The Pacific Crest Trail by Karen Berger

Author:Karen Berger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Countryman Press
Published: 2014-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

Easy trail south of Carson Pass

Like Ebbetts Pass, Carson Pass—the next major pass on the PCT—is not named after the first European Americans to cross it (Mormons who were searching for a direct route between California and the Great Salt Lake). Instead, the pass commemorates Kit Carson—mountain man, scout, guide, soldier, and Indian agent—who left his tracks and name all over the West. Carson came through here as a scout for the second Fremont Expedition, which crossed the Sierra in the winter of 1844 on a trip that featured a series of explorations involving more than the usual number of mishaps and misadventures.

The expedition leader, John C. Fremont, was yet another of the West’s legendary mountain men whose name can be found on topographic maps from Wyoming to California. Fremont was a second lieutenant with the U.S. topographical engineers. A skilled topographer, he made maps that were considered more accurate than those of his contemporaries, including Jedediah Smith and Joseph Walker. Between 1842 and 1854, he made five exploratory expeditions, looking for routes that could be used as major travel arteries through the mountains.

In the winter of 1844, due to a series of ill-fated decisions on route selection and timing, the Fremont Expedition found itself out of food on the eastern side of the Sierra—and desperately eager to find a way to the more temperate Sacramento Valley to the west. But nowhere in the Sierra Nevada was there anything remotely resembling a natural passage through the mountains that could be used in winter. With a combination of resourcefulness and resilience, the party pushed on. Confronted by deep snow, they made snowshoes. When they ran out of food, they ate what they could hunt, or concocted meals of pea soup, mule, and dog. (“It wouldn’t have been so bad,” wrote Charles Preuss, a German topographer, “if only they had a little salt.”)

When they got lost, they climbed mountains to better see the land that surrounded them. Such was the case on February 14, 1844, when Fremont and Preuss climbed to the summit of what is now known as Red Lake Peak. This was a first ascent, and not only in the usual sense: It was the first recorded climb in the Sierra of an identifiable mountain. Another first: “a beautiful view of a mountain lake . . . so entirely surrounded by mountains that we could not discover an outlet.” Fremont and Preuss thus became the first European Americans to see the clear waters of Lake Tahoe. After the climb of Red Lake Peak, the party was finally able to find its way up and over the crest of the Sierra, and several days later reached sanctuary in the Sacramento Valley.

Of all the passes, Donner Pass is the name we know best. Donner Pass reminds hikers of just how powerful and unyielding these mountains can be. It whispers to thru-hikers to make haste in the heat of summer, lest they be trapped in the fierce and sometimes early winters of the Cascades, still far to the north.

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