May 15, 2016

Today was the day we would finally reach Kennedy Meadows General Store. At just over 700 miles into the trail, Kennedy Meadows marks the end of the desert section and entrance into the Sierra-Nevada mountains and northern California. We had spent the last month talking about getting here and we were all a little giddy setting out in the morning.

The first 2 hours revealed no signs of Chris/Rafiki/Russian Ketchup. We were still following his footsteps on trail but had not come across his campsite. Mid-morning we found our answer: a dirt road crossing with a set of his shoe footprints leading up it to a campground and a trail register just past the road. He had reached the register, seen that we hadn't signed it, realized he must have passed us, and then walked up to the campground to call it a night. Further evidence that Russian Ketchup was a good fit.

Not knowing how late he had been up and assuming that he probably needed the sleep if he wasn't up at this point we continued on to towards the next spring. We stopped there for a snack before the next 4 miles of incline. Upon reaching the top we were greeted with our first view of snow-capped mountains ahead of us.

It was a long descent down to the next water source where we took a small break before pushing on to what seemed like it might be our first real flowing body of water since Deep Creek. The going was nice and flat, taking us through the greenest valley we've been through yet.

Rickets and I got to the south fork of the Kern River around 2:30pm with Loopy and Eeyore not far behind. We wasted no time in pulling off shoes to ford to the shade on the other side. Loopy arrived right about then questioning why we had brought all our stuff over given that the trail never actually crossed the river; Rickets and I felt a bit silly especially given how close we had both come to falling in on the way over.

We hung out there for 45 minutes or so. Each of us went in the water to different degrees from just soaking feet to full submersion. As nice as it would have been to hang out for a while longer, Kennedy Meadows was calling. It was only another 4 miles or so to General Store and all of it was fairly flat.

We got to the road a little before 5:00pm, signed the register there, and then headed up the road. As is tradition, we were welcomed with applause upon making it to the store. Oats and Ieuan (who we had not yet given our trail name of Strider) were there hanging out as well as a number of others we had seen in trail registers but not yet met.

After heading up the road to a small restaurant for dinner we came back and just hung out on the porch for a while. The time was passed going through packages, playing cards, eating snacks, drinking beers, and catching up.

Oats and Strider (who took to the name) were heading out the next morning to brave the Sierras. There was a another group heading in as well who we hoped we would also be able to get some updates on the conditions from. Getting in to Kennedy Meadows had been the (somewhat) easy part - now we had to decide what to do about the 400 miles of snow ahead.