Miles today: 21.5

Trail miles: 672.8

Elevation: 6739

Spinning on the turntable: DMB: Away from the world

I hit the trail at 5AM this morning after enjoying overnight oats and Noosa yogurt. That yogurt is crazy delicious (www.noosayoghurt.com) but a little higher in calories and saturated fat than I might normally eat…but I think I’m ok for the moment. I’ll have another weigh in after this week and I’m curious how much more weight I’ve lost.

I’m surprised how much I enjoy early morning hiking. Not too many other hikers, but I can hear lots of birds talking and the cooler temperatures are wonderful.

It’s interesting to have been hiking so long that I’ve seen flowers bud, bloom and now turn to seed. This is almost two and a half months of hiking so far. Crazy.

The world continues to spin in our absence, but i find that I’m more and more interested in the flowers and animals and less interested in the news of the day. The outside world is becoming an irksome interruption to my hiking. I love this bee shot!

I’ve been trying to capture a picture of a jack rabbit. They have gigantic ears! I think there are different flavors of jack rabbits though. Some of them are smaller in size but a few of them look big, like a small dog!

Today the climb is just brutal. This seems to be a common theme! The difficulty of the daily climbs still surprise me. I expected that by this point in the trek I’d be skipping up the hills. Intellectually I know that I’m stronger today than when we started, but dang, some of these hills slay me.

If I’m going to make it to Kennedy Meadows in two days time I needed to hit 25 miles today….

The trail is loose, sharp rock. There are trail sections that allow me to be contemplative, or to meditate, or to just be in the zone and the miles quickly evaporate. This isn’t that kind of trail today. I’m paying keen attention to each foot placement to avoid rolling an ankle on a larger loose rock. Dislike!

After the first climb and subsequent descent I had a smaller hill to tackle.

I stopped early for lunch at 11:30 and took my shoes and socks off. I just need one or two more days out of this pair of socks.

I try to change my socks twice a day. Fresh (cough cough) pair in the morning and replacing them at lunch with the pair that’s drying on the back of my backpack. I have a third pair that I only use to sleep in at night, never for hiking.

I stretched out under the tree, ate my lunch, and took a nap. I wonder how many hikers walked past me while I was sleeping?

The small hill took me two hours to climb and descend. There were no switchbacks. I complain when there’s too many switchbacks and now I complain when there’s none. I talked with other hikers who also struggled with this little hill, so that helped my morale a bit. It wasn’t just me, it was everyone who was struggling.

After hill two came…hill three…

After a solid two and a half hour climb I made it to the first campsite around 6PM. I eyeballed the second tent site, but decided I was too exhausted to continue.

I’m not hungry, but ate my cold soaked meal anyway. I’m still eating the meals we’d prepared for the two of us and I forgot to reduce the amount of food in the bag. I skipped the tuna and only ate what was in the bag.

I’m beyond exhausted tonight. This section is very physically challenging with the high temperatures.