Day 60: Mile 716.5 - 735.1
As Tags noted when he passed me at lunch, today was the day we pretty much left the desert. And he was right, scenery-wise: instead of dry scrub brush with occasional woods, now everything is large trees and boulders, with some lingering sections of scrub brush (although the brush is now more distinctly green). The mood has changed--we're sub-alpine now, with lots of conifers rising up out of slopes. And, towards the end of the day, the trail passed by full granite mountains. Not just granite peak-cliffs at the tops, but the whole thing--the bulk--in solid granite. *That's* the Sierras. (Well, that and water, but the latter isn't quite in full force yet: a lot of questionable water sources today, leading to effectively longer water carries.) From some of the vistas today, I could look north and see that same granite afar off, looming tall and largely snowless, and I think to myself, well, that's where I'm going.
Ah, but I still have to get there! I started the day late and cold: certainly at higher elevations now (about 8,000 feet) if the mornings are any indication. And, again, as soon as the sun hit me everything warmed up. I had camped just above the South Fork Kern River, so I went down to get water by the bridge. Swallows nest under that bridge, so as I squeezed water, I watched the swallows coming and going, chirping away as they came and went.
Then came the hiking. And in the morning, on a climb up, I was slow. Very slow. I put it up to the elevation--the heat hadn't kicked in yet--but climbing out of the river valley, up the gentle wooded slopes, for some reason this was tough. I kept stopping on-trail to catch my breath, and I couldn't settle on a good pace, always too fast and pushing it too much, or too slow and the soreness would build as I went. So very slow in the morning: just 5 miles in about 3 hours. Eventually I got to the water source--a trickling stream marked only by a path of green leafy plants--and stopped for a long while to take breakfast and lunch. While I ate, Tags passed by. He was going to take lunch up at the top of the climb (still a few miles away), but he asked how much further I was planning on going. Another 15 miles?, I posited. Well, he said, don't push it, and he headed on up.
And for once, I actually took that advice. And as I restarted, I didn't push it, but let the pace go as the pace goes. And it seemed to be smoother and, dare I say it, faster. Was it the food? The rest? Did the grade change? No idea, but it went better. I got to the top around 1pm, saw Tags siesta-ing in his sleeping bag, and continued down the other side. And that was at 10,500 feet or so and I didn't get altitude sickness. This is good!; based on past experience, I had been worried about getting altitude sickness over 10,000 feet. Instead, I am noticeably weaker, my pack feels a lot heavier, and maybe there's a slight headache, but the stomach--oh the stomach!--it feels fine. So far.
I hit the top of the hill at the peak of the heat on a hot day. To be fair, today I didn't feel the heat much due to either the wind or the shade of the trees. But if I ever stopped in full sunlight in still air?, oh, I felt the heat!--it was *right* *there*. As long as I kept moving, though, I was fine. And plus, for once my timing was good and as the heat came on I started going downhill, through the woods. And for the rest of the descent, things went well. The day was pretty warm but not hot, the going was work but not hard, and I could hear what I swear were cicadas all around. That tza-tza buzz. Which is strange: I associate cicadas with Taiwan, and with anime where the backgrounds are done in watercolor to show how blindingly hot it is. And yet here I am in the Sierras--the land of snow and pines and granite--and I'm hearing cicadas? To be fair, they did seem to get louder on the brief stretches when the ground was bright sandy, but still, it surprised me. But it was a nice chorus as I hit good speeds, I felt good, I was chugging along.
This cannot last, of course.
I had dinner at another trickling creek (Death Canyon Creek, the name was, and what a name!), and looked at my watch. Only 5pm. According to the map, there were some campsites about 5 miles ahead. Well, I thought, I can hike for another couple hours, see how far I can get. Yeah, probably should have left well enough alone. Because these last few miles, well, were straight up tough. The trail started ascending again, now at above 10,000 feet, and the pack started feeling so so heavy, and my pace started going so so slow, and my need to stop and catch my breath started becoming so so often. With the ascending trail the trees thinned and the wind picked up. The views were admittedly nice, but by the time I got to the Owens Valley overlook--which was pretty, sure--I was surrounded by swirling winds howling around me, with 7pm right around the corner, and nary a campsite in sight. No, I was on the side of a steep exposed slope, going up switchbacks, the wind only getting worse, and the day's golden heat and gentle shade now replaced by a world gray and cold and bitter as the sun dropped below the ridge above. I was desperate for a spot to camp and I did find one--a very "me" spot--a little ledge just as wide as my tent footprint (maybe a little smaller, actually), buttressed against a fallen tree trunk, and somehow sheltered from the wind by some miraculous geometry. This has to be it, I thought, because up above I could hear even more howling, and down below was just more dropping slope and rock in loose dirt and singular trees. But Guthooks said there were more campsites about 0.3 miles ahead, so I pulled a Heather, dropped my pack and headed up-trail with just my poles, to scout. And the trail did continue switch-backing up, and the wind did get louder, and then it crossed over the top, the slope flattened into a wooded plateau, the sun came out again (!), and the wind--was gone. It was still around, would breeze through, sometimes strongly, but it wasn't the driving force it was 10 steps back. I don't know how this happens, but it did! I managed to find a campsite up here, went back, grabbed my pack, rehiked the switchbacks (albeit much slower the second time), and now am setup here. I can hear the wind howling around me, but so far it's above and around, and the trees dense enough to provide protection. My tent hasn't felt much--sure it wiggles and waves, but no harsh flapping and no buffetting, so nothing as bad as Stagecoach or that spot on the mountain the night coming out of Ridgecrest. Hopefully this holds up through the now increasingly cold night!
So what are the takeaways for today? First, evidently I can make it to 10,000+ feet without altitude sickness; this is good. Second, I can make longer distances even in the Sierras--did 18+ today; this is good. Third, sometimes when I'm foolhardy I still get lucky. This is good in that I get lucky, but bad in that it's likely reinforcing bad behavior. Well, fingers crossed that karma, if it's out there, at leasts spares me tonight!
-- Monache Meadow > Cow Creek > Gomez Meadow > Death Canyon Creek > Owens Valley Overlook > Campsite
-- It seems that the solar panel does an ok job of charging the inReach; at least it did so over breakfast-lunch today. It's bad at charging the phone--the battery percentage doesn't change--but the inReach battery percentage went up. This is good: the inReach is my second biggest battery drain. Will see if this holds up.
-- 10,500 feet is a big deal for me, because that's the height of San Bernardino, where I last experienced altitude sickness. I was with Randy (Friend of Angela, not Randy "Arrow" of the PCT), doing another warm-up hike for his Mount Whitney ascent, and when I got to the top at around 10,500 feet, I felt absolutely terrible. Just stomach churning whenever I moved a muscle. Randy suggested maybe I should just throw up and get it over with; I didn't want to tell him, yeah, but I don't know which end it will come out! So I waited there for about an hour until things calmed down enough to get moving. We descended down to about 10,000 feet, when it hit me again and I had to sit down for about 15 minutes, then continued down again. When we hit 9,500 feet, magically everything was fine. So it was clearly the altitude and I've been paranoid about 10,000 feet ever since. So getting to 10,000 feet today, and *not* feeling nauseous, was a *good* *thing*! (Honestly, the real badness about that bout of altitude sickness wasn't the nausea, it was on the drive back when Randy's wife called. We were about an hour late getting off the mountain, and because of lack of signal he couldn't update her, so she was worried about where he was. That's no good. And I had my inReach on me; in future, if I'm hiking with someone, I should let them know their family can login and check my account to keep better appraised of progress.)
-- Throughout the day, I would hear jet engines--like fast, low jet engines--screaming by, look up, and see nothing. But towards the end of the day I managed to look up just in time to see the tail end of a military fighter plane going by. It was flying relatively low, too, I could see the side-profile shape of the thing. What they're doing flying around here, I don't know, but they're loud and very distinctive!
-- I've been trying to *not* eat at camp, so starting the day hiking and then eating later on trail (i.e., Ismael-style), and then taking dinner about an hour or two before making camp (don't know if this is Ismael-style or not, but doubtless it's somebody's-name-style). This gets me moving in the morning and moving is good (the solution to a lot of getting stuck in my head--especially in the morning after strange dreams, or feeling sorry for myself because it's too cold!--is to get moving), and in the evening, it makes camp simpler: just setup and you're done. Clearly, even two months in, I'm still trying to figure out this "camping" business!
-- Finally, I'm clearly between bubbles: today I saw maybe 5 other people? And spoke with 3? There was Tags, who I know, a couple at Death Canyon Creek who advised me on how to get water (just follow this side trail along the creek, over the marsh, past the big rocks, to the boulders out of which the creek springs), and two other random hikers I passed. And there's nobody at this campsite, which is listed as a 5-person campsite (and so pretty big) on Guthooks. (To be fair, there are a couple more large campsites less than a mile up trail, and the comments there rave about the views, so maybe folks went there.) In general, not a lot of folks out here. Well, if the old-timer wanted a more wilderness feel, being isolated and alone is one part of that!
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