Slow Jams

Dear Readers: Sorry about the many typos in the last post! I barely had enough battery life to post! Therefore I skipped revising the latter half...Whoops!

Many questions have been asked, I promise I will try to post and answer them soon!



DAY 72 - Big Girls Don't Cry

Cue Music.

Dun, dunadun, dunadun, da da dadun...

DA DA DAAAAH, DAH DAH Daaaaah!

It was a new era for me. A chance to give my hike a makeover (and goodness knows I love makeovers)!

My blisters had dried up from 3 days in Lone Pine, my belly was full, Freebird had encouraged my desire for a slow pace, I had seen several of my friends, been given a token to cherish through the rest of my journey, and I had crampons in my pack that were dying to be used!

Had there been music playing in the air it would have been the Rocky theme song as I climbed up to Kearsarge Pass...a hell of a climb through snow fields, over a few miles. And I was tearing it up...a few feet at a time.

The music comes to an abrupt stop.

Okay so I was huffing and puffing and sweating profusely, I had to stop quiet often actually.

But guess what...I had confidence, for the first time, in snow.

Perhaps the appropriate song to be played would have been, "I Have Confidence!" from Sound of Music.

Crampons! ARE. WHERE. IT'S. AT! (for me at least)




(Kapow! My ultralight Stubai 10 point crampons.)

It was my first day of exploration completly by myself. Rally and Ishmael had said goodbye as they left camp early that morning, for they were going "Balls to the Wall" as Ishmael had said, to get to VVR in 4.5 days.

I had slept for an hour extra then left my tent and stupid bear vault behind for the day. I was going to "slack pack" it around Kearsarge Pass and lakes.

I walked till I hit snow, then laced up the crampons and charged forward. It was slow going, but, it...didn't...matter. I was going to take my time and enjoy the day.

Though the climb to the pass was steep, the views made it worthwhile.




(Climbing to the pass, a frozen lake below)




(Climbing higher, another frozen lake, on the right the path of footprints in the snow leading to the pass)

I made it to the pass...




...and looked around me in awe...












...I started to climb down the other side of the pass into a valley surrounded by high sierras...




...I followed footprints, made it to the PCT, then I dropped down to visit bullfrog lake...












...I shwacked my way back to the trail by climbing up over hills and boulders (after having had a glourious lunch by the lake). I heaved and hoed my way back up to the pass where I took another look around...




...unbelievable. I would have to explore more of this part of Sierras one day, just not this summer, and just not going 20+ mpd (miles per day).

I went back down the snowy slopes, down many a switchback, and along the path.

I made it back to my camp, which was still in tact and organized my things.

I went to the great pile of rocks that overlooked the desert valley below. I found the cell reception that Rally had told me about the previous evening and called home. My dad was going to leave the next day (if I found a ride from the trailhead down to Independence the next day) to drive out and meet me in Mammoth Lakes on Wednesday. We talked out the boring logistics and then all of the sudden I got upset...also known as I cried.

Though I had had a perfectly beautiful day I still felt regretful and miserable about changing gears. I was having a hard time looking at it as a positive, hiking my own hike. Instead I was still looking at it as a negative, a failure to complete what I had textbook like set out for the hike to originally be.

Sometimes lessons take time to learn, and I was still struggling.

I went back to my camp, cooked, cleaned, then got in my tent.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the boar's fang Ishmael had given me.

Wipe away those tears girl! It was going to be okay! I was still going to have an adventure, a great one at that, just not how I had first planned. But, ah-ha! sometimes the best things happen when you don't know what's ahead. The only thing I knew for certain was that I was going to keep eating cinnamon rolls and ice cream, and I was going to Manning Park, Canada!

DUH DA Daaaaaaaaah! DUH DA Daaaaah!


DAY 72 - The Luck with the Irish

I woke up and actually cooked breakfast! That was a first!

I packed up my stuff by a decent time and headed down towards the trailhead so that I could begin waiting for and wondering if there was to be a ride down for me that day.

About a mile or so into my descent I ran into Buckeye and Swift who were coming back up to get on the trail and continue the hike. They were a little surprised to see me coming down, for they thought I had gotten back on the trail two days previous. I briefly summarized why I was there, to slow down. I told them I was going to hike around Yosemite with my dad, wait for the guys near Tahoe, and that I really wanted to hike from Tahoe to Donner Pass, I would see what happened after that.

"Oooooh," exclaimed Buckeye, "We hiked that section last summer [from Tahoe to Donner Pass], and that's what made us want to hike the whole trail! You're going to love it! It's so beautiful there!"

I mean, I doubt there's a whole lot of ugly spots, but what a nice confirmation!

I continued along and met uncle Tom and General Lee a little further down the way. Explaining again my new hiking strategy. Uncle Tom almost seemed a bit jealous as he took a breather from the uphill climb, subtly mentioning that this fast pace was wearing him out a little.

I hurried along and made it to the parking lot, where I sat on a bear locker next to Train (who was waiting for the rest of the Uncle Tom crew to head back up). Little Engine and her man came down and we all waited.

Finally a clunky old truck pulled up with two more from Uncle Tom's crew. The three of us waiting for a ride exchanged places with those who were about to climb on up the trail. This ride had a small cash fee, but time is money, and who knew when the next ride down would be.

The driver was a former thru-hiker who had run out of money upon reaching Kennnedy Meadows, so instead of getting to finish he settled in Independence, CA.

We rode the length of the twisted road and were dropped of right by the PO.

After forwarding a box of food I had sent myself from Mojave, I went outside, to cross the street, to make my way over to the bus stop.

Though there was a crosswalk I cautiously watched to see if traffic was going to stop for me.

"here we go!" said a lady next to me as a truck started to slow down. I crossed alongside her.

"They usually stop," she continued, "but you can't always tell!". She looked to her right, to the other side of traffic, and went on as she saw a commercial truck approaching a bit fast, "It would be terrible to be hit by that Schwan's truck!"

As we safely made it to the other side I asked, about the road we had just crossed, "This is 395 right? And Bishop is that way?"

"yes, sure is."

"okay, I'm going to see when the next bus is coming, if it's not for a while I might try to hitch a ride, and I wanted to make sure I'm headed the right direction!"

With that we parted. I went over to the bus stop to double check and make sure of the bus times.

I was pretty sure the next bus wasn't coming till late afternoon, which was no good because then I would be stuck in Bishop for the night, the town with the bus switchover to get to Mammoth Lakes. I would need to hitch, and if I got a hitch quick I could make it on the 1:00 bus from bishop to mammoth, so that I could get on a series of buses within Mammoth Lakes proper to get to the ski lodge, where I then could road walk (because the road was seasonal and not open) to Angew Meadows and get on the PCT to camp for the night...blah, blah.

Anyway.

I hadn't been over at the bus stop for more than 30 seconds when a petite blonde lady came running up.

"Um, excuse me, I couldn't help but overhear you just now, and well, we're headed to Bishop if you'd like a ride," she said with a smile and a sweet Irish accent.

"um, yes! That would be wonderful!" I exclaimed.

We walked over to the rental vehicle and Mary helped me put my things in the trunk, next to a completely sequined bag.

"Oh sequins! I haven't seen sequins in forever!" I said with longing in my voice and then, along with my stink and filth, hopped into the back seat next to Ashley, a lovely freckled blonde with a pretty sundress and a pair of raybans on.

Terry, owning the driver's seat returned and we were all off. Ashley had just spent the last 10 months away from Ireland, traveling throught Asia, working in Australia, and finally landing in the USA. She told me of her Thai adventures as her perfume filled the air within the car, giving the world a sweet aroma. I was jealous, I wanted to smell nice again and wear a sundress for a change. Instead I was probably exuding pungent odors of B.O. and I was wearing my raggidy discolored shirt and blue dress with pine tar smudges on the butt.

As I compunctiously watched the eastern sierras slip by me out of the car window, the family of three asked me lots of questions regarding the hike, and I told them of my adventure thus far. When they heard that I was skipping ahead so I could slow things down and enjoy the hike at my pace Terry told me of a friend who was always the slowest hiker of the group, "but he doesn't care that he's the slowest, 'cause he gets the most out of it!" He encouraged me to get the most out of my trip, and if that meant walking bits of it and going slow...so be it. I was starting to realize that the only person who had had a problem with me quitting the thru part of the hike was in fact me.

Everyone else seemed to see the value of stopping to smell the roses over making oneself utterly miserable. It was as if the entire cosmos was trying to tell me just that, by constantly reinforcing me with positive feedback from every direction.

Terry stopped in Bishop to gas up some more, and it was then that we discovered they were going to pass Mammoth Lakes as well, for they were on their way to Yosemite.

So they let me continue to stink up the car for another handful of miles, and when the turnoff for Mammoth came up, they got off the highway and actually drove me all the way to the Mammoth Lakes visitor centre (<---the Irish spelling!). What a delight and unexpected surprise! Again, they proved that generous souls exsist in this world, waiting to help others.

We said goodbye and I went and got information from the visitor's center.

Mammoth Lakes seemed like a full on bustling metropolis compared to the last few weeks' towns and communities. So I went to the Rite Aid (drugstore chain) to pick up a new toothbrush. This Rite Aid was huge, with more styrofoam coolers on top shelves, camp chairs, and sunscreen than I had ever seen in one place. I went to use the restroom and met myself face to face, in a mirror.

My face was bright red, apparently the reflection of light bouncing off the snow two days prior had raveged my usually protected face. To make things funny, there was a triangular patch of pale skin at the intersection of my neck and chin, because I had been looking down while ontop of snow which protected the scrunched part of my neck.

At least my horribly cracked/split/scabbed/resplit lower lip was on the mend.

I made my purchase and headed to the nearby bakery for a snack before heading towards the lodge.

I walked into Schat's and it was if my nostrils started singing that song, you know, the one that goes, "Heaven, I'm in heaven!" Cases, perfectly lit, full of truffles, pastries, and breads filled one side of the main room. Packaged goods filled the other side, and the smell of beautiful chocolates and gluten-heavy goodies penetrated every square inch of air, which graciously filled my lungs with every breath.

You would think I would have gone for the cinnamon roll, but it looked more like a glazed donut, and so many of the other pastries looked better. So I settled for a piece of veggie pizza and a blueberry cream cheese pastry wrap!

I stuffed my face and went over to the bus stop where I caught the town trolley to "the village." I asked the bus driver how late the bus line to the lodge was running and he informed me that it wasn't running yet (which vexed me slightly seeing as the visitor center worker girl had just informed me that it was running). But the bus driver was kind and seemed to take pity on me and my blue burden; so, he took the time to point out which road I needed to walk up to get a hitch.

I walked up the road, found a shaded spot in a nice big turnout and stuck my thumb out. Afterwhile, a small car with two furry dogs and a lovely couple pulled over. They dropped me off right where the road was closed, for they were kind and they were going to go for a run down the road.

I began the walk, past the "road closed" barrier, along the freshly snow plowed road...




...uphill and around the corner, past a set of locked gates, which I gladly passed through...




...then the down hill bit came and the horizon opened up...




...the mountains in the distance were formidable and silent, the light dazzling, and the valley below was green and calm...and I had as much time to take it in and gawk at it as I wanted.

I continued down the road until I reached Agnew Meadows campground where I strode over several mounds of snow, past an empty horse corral, beyond the campgrounds that had been desolate for months as they waited for the snow the melt, and back onto the PCT...






I thought about continuing down the trail a ways, but when I saw it was completly snowed over I felt it wasn't currently worth the trouble. It was getting to be evening.

I walked back towards a small clearing and saw a tree that I was unfamaliar with, leavless but with strange hanging clumps dropping down. The light on the little drop downs was perfect. I decided that was where I needed to camp.

I set up camp walked across a soggy meadow and cooked dinner away from my tent (I don't feel like attracting bears to my tent) then cleaned up and went to bed.

I had skipped 50 miles when I bounced from Cottonwood Pass to Kearsarge Pass, but on this day I skipped 116 miles, thanks to the Irish, with sequins and perfume and encouraging words. But, alas, I was excited.


DAY 73 - Rough Looking Riders

I woke up leisurely and packed a day-pack worth of items.

I left my tent and bear vault behind and went in search of Devil's Postpile Monument and Red's Meadow (where there were supposed hot spring showers). Red's Meadow was directly on the PCT and the postpile was just off of it, but it would save me 6 roundtrip miles + snow if I just roadwalked.

On the way to the postpile I passed many of these signs...


...snowmobiling is quite frowned upon it seems.

I made it to the Postpile loop/parking lot and felt strange about being at a National Monument parking/picnic/rest area that was completely vacant, except for the lone park service worker shoveling snow in the distance...




...on one hand it made me feel as if I was in a place I shouldn't be, but on the other hand it made me feel like the whole place was mine. So I waltzed along the mini trail to the postpile, over some mounds of snow, and then arrived.




(Devil's Postpile pic. # 1)




(Pic # 2)

The pile of oblong rock smooshed together in a cartoon fashion captured my fancy for a bit, and I had the time to just sit and enjoy it. Afterwhile, I got up and headed to Red's Meadow (though I had a bit of a detour, seeing as I had dropped a wet sock off of my pack...and had to go on a small sock finding mission...which ended positively).

I made it to the closed Red's Meadow Campground. The water to the showers was not on, and the hot springs "tub" was sitting under direct sunlight with a few dead bugs swirling around. I was not that desperate for hot water. So I opted to hold out, a cool creek water sponge bath later in the day would have to do.

I rebraided my hair and headed back uphill towards Agnew.

After a bit of walking time had slipped by I saw one, than two, wait three people jaunting down the road. By their gaits I judged them, must be thru hikers. The strides were chipper, confident, and proud. As the male in the lead came closer I felt I recognized his particular walk...Sandman? I waited to say his name until I heard a, "hello," from a ways away. His voice confirmed it.

"Sandman?" I asked.

"Yes..." he replied trying to calculate my still distant face.

When we came together he put the pieces together but was confused as to why I was one the road, alone, this far up the trail. As boy after boy approached I explained things to Sandman, and by the end of the explaining there were 5 of them. Sandman (of course), Smile Train (whom I hadn't met before), and Dave, Straightjacket, and Wander (I had met these three in Mojave briefly). I hadn't recognized the latter three at first because they looked a lot rougher than before.

A lot is an underexaggeration. Though they were all smiling, these five guys looked like they had been run through the ringer about 7 times, like they had been blasted with UV rays and then rolled around in the dirt...and they were coming back down from Mammoth, a town with laundry and showers. Is this what the Sierras + snow + sun did to people? I was afraid to see what my friends were going to look like. Would Salty or Bojangles or Rally or Yellowbird look like this? I mean if I looked the way I did with my cracked lip and sunburn and I had only gone through 751 mi. + Kearsarge Pass what would I have looked like if I had gone straight through?

When I had seen Rally and Ishmael in Lone Pine, we had run into another hiker who was being a real Debbie Downer...when I brought that fact up to Ishmael he said, "Yeah, but he does look like he got punched in the face by Mt. Whitney!"

The elements were brutal, I felt a bit guitly for escaping them so easily, but I felt thankful for the fact that after this hike I would only be 623% likely to get skin cancer instead of 3748% likely.

We talked about their walk and joked for a bit then parted. It was nice to have 20 solid minutes of human contact.

As I continued to walk up the hill a truck drove up and slowed down. I was offered a ride by a trail crew, and they ended up cutting off about an hour of walking, so that I had plenty of daylight left by the time I got "home," which made shaving my legs next to a frigid creek a bit warmer, cooking and eating my bread soup cozier...




...and using my bear vault just as annoying as ever...





I got in my tent early, snuggled into my sleeping bag and poured over the Tom Harrison maps of the John Muir Trail within Yosemite National Park...tomorrow's destination, with my Pops.


DAY 74 (Part 1) - Familiar Faces

Woke.

Ate.

Packed.

Started walking on the road towards the ski lodge.

I was to meet my dad around 10am at the lodge.

As I was merrily strolling along the way, up the hill, I heard a car coming. Instinctivly, I got to the side of the road. I heard the vehicle slowing down, and as it came into my peripheral vision I turned my head...and my jaw dropped a little.

"what are you doing here?" the head sticking out of the passenger window said to me with a big smile.

The face looked so familiar to me...just like Caveman's. It took about 3 or 4 seconds to register everything. It was them! At that point Yellowbird rolled down her window.

"oh my gosh! I was wondering when you guys were coming through!" I exclaimed.

I can't remember what all we exclaimed to each other, but Yellowbird and I sounded like two excited old ladies who hadn't seen each other in a decade. But they had probably been through the adventure of a decade since I had last seen them. We threw my pack in the back and I crawled in next to Bird.

Salty just stayed motionless curled up next to the window and said something about only having eaten 180 calories since [insert time frame]. I wish I had had an oven full of baked goods to give him, but instead I had to watch him suffer in the miserable silence of hunger. The good news was though tanned and a little peely, they looked good.

Bird and I rapidly exchanged the vital details since our last brief reunion as we glided past the "closed road" signs and arrived at the ski lodge, where they dropped me off. They would text me the details of eatery plans once in town.

I called my dad.

"hey dad, I'm here in front of the lodge!" I said.

"Did you just drive down the road in a blue SUV?" he asked in his thick Texas accent.

"yes!"

"I was on that road! I was pulling that marker out if the snow!"

"what?!?" I couldn't believe it. We had just driven by my dad, I had seen a man on the road out of the corner of my eye, but I had failed to realize it was my own father because I was so excited and surprised about running into the others!

So my dad turned around and headed back down and I waited for him.

We met, walked to the car, and squeezed my pack into the back seat. Dad had packed so much stuff that there wasn't much room left in the car.

We hoped in and headed into town. We saw Salty walking along the side of the road and picked him up. I crammed myself into the backseat with my pack and he took the front, until we parked in front of Motel 6...where we met up with Bojangles!

Reunions are grand!

After watching Salty devour a few bites of Bojangles's chocolate frosting, we let the others sort through their PO boxes and take showers while we went grocery shopping and pastry buying.

We met the others back at Angel's a place where supposed all-you-can-eat ribs was about to happen (thus the reason I went and ate a bunch of pastries first). But everyone else was sorely dissapointed to find out the event didn't start till afternoon. Still the others began eating normal dishes and decided to kill the next four hours right there...priming themselves for the endless rib feast later.




(Caveman, Salty, Bojangles, and Yellowbird in Angles, four hours away from all you can eat ribs)

I left my dad with the others while I showered in the Motel 6 room, underneather the best water pressure contained within a shower that has been presented to me on the trail thus far. Not the best shower mind you (big bear still hold the #1 place for me in that category), but the best water pressure on the trail. Salty said it knocked the dreads right out of his hair. I'm realizing it's becoming more about the little things on this trail than the big things.

I went back to the restaurant to say goodbye to the others, so that Pops and I could head out into the wild blue yonder (and skip 28 more trail miles) to hike our own hike for 1+ week through Yosemite. Dad regretfully said goodbye to the restaurant that he had hoped to eat all-you-can-eat ribs at and we were off!

(to be continued...)






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