Day 10

Today we had an easy 11 mile day into town. entirely downhill and mostly snow free.

We ate extremely well, with a massive breakfast of eggs, steak, hash browns, and a biscuit. Lunch was an entire bag of baby carrots and a tray of hummus, and dinner was a huge salad and even bigger chicken wings. For dessert: half a pint of Ben and Jerry’s half baked.

I bought new shoes, a new sleeping pad (I want to ditch my inflatable for some closed cell foam to make setting up my cowboy camp even easier), and lots of food for the next stretch to Big Bear Lake. Having mostly resisted junk food until now, I gave in to my deepest impulses—most of my calories for the next 5 days of hiking will be from Oreos, pop tarts, goldfish, sour patch, and the like. I’ve eaten the same two dinners almost every night and I am not close to tired of either: the first is couscous with dehydrated refried beans, topped with Fritos and a splash of olive oil. The second is a package or two of ramen with loads of oil and summer sausage to beef it up. Yum.

My new shoes have a much wider toe box, a welcome change for my sad pinky toes. The heat has caused major swelling of my feet. Though most parts of each foot have suffered, the pink toes—which are very much hammer toes—have suffered the most. Yesterday when I pulled my socks off, the pressure caused my pinky toe to shoot pus (editor’s note: the correct term for this fluid is serum) into my face and 3 feet over my shoulder onto my pack. Really fun stuff. Viewer discretion is advised.