19 Jun 2025 4 min read

Pacific Crest Trail - Day 82 - Muir Pass

Start: Mile 831.7 - Backcountry campsite
End: Mile 849.3 - Backcountry campsite

With nearly 22 miles between Mather and Muir Pass, we left ourselves 8 miles and 3,300 feet of ascent to reach the top of Muir Pass.

We knew we’d find snow up there, but figured with the rapid snow melt that it would be relatively easy to traverse. We were very wrong as we found ~2.5 miles of snow covering the last miles of the ascent and ~3 miles covering the first miles of the descent. With 8 miles and a pretty late AM start, the boot-packed snow was traversable but soft and a slog to get through.

A really long day, but a really beautiful one.

This bridge has certainly seen better days.

These deer had tracking collars on.

A king above King’s Canyon. The “Only a penitent man shall pass” test from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came to mind.

The granite king wasn’t guarding a holy grail, but he was watching over a spectacular meadow with waterfalls pouring into it from the granite cliffs above.

Old fence posts and barbed wire. I suppose an old grazing boundary. John Muir first visited the Sierra as part of a sheep herding outfit referring to sheep as “hoofed locusts”.

Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry. Excepting my guarded lily gardens, almost every leaf that these hoofed locusts can reach within a radius of a mile or two from camp has been devoured. Even the
bushes are stripped bare, and in spite of dogs and shepherds the sheep scatter to all points of the compass and vanish in dust. I fear some are lost, for one of the sixteen black ones is missing.