Evening
June 18th, about 5:45pm. Been doing
really good today actually. It's been really easy walking. A few
minor passes here and there, pole-vaulting of trees and stuff. But on
the whole, super easy and awesome. I made 30 miles by just over 4pm,
which is pretty frickin' amazing. I should be making 40 somewhere
around 7-8pm. Which is only the second time I've made 40 with the
light still out. But, I've also come to the conclusion that I might
need to get off trail at the halfway mark or sooner. I mean whats the
point if I'm getting off at the halfway. The reason being I've really
noticed, actually today, how much weight I've actually lost. I don't
know how much in numbers, but for right now I've discovered or
realized that for the last 1.5-2 weeks, that my ass cheeks have not
been touching pretty much ever...Howdy... Basically that's a problem.
That's a lot of weight loss. Secondly, I umm.... {Laughs} Funniest
thing ever. As I said 'ass cheeks not touching' I passed a guy.
{Laughs} Off trail. Ohh that's really funny. {Laughs} I've seen like
2 people all day, and I decided to record this, and the second I said
my ass cheeks don't touch anymore, there's a guy..{Laughs} Holy shit,
the odds
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| Where's that trail? |
of that.....Anyways, secondly, my belly-button is basically
a volcano. So like, because it's harder tissue, it's hitting my abs
and literally raising up like a cone off of my stomach. Which I have
never seen or experiences in my whole entire life. I just saw that
today. And, so going over my muscles and things, yeah, my arms are
gone. I try and flex and it's this feeble attempt at a little bump
{Laughs}. Which I expected actually. But the thing I didn't expect is
my quads. Before I left and started hiking when I flexed my quad, the
skin was taut. I really couldn't pinch anything. And today I tried
the same thing and I could pinch a good centimeter of loose skin and
even walk without it slipping out from being pinched. So, my body is
even eating my legs, which I'm actually using everyday. I mean the
only thing that looks good are my calves. I don't know exactly how I
appear, but I definitely can feel it, and it makes sense that if I've
have been only eating 4-5,000 calories a day, and a lot of other
people that are hiking 20-30's are eating that and losing weight. But
I'm doing double of what they're doing basically. And if I'm burning
double that - If I'm burning 3,500 calories that I'm not taking in,
it's basically the equivalent of 1 lbs of fat, I mean the straight
calorie conversion. If that's the case, I've probably been loosing a
hell of a lot of weight really quickly, and I can see that. And so,
that's not worth permanent damage. Sure I have kind been going back
and forth, trying to find a reason to get off trail, but the miles
have finally gotten easier. This is where it gets good. And I think
that its going to be a problem if try and keep going. Now there is a
though of me possibly actually getting off trail, I get kinda of sad
all of a sudden. The
thought of even trying for halfway even
vanishes. I'm ahead of the record. I did the math today, this morning
on yesterdays total, and I was at 43.6 miles a day. And that being
said, the current record is only 41.2 miles per day. I forget
actually. It's either 42.6 or 43.6. So I am still in the running. I
did the actual math and it came out to be that I would finish in 62
days plus a little bit, kind of similar to what I did at the 1000
mile mark. So I know I would kill the record if I just had the
calories and didn't have to worry about wrecking my body. I know I'll
be able to do 45's to 50's, easy 50's in Oregon everyday pretty much
and that would boost my overall. I need to get to Echo Lake and talk
this over with somebody else, Scott or Pi, or both probably. Maybe
get Scott to try meet up and get a scale to see what I weigh. Because
if I've lost 15 lbs, it's all over. I know I weighed 178.6 naked on
the morning when I left San Diego. So if I'm down to 160 lbs, that's
20 lbs below my average, my normal. We'll see. I don't know if I've
lost that much, but just looking at my body, I just notice it. Like
my ribs, the skin on my ribs is tight. I've never noticed that. On my
sternum, there's no padding anymore, it's just bone everywhere. So
all in all, I'm pushing for a 50 mile day today. {Laughs} Regardless.
I'm a little dejected this afternoon because of my discoveries, but
I'll just keep going and hopefully make it to Molly's Nipple and
maybe even a little further. I could try for Carson Pass, but I think
that's a little too far. ....................wind
noise................................ I'll have to give Scott a call,
because I'll be at Donner Pass in another 2 days, so he could use a
little warning, hopefully the sooner I can give it. That's all.
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| Back onto the Sierra Crest 6 miles before Wolf Creek Pass. |
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| Super strong winds on Wolf Creek Pass. Note the hair! |
June 18th. Day 25. I camped about 1/2
mile back from a ridge line, passed Molly's Nipple, about 1/2 mile
before where LINT and I camped in 2009 overlooking more or less
Carson Pass. The point is 0242529E 4882497N. I got to mile 1072.5 and
it was a 49 mile day. I actually just saw Lake Tahoe for the first
time and it makes me pretty happy. I just crossed Carson Pass and
hiked up and ohh it's good to see that big lake. It means I'm more or
less home. I started off, down by, well....Wolf.. I'm not sure what
the pass name is anymore. It said in the book 'Junction at Wolf Creek
Pass' but I don't know if it's the proper name {Wolf Creek Lake Pass
is the correct name}. But anyways, the pass after Sonora Pass, is
where I was hanging out. I got started early, probably about 6:10am
and was in the shade for a good while, walking along the canyon
bottom, which was nice. I found an arrowhead in the middle of the
trail, about 2/3's of it. It is actually a unique one. I don't think
I've ever seen or found one like it. It's kind of shaped like - if
you think of a crude drawing of a pine tree, without the kind of
serrated little ledges, it's more of a triangle, a pointy triangle
with the notches at the bottom, more or less being squared in, there
are squares at the bottom instead of points like I'm used too.
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| Down from Wolf Creek Pass. |
That
was cool. Yeah, middle of the trail, I just kind of saw the obsidian
and said 'ooo what's that?'. I put it off the trail so hopefully no
one would step on it and break it or find it. Anyway, I did the climb
out of the canyon and go up to the ridge-line and instantly hit a
mass of blow downs. Once you hit the ridges, whatever wind storm came
through, I mean it just hammered the Sierras and did a good number.
So after a bunch of pole-vaulting and such, I made it out of the
climb and it turned more into the volcanic terrain. I'm actually
surprised I didn't really remember a lot of it from 2009. I was
surprised on two occasions actually, and was like 'wow I don't
remember this'. It's kind of open meadows, grassy hillsides and just
ash with boulders and bombs and stuff in it, lava caps and points and
plug mountains and lots of things, lots of columnar jointing and
such. So that was real easy walking - ups and downs, but not anything
too difficult. You get further on, and I hit - you get more into the
lahar, the mudflow kind of stuff and it's a bit rougher on your feet
just because it's pretty well cemented and there are just rocks
sticking out everywhere. I hauled pretty well through most of the
day. I
came off of Wolf Creek Pass where it was just howling wind, I
had to take off my had and I was leaning into the wind. I took a
picture with my greasy hair that is totally stuck in one spot
normally was completely plasters backwards, I mean it was just shoooo
{noise} straight back. It was actually windy most of the day. Blustery. You come to a ridge top and you get pushed around, that's
how strong it was, which was nice but could have been a little bit
weaker. So after Wolf Creek Pass, I met 2 Forest Service guys that
were working on the PCT, checking out where trees are down and doing
repairs to trail tread. I gave them the updates from Sonora Pass to
where we were and yeah, just kept on truckin'. I did eventually freak
out about how much weight I've lost, as the previous little recording
states, which I'll briefly summarize. I've lost a lot of weight and I
haven't really come to notice it. I mean it's been there but I just
didn't notice it until today. Like I checked out my legs and I can
grab a centimeter of skin and hold onto it while walking. It means my
legs have just disappeared. Same thing with my stomach. There's... I
don't think I've ever had this little of fat on
my stomach. My belly
button is sticking out. And I can pull a lot of skill off {stretch
loose skin out away from my body}. Plus, the funny one is that my
butt cheeks don't touch and they haven't touched for a little while.
But I finally realized that they aren't touching. I was like 'wow my
butt is loosing fat' but now it's quite apparent. I imagine my face
has done it too, but I've had this beard on so you can't tell. I hope
I can supplement some more calories into my diet. You know {pack}
weight is an issue but so is becoming anorexic from exercise. So
we'll see. Anyway, that slowed me down while pondering that, and
saying that I might get off trail at the midpoint because I don't
want to do any permanent damage to myself. I need to look up long
term effects and really make a judgment call based on, maybe someone
else's opinion too. But anyways, I kind of got over that. I hit 40
miles by about 7:30pm which is the fastest I've done that. Then I had
to trudge, literally trudge through the mosquito infested terrible
like 5 or 6 miles before Molly's Nipple. It was just ups and downs
next to little
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| Molly's Nipple! |
lakes and nasty ponds full of mosquitoes which was
annoying, especially at the end of a long day where I wanted to make
50 miles. I finally broke out of that and go onto the slopes of the
volcanic terrain and stuff, out of the granite. It was dark by then,
so I was just truckin' along into the night. I stopped at about
10:30pm at 49 miles because I knew if I had gone another mine I'd be
up on the ridge and it was still pretty windy. Ya know, being
miserable in the wind versus a 50, well I'd rather be comfy and not
at 50. So I did that. I don't know really what else there is to say.
It was a great day. It was pretty easy walking. I'll make it to Echo
Lake tomorrow and onwards from there! I think I saw 3 people today.
It was pretty lonely. But that's OK, I expected that, especially
since I'm ahead of the pack.
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| North of Ebbetts Pass |
