 |
| North end of the Tuolumne Meadows area. |
June 16th, Day 23. I managed to get
38.5 miles with a resupply and starting about an hour late at 7am. I
stopped just about a half mile down from Seavey Pass at point
0278838E 4214226N. Ohh where to begin. Overall summary of the day:
started out pretty well, was OK, wasn't too hard and then the evening
and night were hard and terrible and full of mosquitoes. Basically it
kinda just ended, like my legs just don't have any energy whatsoever.
But lets start at the beginning. I slept in a little bit because I
knew the store didn't open until 8am. I left, I was about 4 miles
from the store at Tuolumne Meadows. I left at about 7:15am or
something, and flat walking, real easy. I got to the store at 8:30am.
There were 4 thru-hikers there that were waiting around until the
next day to get passes to climb Half Done - Bone Collector, Tank, I
forget the other one and the one that's just kinda doing sections
with them, she had already hiked the PCT, named Orbit. They seemed
pretty cool. I immediately went in and bought a pint of ice cream,
two boxes of Chips Ahoy, what else...I bought a microwave burrito and
extra large hot pocket. Those two items are to take with me for my
lunches {extra
 |
| Just after Miller Lake. |
calories and a treat while in the wilderness!} . So I
worked on...well I talked to the clerk, who said "oh yeah, I can
get your package". So I got my package as well, before the post
office was actually open at around 8:30am. So I went outside and
started unpacking my box into my pack, eating my ice cream, chatting
with the other hikers and stuffed my cookies away. Then went back
into the store and bought a couple It-Its, one for myself and two for
the others to split, and a Cobra, 16oz. Which, after about 3 months
of not actually having any alcohol and being at about 8,000ft, it
kicked in pretty well. I felt good, gave mom and dad a call, got the
voice mail and left a message. Gave Pi a call and chatted with him
for about 10 minutes or so. I went back in to see if I wanted
anything else from the store, since it would be one of my last
chances. I bought and avocado, ate that, and pretty much got up and
left. The first ohh half a day after that is not very hard. Fairly
flat, not a whole lot of going up. I mean you're kind of in a valley
for a lot of it. Then finally, towards the end, well the afternoon,
late afternoon, you start having to drop down into valleys and then
pop back out of the valleys into the next valley. It's pretty warm
actually, like in the 80's, which I don't know, it feels like it's
taking an extra bit out of me. I definitely know I'm tired from my 6
day run of the Sierras, the high Sierras that is. I
 |
| Near Matterhorn Canyon Trail junction. |
know the
elevation is still kicking my ass. I don't know if it has anything to
do possibly with my sickle cell trait. That I've pretty much been
above 9,000 ft for a good week or so now, which means definitely a
lot of my red blood cells are going to be sickled, {approximately 6%
of my blood at 9,000ft, probably more due to the extreme exercise
involved}. Hence, that I'm not going to be getting as speedy of
oxygen delivery, because I have less of them {healthy red blood
cells} to deliver oxygen. Plus the fact that I've only been up at
altitude for a week, so acclimatization and the making more red blood
cells have been slow to happen. So yeah, the ups and downs, I have to
keep forcing myself to keep moving. It's one of those - it feels like
my legs are just dead, I mean completely dead. They...I'll hit a
little like 30ft climb after just come from flats and my legs will,
after about 10ft will start burning. And I wish I knew what to do
about it, because, ya know, I fight through it, fight through it, and
after a little while the burning goes away, but they just don't move
at all. So, it's one of those, I kinda just have to keep going slow
up any hill pretty much, and there are a lot of fucking hills. The misquotes started getting bad
 |
| Neat 'stairs' climbing to Wilson Creek. |
at whatever pass that was {Benson
Pass}...I forgot, it's over by Smedberg Lake. And from then on, the
mosquitoes haven't let up. Even until the next day, I'm almost
probably about 3 miles south of Dorthy Lake, and they still just
swarm you. I have about two applications of Deet left, so I'm using
it sparingly. But anyways, up and over the pass by Smedberg Lake,
TERRIBLE misquotes. I managed to plow through them in the evening and
had another big up to Seavey Pass. Whooh, that was really hard. My
legs just don't want to work, even at the end of a 38. Ya know at the
end of the day they were just done. But, I managed to climb it in the
dark. Ya know, it was one of those passes - this section I just
remember as being awful, I don't think I felt very good last time. It
is, it's pretty fucking awful. Today isn't much better either. So I
knew, I remembered portions of it that I didn't like, so I wanted to
get passed most of those. I at least got passed one of those
obstacles and stopped hiking at about 10:30pm I think, just on the
other side of the pass. That was it, no mosquitoes until the morning.
They were dormant overnight, so I slept out, cowboyed it. But I don't
know... I'm really feeling wrecked. That's a lot of today speaking as
well. I could definitely feel it yesterday evening. My body just
doesn't want to go. So we'll see where this ends up. I should be at
Sonora Pass sometime tomorrow.
 |
| Day 22 Panorama - Climbing up to Donohue Pass. |
