Day:256

Direction: Southbound

Trail location: 1910

Cumulative miles hiked 2019/2021: 2580

Cumulative miles hiked 2021: 563
Miles hiked today: 17
Elevation: 9966

High/low temp/humidity: 64/46/10

Spinning on the turntable: Post Malone: Hollywood’s Bleeding

Oh my word it was cold this morning. My feet have been cold the past few nights. I’m sleeping in a 20 degree Marmot, with a liner, with socks. I can’t believe that I’m getting cold. I’m having issues with the sleeping bag zipper popping off a tread while I’m sleeping, and completely unsheathing (?) while I sleep, so that doesn’t help much.

I started the day with a the hill climb that i didn’t want to climb yesterday afternoon. I feel better today than I did yesterday. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it many times; The High Sierra Section has been very challenging for me. I miss having companionship.

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I’m conscious of the fact that my time on the trail is winding down. In 2019 I wanted to keep going, keep the experience alive, to keep hiking. This year I’m just wanting it to be over. My feet and ankles ache. I know I’ll look back at this experience later in life and really love it, but today, at this moment, my dogs are barking quite loudly. I’m struggling to get up and moving again after a long lunch break, so I’ve started limiting my lunch time to 30 minutes. Eat fast!

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The skies are most amazing blue. I’m entranced by the different landscape, the rapidly changing foliage, and the piercing blue sky. I could sit for a long time and just soak it in. I may actually sit on logs here and there just absorbing the scenery. After nearly two months of smoke filled sky, this is amazing.

I fill my sightseeing with stuffing my face with food. I’m trying to jack up my caloric intake to give myself more energy for hiking. In the first month I was loosing about a pound of body weight a day. Lately I’ve been loosing about .75lbs per day. I’m fine with weight loss, I could easily absorb more of it, but the lack of energy is problematic when I want to hike all day long!

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I’m trying to remember correctly, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone today. Or yesterday. Once I passed Whitney Portal, it’s very quiet out here. It was a nice quiet afternoon of downhill hiking. I hit the summit of some pass today, but I don’t know what the pass was named, so I named it “pain in my ass pass” when I sent out a Garmin message to my list.

This evening I have another camping area to myself. There may be 25 good camping spots, and it’s just me. I don’t mind the lack of folks, but I wouldn’t mind it if someone showed up for dinner and then left 30 minutes later after some good conversation.

I was groaning to myself earlier. I was setting up my tent and I saw a nice pair of prescription glasses sitting on a rock. It took me about an hour to decide that I’d take them with me and leave them in KMS lost and found. I really don’t want to haul other folks stuff out, but, it’s someone prescription glasses. If it were me, I’d hope someone would do the same. It sucks being a nice guy. I’m shaking crumbs out of my backpack to avoid carrying extra weight and here I am carrying someones glasses. Sigh.

This is a screenshot of my Garmin map. The points in the South are from 2019 when I approached KMS. The points in the North are from 2021 as I approach KMS. Soon they’ll converge and we’ll be done. Noelle asked me before I left Onion Valley what kind of celebration I wanted to have. I didn’t, and still, don’t know. I’ve been so focused on finishing that I’ve not spent much time thinking about how to celebrate “finishing”.