Location: West Walker River Bridge
Wow. What a bizarre day. So first off, we hit 1000 miles today. A
huge milestone for me. I did a little dance right in the trail.
Also today is my 2nd month anniversary of hiking. Like before (on my
1 month anniversary) I'd like to mention that I'm partly hiking in
order to raise money for the American heart assoc. If you'd like to
donate, the link is over in the sidebar on my blog. Heart disease
takes millions of lives and even those of seemingly healthy people we
know and love. This disease struck my family hard on 05 with the
passing of my father.
Ok...and now on to the craziness. Last night we couldn't ford a well
over- swollen falls canyon creek. This morning, we walked for two
miles upstream with no place to ford. When we made it to another
impassable stream we had to make a decision. That decision ended up
being probably the craziest/stupidest thing I've ever done while
hiking. I inflated my thermarest, used it as a raft, and swam across
the 10 ft deep, 50 ft wide creek. It was fresh snowmelt
water....needless to say it was so cold it nearly knocked the wind out
of me. Once on the other side safely, I deflated my pad, balled it
up, threw it back so that Kerry and then crowdog could follow. We
prepared and put all of our spare clothes in a bag so that we'd have
dry stuff to put on. It was insane. About an hour later we took a
break and I unpacked everything to dry it all out.
Then came the snow. For the next 5 hours we covered 5 miles....it was
fields of exhausting sun-cupped snow, and multiple compass readings.
Awful.
But then something wonderful happened. We crested Dorothy lake pass,
and as we came down the backside, the snow was noticeably less. We
skipped along visible trail covering several miles. Looking off in
the distance the mountains all looked snow free (although we were
seeing south faces). We only covered 15 miles today, but still hiked
13 hours. Like I said, long day. Tomorrow we have a rough one too.
The last mountainous challenge of the trail. We have a nasty ridge
section over 10,500 feet before descending to Sonora pass. Our food
situation isn't looking so good either, so we may be hitching into
Bridgeport for a quick resupply. Lastly, we are out of yosemite now
and into Hoover Forest. This means no more bear cannister! I'm
mailing it home on bridgeport or lake tahoe.
1 comment:
"When we made it to another impassable stream we had to make a decision. That decision ended up being probably the craziest/ stupidest thing I've ever done while hiking." Sometime you need to tell us -- if this was stupid -- what smart would have been.... Really!!
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