Editors note: the posts in this series are excerpts from Jason’s field notes.
Day 5 – 20180731: Our last day. In the morning there are a few brief sprinkles, and dark clouds everywhere. I hear two thunderclaps, and Marvin is shaking with nerves. We reluctantly decide to bail on the route. Nastassja suggests waiting an hour or two to see what the weather will do, but we decide it’s better to move right away if we are to have a prayer of making it to the truck today. We pass the remains of a plane wreck scattered all over the east side of the pass as we descend. We both study the GPS map carefully and pick a route, praying it is free of Cercocarpus (aka. Mountain Mahogany, which forms dense thickets that can be impossible to walk through, even without giant packs). There are some very lovely bristlecone/limber pine groves early on, and we find a huge population of Parmeliopsis ambigua on the north side of one big log. But the ridge we’re following soon turns into Cercocarpus forest, even on the north side. We struggle on both sides, desperately trying to find any way through. It is hard going and very frustrating, not least because by now it appears that the clouds have all but disappeared and we might have been able to finish the route over Montgomery and Border Peaks easily.
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