JMT – Pinchot Pass Woods Creek and the Suspension Bridge #johnmuirtrail #backpacking #thruhike

JMT – Pinchot Pass Woods Creek and the Suspension Bridge #johnmuirtrail #backpacking #thruhike

Good morning everybody. Welcome to day six of the Johnier Trail. Zigzag and I are just breaking down camp here. He’s finishing up breakfast. Nice brisk morning. Wasn’t too bad last night though. Got down to the 40s probably. Uh we’ve been fortunate so far on the trip. No freezing temperatures this time of year. You don’t usually get them up here. But anyway, we are in the uh valley going down I’m sorry. We are near the Bench Lake Ranger Station. We’re going to be climbing Pincho Pass today and then in the valley towards uh Woods Creek and we’re probably going to be camping down there. This uh section of the trip is almost over. Looking forward to a day off in Independence in a couple more days. So, hope you stick with us on this one. We’ll see you up the trail. All right, last glimpse of Mazer Pass. There’s where we went over yesterday about 5 miles away. All right. First thing in the morning, we just had to ford that. I shall call you Camel Peak. Double hump. Thanks. Appreciate it. Still climbing. We got about 1,000 foot gain this morning. Should level out a bit a little bit before I climb the pincho. going somewhere up through that. All right, just arrived with the intersection with JMT and Taboose Pass right there. That is an actual pass going out to civilization. It’s about 9 miles. Uh it’s a bailout point if somebody needs it. Uh but yeah, should be a ranger station around here somewhere. And the pass is up there somewhere. Can’t quite see it yet cuz of the trees, but only got about maybe three or a little under three to go. Let’s get to the top of the pass. All right, we’re going to stop and get lthered up for some sunscreen because we’re getting out in the open here digging in this morning. Keeping our head down, getting this hike done, but you have the climb. I do that. Totally missed the scenery. Walking right by a nice little lake. Didn’t even see it. Looks just like I sliced my meatloaf. All right, view up Pincho. We’re uh making progress. I’m estimating about a mile left, maybe a little more. I’m not sure how the switchbacks go. We’re just over this. I think it’s an unnamed tarn right above Lake Marjorie, which is right back there. I was trying to get a good vantage point and never really did, but you know, there it is. We’ll get more up on top of the pass. Still a little bit of snow here, hanging on the north side. Not much though. That’ll be gone in a couple of weeks. [Music] Let’s finish this thing out. Little pah with tuft of grass in his mouth. Hey Gary, while we’re up here, want to bag that peak? Um, no. Okay, we are top of the world here. Well, not really, but 12,94 ft. And uh looking back this way and this where we came from looking down the next basin where we’re headed trail switch backing. Still don’t know exactly where it goes, but my guess is we’re going to be headed down that way. Little bugger is going from my backpack. Morning. How y’all doing? Good. How are you? Good. We’re waiting for our breath to catch up to us. I left it down. These bacons move. Get out of here. Some people came up. Howdy. See how many people we can fit up here. What? What? What did you say? Were you on a shuttle coming out of EDVR? Quite possibly. Yeah, you were in the front seat. Yeah. Nice. Oh, yeah. I ran into your friend. I had to turn around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s unfortunate, but he got airlifted out. Oh, really? Yeah. We went downhill for him. That sucks. Something on the trail. He seemed Yeah. He turned around, went back to Ranger Station and uh I told him to. I said, “You better check in there.” And lucky he did. And uh blood pressure was really low and uh they let him sit for a day. Didn’t improve. Tried to walk him out. He couldn’t walk. So they airlift him in Fresno. Ended up he was missing half the blood in his body. How does that even happen? Obvious He’s got he had other issues. I felt like yesterday, but not that bad. Blood is okay. He’s stable now in front of He is. Yeah, they released him yesterday. Okay. So, Oh, good. But now he’s got to go home and figure out what’s going on. Yeah. Well, you know what? Feder finds out and he’s okay. Yep. Did he have insurance or at least like the airlift insurance? Well, the that I don’t know if he did or not. He had the Garmin. Did he get the SAR? Yeah. And I don’t know who airlifted him out. If it was medical, he’s he’s out of luck. But hopefully it was the uh lifted out by the military. PHP or military is good. That was free. You have the idea. I know in this country. All right. We’ll see you guys later. All right. Enjoy the rest of your night. Hear that? I know there’s a base near close enough here where we hear the fighter aircraft buzzing above the mountains here. One was actually we could see it. It was pretty low on camp last night. Believe it was a hornet. But uh we hear them rumbling up in the the sky is above us, but you can’t really see them because they’re so high up there. Um, I don’t know if they’re allowed to come down low through these mountain ranges or not. I’m sure they do at some point for practice. Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I love the military jets. There’s Pincho Pass and there’s a group of hikers we were talking to up there. One of them remembers Scott and we gave them the news. And here they come down switchbacks. Today’s a lot of looking down and grinding through. Even though it’s downhill, you know, downhill’s different type of work. Gravity’s working with you, hand against you. Some of these step downs they put into the trail design. A big step. So, it’s leg day again. We got uh probably under five miles now to go to Woods Creek. Okay, so we are at the intersection with Sawmill Pass in the JMT. And as you can see, it says the trail is not maintained. This is what everybody talks about. If you try and go out on this trail, you better be ready. It’s uh pretty rugged. All right. So, I can hear the creek now down here, Woods Creek. It actually drains out of that water shed basin up there. And we’re going to basically be following it all the way down to the uh suspension bridge, which is at the low point of our hike today. That’s where we’ll be camping. All right, we have descended down into tree line, at least the very beginnings of it. Still exposure every once in a while, but man, that’s better than the last couple miles. The sun was getting hot to get down off that uh paths up there. It was actually kind of chilly. We had to put our jackets on when we stopped for lunch in the shade. Sorry, I’m out of breath. Um, but yeah, down here in the shade, you get in the forest that the the temperature drops like 10, 15°. It’s amazing. We can breathe again, Gary. We’re below 10,000. So much for the forest walk. You got full exposure. Now just made it down to Woods Creek. Finally. Uh we’re going to water up here, have a snack, get some energy back in us. We got about another 2 point something miles to go till we get to the bridge or actually to the campsite. Here we go. [Applause] I think go straight ahead and then round to the right. All right, we have about 1 point 4ish left. So, here’s the beginning of the Woods Creek water slide. And no, it’s not one you want to ride. Trust me, there’s warnings about it. And the water uh and rock out there in that underneath that water gets really slick with algae and everything else. And you start sliding on that, you got some issues downream. So, we just came to the intersection and turn off to uh the suspension bridge here. We’re going to do uh about a tenth to two ten of a mile to the campsite. Uh going back this way is roads end trails head. Uh we don’t really need to do that. We are staying on trail. Okie dokie folks. We made it. Woods Creek suspension bridge. Right. Cross over Woods Creek. Now, you’re only supposed to have one person on it at a time. And there’s still people on the other side, so give it a minute. All right. Gary’s the brave one. He’s going first. Here [Applause] we go. Good evening everybody. We uh actually beded down for the night. Didn’t really have any filming this evening because we were we were dead dead tired when we walked into camp. So, we ended up uh you know, set up a tent, got some dinner, did our uh wash up and water filter and all that stuff tonight. And now we’re tucked in, ready to go. We need to come up with a plan for tomorrow and the next day. uh some intel I got on the trail over Glen Pass might change things on how we approach it. So, more on that later if that actually does happen. But, uh tomorrow’s plan is going to Ray Lakes, stay in there tonight, and then headed out to our zero day and finish the day after. Uh I didn’t check the mileage tonight. I haven’t really had the time. Uh we were supposed to do around 11 miles. So I’ll check that and post it later. I appreciate everybody uh sticking with us today and with all the other videos too. So we are camped out right near the Woods Creek Bridge. Uh we found a couple sites. This is a very popular area. I mean all the tent sites were almost picked out by the time we got here. Otherwise we would had to continue for a few miles uphill. uh towards the uh Ray Lakes Basin and we did not want to do that because we just bar Gary barely almost made it here. So, we refueled and uh we’re going to do it all again tomorrow. Hopefully a short day. So, until then, appreciate everybody. If you like the content, check out the uh thumbs up down below. Hit that thumbs up. Consider subscribing. It only cost you a click. And uh if you want to be notified of all the content I release, just go ahead and hit that uh bell down below. Appreciate everybody until tomorrow. Good night. [Music] Oh. [Music] Oh. [Music] Oh, [Music]

JMT – Pinchot Pass, Woods Creek and the Suspension Bridge #johnmuirtrail #backpacking #thruhike

On Day 6 of our John Muir Trail adventure the trail was a little kinder to us, with only a climb up to Pinchot Pass where we took a leisurely break before descending a long downhill to the Woods Creek Suspension Bridge, and tent pads adjacent to it. Although moderate in the elevation gain/loss, it was still a long day at almost 11 miles. Downhill is just a different kind of work!

This sets us up for two hike possibilities: Camp next at Rae Lakes and do a long day out after that, or put in miles to Charlotte Lake and have an easier hike out for our Zero. Time will tell which one works better. Stay tuned!

Highlights of this episode:

00:00 Start
01:35 The Climb up to Bench Lake area
04:24 Lake Marjorie
04:46 Climbing to Pinchot Pass
05:51 Pinchot Pass
07:37 Giving update on Scott’s Bailout
09:14 Descent Starts to Woods Creek
13:47 Woods Creek
16:23 Water Slide
17:35 Suspension Bridge
18:46 Camp
21:06 Slideshow

Whether you’re planning your own John Muir Trail thru-hike, researching backpacking the Bench Lake area, Pinchot Pass, Woods Creek, Woods Creek Suspension Bridge or just love epic hiking, this episode is packed with scenery, some wildlife, and a pretty awesome feat of bridge technology – you won’t want to miss.

For more John Muir Trail backpacking videos, gear and food planning, check out this playlist: https://youtu.be/tKT0A0Vu-9A?si=vncBZBGXwzprXigl

🔔 Subscribe for this and other backpacking adventures: https://www.youtube.com/c/BackcountryAdventureswithBeagle

#JohnMuirTrail #Backpacking #PinchotPass #BenchLake #WoodsCreek #JMT #HikingCalifornia #SierraNevada

#hiketheearth
#thruhike
#backpackingadventures
#pinchotpass
#hiking
#woodscreeksuspensionbridge
#wilderness
#hikingculture
#beaglesbackcountry

John Muir Trail hiking vlog
Backpacking Kings Canyon National Park JMT
Hiking the John Muir Trail
Climbing Pinchot Pass JMT
Descending to Woods Creek Suspension Bridge JMT
Sierra Nevada backpacking adventures
Waterfalls and peaks in on the John Muir Trail
JMT section hike to Woods Creek Suspension Bridge
JMT section hike to Pinchot Pass
Backpacking California