Day's end: just past Bear Ridge Trail
Day's miles: 5.2 miles
Total trip miles: 93.1 miles
This morning I couldn't help but wake up early. Breakfast wouldn't be served for another hour, but it was nice to be awake and enjoy a quiet morning without feeling like I had to be going anywhere. After Aaron woke up we made our way to say good morning to our friends and then followed our noses to the restaurant for a delicious breakfast (pancakes, bacon, sausage, eggs, hash browns, and tea). Breakfast was bittersweet. I was happy to enjoy another meal with our friends, but most of them were taking the 9am ferry and had planned on hiking all day today, while we were tentatively planning on taking our last remaining zero day at VVR. I was sad that we may never see them again - I'm not very good with goodbyes.
Our hiker-trashed tent-cabin at VVR.
After watching the ferry leave we went back to the tent-cabin to sort through our stuff and I set about planning the remainder of our trip. Using our map and my very rusty math skills, I tried to determine how many miles we would have to do each day so that we could summit Mt. Whitney and finish the trail on September 11th (our original end date). It could have been that my math skills were pretty rusty, but every time I worked out the daily mileage, it came to an average of 16 miles per day in order to finish on time.
Wait a minute... that can't be right...
I re-checked my math and found no errors. If we stayed at VVR all day today and did not start hiking until tomorrow morning, we would have to hike an average of 16 miles per day to finish on September 11th. Judging by our current average miles per day (about 11-12), I'm not so sure that we could do that - especially if there was going to be at least one mountain pass per day towards the end of the trip.
After a little panic session, I came up with the new plan to leave VVR today on the 4pm ferry, reach land by 4:45, and hike as far and as fast as possible until the sun went down. If we could go about 5 or 6 miles this evening then we would only have to do about 14 miles per day to finish on September 11th - a bit of a push, but do-able. We were both a little bummed after we committed ourselves to leaving on the 4pm ferry because that meant we would never have a true zero day while hiking the JMT, which our bodies craved. On a more positive note, leaving at 4pm today meant that we would be hiking a reasonable number of miles per day for the remainder of the trip and that we would be able to finish the JMT as originally planned.
For the remainder of the day, we checked and re-checked our gear, I showered again (thinking this was my last shower for 9 days), we ate lunch and hung out near the VVR restaurant. I can't lie, my mood for the rest of the afternoon was a little off. I was bummed that we may not see our hiking friends again, worried that we might not meet any fun, new people, disappointed that my injuries and our overall slowness in the beginning of our hike had pretty much eliminated our only true zero day left, upset that my leg still hurt me and I hadn't really had time to rest it as much as I wanted, and worried about starting the "hard part" of the trail (see the elevation profile at the top of this post). What if this really was my last shower for 9 days? Would my hair fall out? Can we really pull off an average of 14 miles per day from here on out? What if one of us gets hurt or sick and there isn't a bail-out point for miles and miles? Will we be able to make it 5ish miles including a 2,000 foot elevation gain in 2 hours tonight? That's faster than we've ever hiked on this trail so far!... I need a beer.
After stepping off the ferry around 4:45 that evening, we were asked to see our permit by a Forest Ranger. He looked at our permit for a long time and then asked Aaron if he had any family that lived near him (his last name and address were on the permit). As it turned out, the Forest Ranger who checked our permit also worked another job with Aaron's cousin who lives a few blocks from our house - what a small world! He promised to tell Aaron's cousin that we were alive and well when he next saw him. How neat!
Nearing the base of our evening climb we bumped into two hikers going the opposite direction, and one of the hikers happily stated that there were 57 switchbacks to the top... Oh boy. Regardless of the seemingly endless number of switchbacks (we counted 60), we successfully made it over the top and only had to hike by headlamp for about a half hour. Overall, not too bad for a two hour power-hiking session.
You can enlarge any of these pictures by clicking on them.
great Blog Rose
ReplyDelete