PCT hikers who passed through Sonora Pass this summer were fortunate to have available the mobile cooking center/store/community center Sonora Pass Resupply. For $50 this 21st century company will take your package sent by mail and have it ready for you when you arrive at the startof Section J. Plus proprietor KC has whatever else you might need in the way of food etc to hike the trail.
I tried his service myself this year, and sure enough, KC (spelling?) in his nifty truck parked in the campground, by agreement with the Forest Service, deilivered me the package, no problem. (Though he chided me slightly for being a day ahead of schedule, and thus a challenge to his team’s organizational abilities.) Then he helped me send back all the extra stuff I didn’t need.
Around the back of his substantial truck, under a canopy KC set up, around a stove he provided, drinking coffee he percolated, grew a small crowd of hikers and a few non-hikers too.
Ran into my new pal Honeybun. He’s standing looking at the camera, his pal Miner is standing looking away from the camera, and KC is seated in the truck. Can’t ID the others.
“Hiker trash,” Griffin/Honeybun called the group — including himself. And in truth, some of the denizens at the table at other times that morning were smoking, overweight, or living on the edge. Section J was full of surprises.
First to discover a virtual camping store in a truck in the middle of a wilderness. Then to run into a society of hikers, the first unconstrained by tourists in my experience this year on the trail. Then to face a jagged but attractive pass, nearly as steep as the one I just came down to cross the road.
Then to head up over a 10,000+ pass of mostly jagged, barren metamorphic rock, cross into the Carson-Iceburg Wilderness, the third wilderness in about fifteen miles.
And then to drop into a startlingly beautiful canyon of smooth granite shoulders, strong creeks and rivulets of water from all directions, flowers, greenery, and the sound of rushing water.
This is the East Fork of the Carson River, and boy, is it something.
Again I glimpsed an unauthorized camp by water that I could not leave, even if it meant stopping in the middle of the afternoon. All too beautiful.
Will be back on the trail, with fortune, tomorrow afternoon, for section K, from I-50 near South Lake Tahoe, to I-80, near Truckee, but have left some posts for your perusal.
Kit Stolz 