Day 56

Today was a real test of my psyche. My mind and my body were disconnected, putting them at odds several times. Frustration was my overwhelming emotion today, for more reasons than I care to enumerate. Though the twenty five miles I hiked had a mere 2,600 feet of gain, with more than half of that concentrated in the first five miles with the rest essentially little ups during a long flat/downhill section, I struggled for almost all of this latter twenty mile stretch, and though I tried to enjoy myself, I really didn’t.

I woke up at 5:00 and AO and I were rolling over Island Pass by 5:30. He stopped to poop and asked that I wait for him when the snow starts on the ascent to Donohue Pass, around four miles away. I wouldn’t see him until four or five hours later, since I saw no sign of him even after waiting for him near the top of the almost snow-free pass for half an hour.

The climb and initial descent were easy and I felt okay, though tired from poor sleep (only my second night at elevation and we slept at 10,200’) and with a more productive cough than yesterday. The crew from last night kept me company on the climb. Somewhere during the descent a deep fatigue set in that would remain with me for most of the day. This fatigue felt like CNS fatigue, brain fog, and muscular fatigue all at once, and none of my tricks—chatting with people, eating, music, stretching, thinking about math—seemed to peel it back for very long. I made it to Yosemite!

Having reached the valley floor, I was met with beautiful meadows (if I were a bear, I would hang out there) and the blue serpentine Tuolumne River. This continued for fifteen miles through Tuolumne Meadows and north past several great waterfalls. I didn’t enjoy myself very much on this stretch, which of course chagrined me more because of how beautiful it all was. Highlights of this stretch: having either a huge coyote or a stray member of the Southern Sierra wolf pack investigate my cat hole digging skills moments before the act itself, running into the duo I first met at the Cajon Pass McDonald’s and later at Serenity’s Oasis in Agua Dulce, AO catching up to me after a creek crossing where a random weekender gave me a cinnamon roll moments before, seeing my first horsepackers, cooling off in the mist from one of the Tuolumne’s many epic waterfalls, making it to the Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp’s urine-diverting toilet moments before calamity struck. Some lowlights: missing my friends up ahead (especially Bailey, Road Runner, and Beer Run), my malaise and fatigue, my frustration with my body’s seeming inability to walk on flat ground above three miles an hour without difficulty as god intended.

After the near miss at Glen Aulin, I decided to march up the climb towards distant Benson Pass despite what my body was telling me to do. I made it one and a half miles and about 600 feet up before resigning to camp pushed up against a granite wall at Mile 950.9 by the first creek I had seen since starting the climb. It was about 5:30 when I sat down and spaced out for what must have been a few full minutes before noticing the thirty plump mosquitoes covering my hands and legs. I was swarmed from then until I climbed in my bivy, the first time I have zipped it up.

Despite another day below my target for reaching South Lake Tahoe on time, I don’t think a bail at Sonora Pass will happen for a few reasons: my body will rally, if not tomorrow then soon, the numerology still works—I need to average 28.1 miles per day over the next five days, there are five passes between me and SLT and I have a bit more than five days of food (so I could have a free “eighth day” where I nero in to SLT), and there are several places to jump off to reach SLT prior to the canonical Highway 50. No biggie if I don’t make it, but I won’t fail without suffering a helluva lot more than I did today. Tomorrow will be much tougher than the last two, with a seventeen mile approach to Benson Pass beginning with three potentially major fords six miles from my camp. I expect to land below my target tomorrow with the plan of making up the difference on Day 58 with what looks to be a bit easier terrain.