High Sierra snowpack, 14er summits, birthday waves, and a start date..

So might be good to start thinking about a start date a little more huh... I keep getting the question and putting it off saying roughly mid-May, as advised/suggested by an AT thru-hiker friend who has also hiked the PCT. Deciding that might be something to firm up a bit more today, I followed a rough formula generally followed by PCT thru-hikers as the rule of thumb.

The High Sierra in CA is the major obstacle for a thru-hiker so start dates are pretty much based on the snow pack depth and when they might clear/melt away enough to be able to hike through the passes - a fair amount of snow is to be expected, but there's a point at which they are impassable... well, at least not w/o superhuman effort and an epic amount of food to last while you very slowly labor through it all..

So it's obviously a rough guesstimate, but the formula is to take the snow depth at Bighorn Plateau (no, I don't currently know why there) around the first of April, divide that by 3.5 and add that number as the number of days to June 1st to come up with the date to start (or continue rather) hiking from Kennedy Meadows (the gateway to the High Sierra). It's estimated that hikers take 5-6 weeks to get there from the start at the Mexico border.

The start date is a balance between getting through the Sierras as soon as possible to give yourself time to make it through the Cascades before the snow begins to fall there (while also avoiding as much of the steadily increasing heat of the desert at the start as possible), and not starting your hike so soon that you end up at Kennedy Meadows only to sit around waiting for the snow clear so that you can continue on with your hike..

So today I checked out the snow pack measurements online, including the Bighorn Plateau location in the given formula, and looks like "Laces" was certainly right about them having a higher than average amount of snow to let clear... lucky me - a little more time to get my butt in gear! :)

So back to the calculating.. we have a March 31 figure of 106", divided by 3.5 we get a little over 30 days from June 1... resulting in July 1.... and so I become sidetracked for a few: Hmmmm.... where's Mt. Whitney I think to myself...? only about 60 miles from Kennedy Meadows...! Nice! So now I'm playing with the idea of shooting for a July 2nd summit of Mt Whitney to wave a Happy Birthday to the "General" as she summits her first 14er on her birthday ;) If *I* can manage to time my summit of the highest peak in the lower 48 after hiking nearly 775 miles for over a month and a half through the heat of the desert and over snow-packed mountain passes, she'd *better* be able get her butt up there to return the wave!!! :D

Anyway, back to the planning... so July 2 Mt Whitney.. means leaving Kennedy Meadows around June 27-28... backtracking 5-6 weeks from there... and what do you know, "Laces" is truly a genius, roughly mid-May and I'm back to where I started ;)

Sounds like Dave, a friend from work, is puttin' on a BBQ on the 14th and calling it my send-off. lol - it was good of him to let me know, maybe I'll actually be able to make it!

I'll take a second look at the mileages and resupply logistics tomorrow but I'm assuming I'll buy my plane ticket for the 15th, making for a hike start of May 16th or 17th..

:) From what I read, I have to expect to be pulled aside for an inspection, why? Because I'll have a one-way ticket ;P