Day 69: a string of small catastrophes

Day 69
Miles: 20
From volunteer peak to Falls Creek

We camped high, hoping to catch the first sun and ride it out of bed. It sort of works… on the trail by 8. I’ll take it. We hop back on the granite rollercoaster ride through Yosemite’s backcountry.

We’re not fast – not here – but we pass tons of people, section hikers and weekenders, mostly. Don’t be fooled, this trail is kicking our butts. I think we’re also low on food. Every time we eat take out all our food and look at it. The huge pile we dragged out of Tuolomne doesn’t seem so big anymore. We eat a few things out of one bag, a few things out of another… We put the bags away, a little hungry. I hope it’s enough.

It’s lovely here, granite with huge shear zones, a wonderland jumble of swells and domes and rock. Flowers line all the infernal stone staircases, like they hired a landscaper after the brute labor of laying stone. Atop seavey pass we swim in the small lakes there, then go down again, down Kerrick Canyon. I’ve stopped looking at the elevation profiles that come with our maps. What’s the point? When the trail goes up, I go up. When the trail goes down, I go down. When the trail goes around I go round and around and around and around and around. 

Coming from the other direction is a familiar face – Halfstep! He’d hitched to South Lake Tahoe for the fourth of July, now he’s hiking back to Tuolomne Meadows, where he’ll hitch back to South Lake Tahoe. It’s easier walking north of here, he says.

At Wilma lake we stop to fish. If we keep hiking, then maybe we’ll run out of miles before we run out of food. But if we can catch some fish, we’ll be ok too. I love to watch J cast, flicking his line further out over the water. No fish though. Nothing, nothing. The mosquitoes are horrendous, everywhere. I’m in full mosquito-armour: windshirt, hat, headnet. I’m still about to lose my mind. J is well down that road… No headnet. He flicks his line to cast and gets his fly stuck in a tree. It’s the only fly that has been getting any attention from the fish, so I stand on J’s hands and pull it out, crashing down myself. I get the fly out, and a bloody gash across my palm for the trouble. J loses the fly completely on his next cast.

Nerves shot from the sharp whine of mosquitoes in our ears, no miles made, no fish caught, it’s time to go. Except when we pass the outlet to the lake, full of trout. J loses another fly, loses his cool. He’s got the mosquito rage! Only cure is a good night’s sleep in a net tent. We take off, desperate to make just a few more miles before bed, and our sawyer squeeze water filter bladder slips out of his pack and pops. We watch the water spurt out. “Good thing we have a spare, huh?”

Not enough miles (never enough miles) we find a spot to camp. my feet feel terrible, shooting pains. My hipbones are screaming against the indignity of carrying my bear canister yet another day. So far I have managed to keep then from turning into open sores. Like last night, we look for a spot that will catch early morning light, hoping to ride the sunrise out of bed. J is setting up camp and I’m cooking dinner, I swat at a mosquito and flip the dinner out instead. Lipton pasta side Alfredo flavor, all spilled in the sand! I reach for the pot as it goes and burn a hole in my windshirt, the one my mother made me.

J and I just look at our food, in the sand. We don’t have enough as it is. So we scoop it up, pasta, Alfredo, sand, and put it back in the pot. We eat our dinner very slowly, discouraged, besieged by mosquitoes. What a day.

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Day 68: hard walking

Day 68
Miles: 18
Meadow with rock to Volunteer Peak

We’ve only just got back on trail when we run into two other PCT hikers taking a break. There’s a third pack next to them – “that’s our buddy’s pack,” they explain. “He forgot his wallet at camp.”
  “That’s the smallest pack I’ve ever seen!” I exclaim. “Is his food in there?”
  “Yeah, that’s everything. His base weight is six pounds.”
  “Six pounds?!”
  “Yeah. He’s hungry and cold a lot.” They pause. “He doesn’t like it when we tell people that though.”
 
J and I laugh. Having a tiny pack doesn’t get you any trail cred if you’re miserable all the time.
I have a sneaking suspicion that most super-ultra-lighters are hungry and cold a lot, but will never admit it.

The two hikers we’re talking to do not fall into that category. The dude tells us that his base weight is 33lbs – four of which come from the didgeridoo strapped to his pack. Huh. If I were to give myself a four lb musical instrument allowance, I think I’d pick something with a wider range. But, 6lbs, 33lbs, or 15lbs(my base weight), here we all are, coming up on 1000 miles.

It’s more granite and forest with every mile. I feel like we’re on a slow taper out of Kings Canyon – still beautiful, but easing up on the overwhelming spectacular. The huge ups and downs have turned into small ups and downs, the sheer cliffs only a rocky giant’s playground. Hard walking.

A small lake – Miller’s lake – calls our name. Blue, almost warm, thronged with bright blue damselflies. For once, for a minute, the mosquitoes let us be.

By afternoon, it’s the same ol’, same ol’ behind on miles, hard walking. I can feel myself being increasingly neurotic about miles, and I hustle J all day, hustle myself, walk faster, walk faster, walk faster, walk faster! I can’t walk any faster! I’m exhausted. This section of trail is brutal.

“Why is this section so hard?” I bemoan to J.
  “Don’t you remember the Davids telling us that this is probably the hardest section of the entire trail?”
  “I think I missed that memo.”

I’ve gotten it now though. Holy smokes.

At three in the afternoon we come out on the ridge over Matterhorn valley. I’ve seen this valley before, I’m sure of it – perhaps in the book of fairytales I read as a child. This is where the Enchanted Kingdom lies… too bad that’s not where we’re going. No time to waste, we should be walking faster.

We pass Smedburg lake in the late afternoon. Lots of hikers setting up camp. “There’s room over here,” calls out a fellow hiker.
  “We’re going to do two more miles,” we reply. Two of the worst, hardest, rockiest, steepest miles yet. Why do I always need to do two more miles?

The setting sun shines off the glacier polish, lights up Volunteer Peak, which is behind us now. Only 18 miles today. We’re going to run out of food if we don’t start hiking faster. Maybe tomorrow.

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Glacier polished porphyritic granite

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Volunteer Peak

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Day 67: someplace old/ someplace new

Day 67
Miles 10
From Tuolomne Meadows to meadow with rock

  “Wow, that’s quite a total!” Exclaims the man behind the cash register. J and I have opted to resupply at the Tuolomne Meadows store instead of mailing ourselves a box. It ain’t Wal-Mart prices, but it’s ok. We’re buying 150 miles of food – seven days if  we’re fast, eight days more realistically. Estimating a dollar a mile works pretty well to keep our bellies full, but we’ve only rung up $250 of groceries at the little store. The cashier might be impressed, but that leaves us fifty bucks short… We look at each other.
  “It’s a lot, but I don’t know if it’s enough,”  J replies.
  “Let’s just go repack it and see how it looks,” I tell him.

Overwhelmed by the piles of food that we divvy up, we do not buy any more food. We have to carry this mountain of pop tarts, mac n’cheese, crackers, candy bars. Surely it’s enough?

It’s a gray, drizzly day. Matches my attitude. We sit at a picnic table with some other PCT hikers, not hiking.

We’re approached by a man in a sweater, with a beautiful handlebar mustache. He’s an artist, taking portraits of people of Yosemite. Today, that’s us. He lets us pose however we want, and I lean on my trekking poles, look straight at the photographer as he ducks under his little black curtain to click the shutter on his old fashioned 4×5. Every cell in my body feels self aware and tingly with the force of the full attention of another human being. When was the last time I was looked at so completely? To be seen as I am, or as I wish I would be?

Since we’re already holding our trekking poles, packs on, shoes tied, standing on the trail even, it must be time to go. Is thru-hiking turning into a chore? An exercise in self punishment?

We walk through the gray day into the meadow, smooth gray domes populating the horizon, smooth, gray water running through the field. We come to the waterfalls before Glen Aulin, think of the Davids. J falls asleep on a rock, I lean on my pack.

The Grand Canyon of Yosemite is opening before us but we take a hard right turn to the north. “I hiked here with my dad once,” J mentions. “We camped at a meadow with this incredible giant rock. We sat up there on it, watched a big, beautiful owl fly below us.” The giant rock appears before us, size of a house. It’s drizzling again. We planned on going another five miles, but we set up the tarp behind the house-boulder. Home again.

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Day 66: rainy day

Day 66
Miles: zero
Tuolumne Meadows

We posted a note for Bluesman on the Tuolumne Meadows campground message board, but no sign of him yet. We’re not entirely sure if he’s ahead of us or behind – we think he got caught up in Mammoth. It would be great to see him again before he gets off trail for ten days. Who knows if we will ever meet up?

At the campground, the groomed, lovely, and stylish climbers pack up and head back to Berkeley. Dan and Christina hang out a little longer. We had discussed going climbing, but we’re exhausted and Christina is ill. And it’s raining. It’s nice to have a day that’s not all business, that’s slow, that’s unrushed. We meant to take care of all sorts of business today, but a recent rockslide took out the cell towers and landlines so we’re off the hook. I buy a postcard for my mother at Tuolumne Meadows store and get in line for the Post Office, where a queue of dirty hikers are holding their postcards for their mothers. Don’t want to have Search and Rescue chasing you.

Dan and Christina don’t get to stay for the entire day, which is a disappointment. It’s so nice to see old friends.

I first met Dan and Christina a couple years ago, on a climbing trip to Joshua Tree. Dan was getting ready to launch a kickstarter campaign to produce a rechargeable headlamp (at the time, there weren’t really any on the market from the big name brands). He was able to get fully funded, get his headlamp produced, and launch his company, . J and I are using Bosavi headlamps for our thru-hike. Super lightweight, super bright, and no AA batteries for the trash.

Despite being a beautiful product, without a big name behind him, Dan has not been able to get his headlamps stocked at any of the big outdoor gear stores (REI, I’m looking at you). The company was doing ok, and then everything went up in flames.

Big, redwood timber, tarpitch roof flames. The warehouse with all the production equipment, designs, tools, and extra stock was burnt to the ground when one of the other tenants left a pile of oily rags sitting in a corner. One little spontaneous combustion, next thing you know, all your hard work is little lumps of char. The metal tools melted to the floor.

The bad news is that Bosavi will never produce another headlamp. The good news is that part of the inventory was stored off-site, and there are 400 of rev 2.0 Bosavi . I think they’re a great product – can’t think of a better endorsement than taking it on a thru-hike – so if you need a headlamp, check it out.

Once Dan and Christina take off, I take the book that we acquired yesterday, sit down at the picnic table, and don’t move for the rest of the day. It feels like the lap of luxury.

It’s almost dark when we hear someone walk up to the campsite and call our names. It’s Lapis! We’ve been crossing paths since Big Bear. She saw our note for Bluesman on the message board and came to find us. She joins us at the site for the night. I suppose tomorow we will have to finally do our resupply chores and walk out of here, but I’ve got one more night to rest.

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Day 65: the stone staircase

Day 65
Miles: 22
From Ansel Adams wilderness to Tuolomne Meadows

Fell asleep hard last night, but I’m still tired. I’m tired all the time now. I sort of thought I’d be used to this? That my body would catch up? Instead, it seems like every time I get a little stronger that the trail gets a little harder. I hoped my new shoes would help, but after a one-day reprieve it was straight back to foot pain. Blast.

Our morning takes us up and past Thousand Island Lake. It’s beautiful, in classic High Sierra fashion: white mountains, pink flowers, green trees, blue lake. We crossed into the Ansel Adams wilderness area yesterday, and I’ve been thinking about his photos, and how he could hold the soul of this place on a black and white print, this place of blue green white.

We’ve got our last pass of note coming up, Donahue Pass, then onto Tuolomne Meadows. Onto a real day off! Maybe with just a real day off I won’t be so tired anymore. Maybe I won’t feel so thin.

Up and over Island Pass, which I didn’t realize was a pass, or that I was crossing it, until just now, where the sign marks it. I keep thinking we’re going to be out of the high country for good, but the smooth, glacier-polished land of marmots and green grass and knife-edged peaks reappears. The pass is a wild tumble of boulders and stone, with a trail blasted and built into an infernal stone staircase, with every step either too high or too short or too long or too shallow. “Right or left?” I ask J, pointing at the ridgeline. “Which I’ve do you think is the pass?”
  “Right.”
  “Really? I thought left.”

It is left. For someone used to looking at rocks, J has maintained an astonishing record of zero correct guesses on the passes.

Up at the top another hiker hails us: “Welcome to Yosemite!” We’ve made it to the park. J and I sit down next to a teeny melt lake for lunch.  There are two guys, David and David, eating there as well, and next thing you know we’re chatting about gear. I love talking gear. It drives J crazy. I can’t help it. If he’d ever been to a reunion with my dad’s family he’d know why. Talking gear is what I was born to do… Even if the gear in question is poop trowels and butt wipes. (Of course I carry butt wipes! A little heavier, sure, but you don’t need ’em until you do!)

A David pawns off his book on J. He wanted a new book, but maybe not a hardback. As we leave the same David tells us – “when you get to the waterfalls beyond Tuolomne, tell it hello for me. It’s where I was baptized by the universe!”

Down Donahue Pass turns out to be a different endeavor from up. Much longer, for one thing. Endless, to be more exact. Unending. Brutal. They must have built this trail in the thirties, because there surely has been no other time since when backbreaking physical labor has come so cheap, so abundant, as to even imagine what they have done here. Miles and miles of carefully built stone stairs, hand cut, hand blasted, hand laid. I don’t even appreciate it, this rocky stumbling ground of stairs that are, every one, the wrong size.

The downhill is endless, but somehow passes. It always does. We begin the second infinite section of the day, the flat, easy walk along the Lyell River to Tuolomne Meadows and friends and rest. It’s a storybook meadow, a green corridor between forested mountains, a wide, blue meander winding through. For nine miles. Easy, if the entire High Sierra hadn’t come first.

Tuolomne Meadows is a teeming tent city. Fourth of July weekend. I thought the JMT section of the trail felt crowded, this is a metropolis! We make our way, limping, the message board. J’s long-time friends Dan and Christina should be here to meet us, and hopefully they left a note.

“Hey!” Hollers a car behind us.
  “Dan!” J hollers back. We found them!

Dan and Christina live in Berkeley, and they’re here camping with a big crew of climbing friends. Everyone is fit, strong, stylish, clean. I feel like a schlub, a dirty, tired one. They welcome us and feed us all the same. I’m so glad I don’t have to walk anywhere tomorrow.

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Thousands Island Lake

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Coming down Donahue Pass

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Whose idea was this??

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The Lyell River

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Day 63: afternoon push

Day 63
Miles: 26
To Red’s Meadow
Over silver pass

The big passes, as I like to think of them, are all over, but the little ones remain. (Only 10,000 feet? Not impressed.) So up and over Silver pass. It may not be a big pass, but I’m feeling tired nonetheless. Always tired.

Silver Lake, Lake Virginia, Purple Lake – all are a brilliant blue. Now we’re leaving the land of the lakes, into the trees, a quiet, dry forest walk.

If we do 26 miles tonight, we’ll make it to Red’s Meadow. Our maps say: free hot springs showers. I hike faster and think: free hot springs showers. Ice cream. A burger. Hike faster. The day is a blur of trees and hiking faster.

The landmarks on our map begin to have very volcanic sounding names: crater creek, red mountain. It all becomes clear when a giant cinder cone appears in view. It’s shocking to see rock that isn’t granite, isn’t white. Do rocks come in other colors?? I wonder what burblings of magma, what gyrations of stone, conspired to conjure up this black cone.

Coming down off a huge ridge, we look across a valley and see miles of downed trees. “Do these trees all look like they were blown over to you?” I ask J.
  “Blown over? They look like they were ripped straight out of the ground!”

Giant trees, roots ripped straight out. All the trees have fallen in the same direction. Are there tornadoes here?
A day of natural mysteries. I don’t care. I just want a shower. J and I stumble into Red’s Meadow dirty and exhausted.

The cafe is closed. The showers are not free, and they are closed. The store’s sign says it is closed too, but the proprietor is still there, and he sells us canned soup, ice cream bars, and soda. So there’s that.

The campground is another half-mile, so we limp to it. We had heard there was free camping, but we can’t find it, only pay sites. Another hiker finds us standing there, sad and confused, and takes us back to his site. It’s a group of JMT hikers. They’re only supposed to have six people per site, and we make it seven. “You guys are pretty unified, right?”
  “Totally unified.”

They are unpacking their food drops, and we inherit larabars and drink mix and snacks.

We were planning on going into Mammoth to resupply, but we packed too much food out of Bishop. Between what we still have, what we’ve just inherited, and what we can buy at the store, we’ll easily make it to Tuolomne Meadows. It would be fun to celebrate the Fourth of July in town, but we’re trying to meet J’s friends who will be in tuolomne for the weekend. So we’ll hike instead.

I sure wish I’d gotten to take a shower today…

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Silver Lake

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Lake Virginia

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Purple Lake

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(Phone is out of battery 🙁   )

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