Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
18 July 2010
This was the only morning Darlene did not rush up. She had had a miserable night in a damp bivy sack and now her left eye was swollen, as if bitten by a furocious mosquito or black ant. It hampered her vision and perhaps her mood as well, but she trekked on. Everything she had was damp and needed drying, although the still-shadowed hillside wasn't going to do it. We had to find sun. My tent was damp but everything else was fine. We had no choice but to move on, and we did by 8:25am.
We had a long day planned but it started with a steep two-mile uphill that kicked my ass. I found reasons to stop: watching the wildlife--there were plenty of new birds here I hadn't seen before--to taking photos or talking with hikers. One was an older man who claimed he had spent 35 years living overseas, mostly in the Phillipines where he has a second home, and the Middle East. A former Special Forces soldier, he opted to settle in Fresno "where I have mountains all around me!" He comes to the central Sierras to go on backpacking trips; a father-son duo was behind him.
The scenery then opened up to more rocky vistas of snow-capped peaks and deep lush canyons.
Darlene soon was far ahead of me. I lagged behind from the very start, lumbering uphill with my sleeping bag draped around my backpack so it could air out better.
At one point Darlene reminded me that she had waited for me for 30 minutes. Oh uh. At another point she had waited "long enough to eat a Cliff bar." I'd rather she not have waited on me as I didn't want her to feel toward me the way she felt toward Al. I didn't want to be the reason she was slowing down. Was I upsetting her?
This was a day to meet other hikers in fact. We also encountered a lone PCTer in a kilt who said the hardest part sofar was the Mohave Desert. "After 600 miles the desert will make you or break you."
We didn't stop until two hours later when we had some sunshine along Virginia Lake, where a lone sea gull flew overhead scanning the water for fish. The gull seemed out of place here so high in the range, but perhaps it was one of the sea gulls that nest along Mono Lake but then flies to the ocean to live. We had our gear laid out here on rocks to dry out and enjoyed a long and leisurely lunch.
We stayed at this lake for over an hour, letting everything dry out, enjoying a lunch and taking in the scenery. We didn't see a soul until we were ready to continue our trek.
Even further along I met a former Forest Service Ranger, Marty, who was willing to berate his former employers while I thought to myself "He could be talking about the army!"
Marty had passed me as I descending toward Tully Hole, a lush and deep small meadow surrounded by high peaks. I had stopped to tie my shoes which had come loose when he approached me. From afar Tully Hole looked gorgeous, a small, deep and lush meadow in a depression what was surrounded by peaks in all directions. I knew once in Tully Hole I would be eaten alive by mosquitoes, as much as I wanted to stop. Marty was on a five-day solitary backpacking trip. Tall and lean, he didn't seem to have trouble with the peaks.
"Looks like you have a heavy pack there" he told me. Yes, today it felt heavy. "How much are you carrying?"
"Around 35 pounds." It felt heavier.
"I have 25." I've have carried that much as well but I had a lot of food with me.
Marty also told me some secrets about the Forest Service. Calling his former bosses by name, he admitted that the Forest Service he knew was an agency all too willing to have rangers go into the backcountry to look for violators of any rule. "In three years I never gave out a ticket. I was not going to penalize people for being in the wilderness." Later he added that "The first class the Forest service made me take was a law enforcement class. That class taught us how to detect liars." Marty had started his career as a FS volunteer, but then was offered a paying position which he kept for a few years. I enjoyed talking to him, but once I met up with Darlene Marty kept on walking and we never saw him again.
The scenery around us began to get more and more spectacular. We were now in Cascade Valley. I noticed more sequoias. Vallies and hills were all becoming more prominent and the vistas more striking. Darlene pointed to an area where she and Ray had once camped and where a bear had been able to take down a "Ursack" which Ray didn't tie properly around a tree. Ursacks are no longer seen as bear-proof in the backcountry and do not fulfill the NPS's descriptions of a bear cannister. But I had yet to see any bear scat to prove that there were bears in the back country. I've seen more bearscat around Mount Wrightson in Arizona than in all the time I spent along the JMT.
Another threesome coming from Cascade Valley were the only people we met in this area for the day. How far were we going today? I was tired, but I followed Darlene. She was ready to camp at the next available lake, but where was the next one?
"It's about a mile uphill" said one man in the threesome. Although that lake was more of a pond and we continued on, our campsite for the night was a small area off the trail near a rushing creek and covered by tall pines. Darlene bathed in the creek in private as I admired her courage to dip into the cold water. I did all my washing out of my portable "Summit to Sea" basin which Darlene thought was my coolest tool I brought on this trip. ("You impress me with that thing" she had told me).
A few more adventurous evening hikers passed me, one which she stopped to query about any snow conditions further up the pass. She seemed very concerned about snowpacks and ice conditions along the higher elevations.
I probably could have hiked a little further today, but why push it?
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