a week later were considerably less than what
we had. You can see in the pictures the weather was quite warm. (SF had
temps in the 90's that week.)
Ken

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <RBALCORN@cs.com>
To: <pct-l@mailman.backcountry.net>
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 3:39 PM
Subject: [pct-l] Early Season Fording Techniques?


> I'm reading Blistered Kind of Love.  They talk about stream crossings in
the
> Sierras chest high.  This is early season - cold, snow melt water, etc.
They
> don't say how they dry off.  My assumption is they are hiking in quick dry
> synthetics and walk till they are dry.  For those of you that have done
it, how do
> you avoid hyperthermia? Do you take your boots off, etc?  I hike this area
in
> summer, and take considerable effort to stay dry - boots off, switch to
> lightweight river shoes, but water never more than thigh high, so
wondering how you
> early season pct hikers do it?
>
> Ralph Alcorn
> www.backpack45.com
> Shepherd Canyon Books
> Publisher of We're in the Mountains, Not Over the Hill: Tales and Tips
from
> Seasoned Women Backpackers
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