Morning
Having been on trail for, well 26 days
and like 3 hours now, I uhh... Well yesterday I got a message from
Colina (my friend) and it was basically just like 'Hey, just having a
bad day, wish you were here to talk to, I miss you" And the
strange part is that I uhh, it's been 27 days and I'm totally
disconnected mentally and well just in general from the rest of the
world. And I haven't even truly give it a thought at all. Like, it's
such tunnel vision right now, its just do the miles, go as far as you
can, go fast. Food. Water. Where are you sleeping? It's been boiled
down to the basics and I haven't given pretty much anything else much
thought truly. Um, it's kind of interesting being disconnected, ya
know I have my phone, but I get relatively little service, so it's
not that useful to keep connected with. It just kind of hit me like,
I was like 'Ohh yeah, there are other people out in the world that I
care about and they care about me". And, it's strange. I mean
sure I send little text updates and things, but that's really
informal. It... I don't know. It's just one of those things that just
hit me. I think its
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| Almost on top of the long Sierra Crest ridge. |
going to have to stay that way to finish this
bastard. You know it's nice to meet up with people and things, but
definitely right now it's one-track-mind, nothing else matters. Not
to say I won't call her back and talk with her, it's just you don't
think about things. I haven't thought about women, I haven't thought
about.....just pretty much anybody but myself. And not even
particularly myself but what I'm doing. So, yeah. You think it might
be a time for like reflection and contemplation, which it is to a
point, but truly doing this many miles a day...everything blurs
together and you really just kind of zone out because you have to.
Like you don't sit there at a pond and be like "Ohh this is so
pretty, I wish so-and-so was here, la de dee..." It's more of
the "ohh look, a hill to climb, OK." Set your breathing,
set your pace, get the trekking poles moving and start counting so
that you take you mind off how much this sucks. And look 20 minutes
later I'm at the top, awesome! Ya know, that's how a day goes. You
don't think. So I'll try actually I'm going to see....Ohh god
mosquitoes!... how it goes. But for now, I'll give her a call back
when I get back into service.
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| Sierra Crest above Sierra At Tahoe ski resort. |
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| I see you Tahoe! HDR |
June 20th, Day 27. Mile 1159.5, thats
43 miles for the day. I slept pretty much right next to the westbound
rest area on I-80, because my brother surprised me with trail magic
and I didn't feel like going very far after we talked. Anyways I'll
explain that in a bit. Lets see, I started really early, well not
realllly early. About 5:55am. Lets see. Basically I had a really
quick awesome day. I had called my brother from Echo Lake and he was
like "Yeah I can probably meet you, sometime on Wednesday".
So I wanted to make sure I was...well at the rest area before it got
dark and was too late because if I took my normal time, I would have
probably gotten there when it was dark and that wouldn't have been
cool. So, lets see, I tried to get an early start, I made really good
time, um lets see, I um had easy terrain for the most part. In the
morning a ridge walk, down and ups and nothing too difficult. Once I
got about 20 miles in, I started to get out...I broke out of the
forest and onto the peaks with the ski areas, which was awesome. They
are one of the best parts of this area, is walking up on the ridges
and having a clear view... basically walking along the Sierra Crest
on the volcanics and having a clear view both to the east and west.
Yeah, I just love that because you're literally right on the ridge. I
had lunch at 20 miles, was about 1/2 mile ahead of my hoped for time.
Ya know it was like 6 hours and I was already at 20.5 miles, which is
great. I mean I eventually would make it 40 miles in about 12.5
hours,
which is basically no time for stopping, it's just go all day
long. I was tired. Anyway, I got off the ridges and on the ridges and
ups and downs. I remembered a lot of it from 2009 and I remembered I
loved it. There was still a bunch of snow actually on the ridge after
you cross the forest road #3 that brings you down to South Lake
Tahoe. Otherwise it was a great day. It was a little warmer than I'd
like for some of the climbs, probably somewhere in the lower 80's,
but all in all great. I only saw 2 hikers the whole day. One was a
guy doing a little bit of the section and then I saw Billy Goat
towards the end of the day about mile 31-32. He actually knew who I
was, not because of my hat, but because I'm in his words "on of
the only guys that's like 6'8") *Laughing* That was kind of cool
that he recognized me. We chatted for about 5 minutes and then I was
like "I've gotta go, I'm trying to probably meet my brother and
blah blah blah". Thankfully I made it. My actual...my hardest
snow crossing was actually right there by Mt. Lincoln. About 2.5
miles away from Hwy 40 at Donner Pass. The trail cuts around this
ridge and drops down, and you pop over the ridge and suddenly find
about 10 ft of kind of flat level snow, then it drops about 20 ft
down to the trail - vertical, hard, can't kick steps really, so I had
to do a big detour to manage that one. And, by that time, because of
the snow and talking with Billy Goat, I was a little behind, which I
was worried about. Eventually I made the next three miles over to
I-80 and got to the rest area, which since he was coming up from
Grass Valley, he was on the eastbound rest area, and it's really a
pain to get over to the westbound rest area so I just literally
walked across I-80, not a
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| Massive fields of Mules Ears abound. |
problem. There wasn't that much traffic and
no median, well the median is a big huge 50 ft rock and dirt area, so
not a problem. I met him there at about 8 O'clock and just hung out
basically. I had done a big mile day and I didn't need to do more so
I just said screw it, this will be my "rest day". Had beer,
he brought a pizza, ya know and some other snacks and we just hung
out, it was great. I hung out until about ohh, I don't know, 10ish,
and he was headed back home. Star and Paxx were there too. It was
good, it was nice to see them and great to get some extra calories
and literally just hang out and stop moving for two hours. I was
tired because I did push really hard the whole day. So I didn't feel
like going on any further. I just basically just sauntered back into
the woods and I had scoped out a good spot earlier to rest and so be
it, that's where I laid down for the night. The road traffic didn't
bother me one bit. I can sleep through anything pretty much now.
Sleep on anything, sleep through anything. Um yeah, it was a good day
and it ended even better.
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| Sierra Crest above Squaw Valley ski resort. |
