Just going for a walk

So it seems a zero day in Mammoth Lakes is like a zero day everywhere else: very very busy. Yesterday I had managed to get in my laundry done at the laundromat after my ER visit and right before it closed (last load at 8pm the sign said--I started my load at 7:50pm). And today I dropped by Mammoth Mountaineering Supply to pick up some odds and ends, and the local Grocery Outlet to resupply. Here's the more interesting stuff: -- Ate a lot of ice cream. There's a Rite-Aid close to where we're staying (in the same plaza as the laundromat, and across the street from the Grocery Outlet), and inside they've got an ice cream counter where they'll make you a cone. Only I went in and discovered that, off to the side, they have a freezer where they serve pints of the stuff. So I bought a pint, and finished off a pistachio nut pint the first night, and a pecan praline pint the second. Polishing off a pint of ice cream actually comes pretty easily these days. -- For the room, w...

Today we finished the brief 5 miles to Red's Meadow and got into Mammoth Lakes. And ate some cooked food, and ran some errands, but probably the most important--and possibly most interesting--thing was my visit to the emergency room. I had originally wanted to go to an urgent care, but I didn't see one on the map. So I went to the hospital and walked up to an entrance as I pulled my mask out. Only it was exit and, it looked like, the place where the off-shift nurses hung out. No, there isn't an urgent care in town, they confirmed, only the emergency room, and it's on the other side of the building. So I went, checked in, and got ushered into a room within 5 minutes (which was surprising--I was prepared to wait for hours). And got checked out by Jeremy (the nurse), got a few x-rays of my chest by Lars (who had also had bruised ribs before and commiserated with me), and sat around in one of those embarrassing--and chilly!--gowns for a while. Here's the diagnosis: from...

It's amazing how fast you can go if you don't stop to look at anything. I woke this morning and wasn't as stiff as I expected to be: I had expected my right arm and side to be locked up and they weren't. Things could move, which was good--it likely means nothing is broken. Just everything hurts when it does move. Getting up from a laying position to a sitting position in the tent was difficult--doing so requires engaging the stomach muscles, and that incurs tremendous pain and an inability to breathe. It took several tries, of different strategies, but in the end the solution was just to take the pain and do it. For me, taking the pain was actually the easier part (though by no means easy in and of itself): the harder part is that if a muscle but twitches, suddenly the lungs seize up and I can't breathe. And then that brief panic sets in, but in that panic the muscles tense, and the asphyxiation continues, and then the panic lengthens--you get the picture. I couldn...

Yesterday (I'm writing this on Day 77, the day after) started off a good day. I left from VVR relatively early--had intended to close my tab at 7am when the Store opened, but the line was long (the line was also the breakfast line) so ended up closing around 8am instead. And I had intended to catch the shuttle (VVR runs a shuttle between the resort and the various trailheads) but the shuttle was already full by the time I checked. So instead I walked to the trailhead and was actually glad I did: the line streaming into the overcast of yesterday's rains, with the foreground lake disappearing up a gorge into the background mountains, it was quite a sight! And when I got to the Bear Ridge Trailhead, lo and behold there were three hikers there from VVR about to set out. So I got there about the same time as the shuttle (just with about 1-hour and 2.8-miles less energy). And the hike up Bear Ridge went well: some steep parts, but many smooth portions, and I made very good time (for ...

Today was the day into Vermillion Valley Resort--which everyone knows as just VVR--to grab a couple-day resupply to make it to Mammoth (via Red's Meadow). The way to VVR required hiking up the PCT another 4 miles (3.8, but let's say 4), then turning onto an 8.2-mile side trail that's "all downhill", all the way to VVR. Sounds straightforward. Physically, today was a tough day. Start with the morning. I got up, looked up, and even after the morning sprinkles subsided, could see a handful of mosquitos inside my tent fly (but thankfully outside my tent mesh). So I got on my long pants (of course), my rain jacket, my head net, my gloves--all the things--and as I was, say, kneeling to inventory my bear canister, I look to the side and saw a little cloud--a literal cloud--of maybe 20 mosquitos swarming around at the level of my head, occupying a space roughly the size of my head plus lungs, just waiting for a hole to open up in my protective suit. And every now and then...

So I'm here in my tent, in nothing but my skivvies because it's been hot and muggy since we dropped into this river valley a few miles back and I'm laying on my pad trying not to touch anything, and watching the mosquitos probing above, having found a way past my rain fly only to be foiled by the fine mesh of my tent. And my face is swelling from where they *did* get me during dinner--at least 4 spots, 3 on my cheeks--along with spots on the backs of my hands, my forearms (through my sunshirt), even possibly my ankle (through my socks?--how?). And overhead there's a distant rumble, a yawning thunder, and the overcast skies above are dropping sprinkles of rain at their leisure. And let me tell you, unironically and unapologetically, today was a *good* day. Because today we went over Selden Pass, which is my favorite so far--Muir Pass being a close second. And lest you think, oh, he just likes the most recent pass, the one freshest in his memory--no, there was something a...

And at the risk of making this a Trope, here is the Day as an enumerated List. Alas, but no throughline Emerged for today, and with that no Idea, so that I am left without Structure. And so a List it is! 1 Uno and I have been heading out early, with Dylan catching up later, so I go to wake Uno each morning while Dylan sleeps in. And today I woke her about 15 minutes before sunrise. And so we gathered ourselves, then went to the top of the little bluff east of our campsite, and watched the sun break through a notch in the peaks to the east. And it was magnificent. As Uno said, this place almost looks like Mars (well, except for the flowing snow-stream down below babbling away) (and the snow-bank it's springing from) and to see the sun rise someplace so foreign is almost surreal. To our left, the lake spread wide and clear in the windless morning, and behind us, the moon was just now setting, dropping behind a peak near-orange in the sunrise, it's top grayed by cloud shadow, it...