Day 16

Day's start: Lake Marjorie
Day's end: Lower Rae Lake
Day's miles: 13.9 miles
Total trip miles: 174.6 miles

Happy Birthday Aaron!!!!
Today is Aaron's birthday, so we slept in a little bit this morning. When we got moving, the climb up to the top of Pinchot Pass wasn't even that bad! Birthday miracle! Along the way we ran into a two man hiking team who had super lightweight, hand-made looking packs. In between taking loads of pictures, we managed to make it to the top of Pinchot about the same time as them.

Leaving behind Marjorie Lake

View from the top of Pinchot - the left of the picture is north facing, and the right is looking south where we are headed.

Didn't I write something on day 1 about how my white shirt was never going to be this white ever again... didn't lie.

 Beginning the descent after Pinchot Pass

After Pinchot, the better part of the morning and early afternoon was going to be downhill until we crossed the suspension bridge at Woods Creek, so I was gearing up for an easy day.
Didn't happen.
The first mile or two was pretty smooth going, and then the trail just turned into this ugly combination of steep switchbacks on large rocky boulders. Ugh. This really slowed us down a lot, which I found increasingly frustrating because we had to pull some big miles each of these last days of the trip if we wanted to finish on our planned day, and this was just slowing us up.

When we were about a mile or two from the suspension bridge this ugly trail got uglier. The tree cover tapered away, and soon we were left with just a rocky, wobbly, slow trail and lots of hot weather. I kept watching the map and tracking where we supposed to be, and we were just falling farther and farther behind where I had hoped we would be. Soon we came within one mile of the suspension bridge and saw on the map that we should be crossing a creek every 1/4 of a mile. Perfect. This way I could really keep track of where we were. After passing the first creek crossing, it was almost a half hour before crossing the next one. This meant our pace was about 1 mile per hour. That is sooo slow! I haven't felt this frustrated on the trip in... ever, I think.

We tried to pick up the pace, but by the time we passed the third creek crossing I realized we had fallen even farther behind (how is this possible?!). This was the one mile from hell! I couldn't take this downhill section with the boulders and the relentless sun anymore. I snapped. I was dirty, and tired, and hating how slow this section of trail was, so I started yelling about how I hated this trail and just wanted to go home. I tried to get moving even faster than before, determined to get this stupid mile over with, so I started running down the trail.
Big mistake.
In the middle of running, my foot (with the couple week old rolled ankle) stepped wrong off a rock and I rolled it. This time when I screamed, it was because my ankle hurt so bad I figured I had torn another ligament. I couldn't put weight on it and dropped to the ground. Aaron ran over and helped me move underneath a nearby tree, so at least I wouldn't have to be baked in the sun on top of all of this... To press the SOS button on the SPOT, or not?

We took our shoes off, elevated my foot, and settled in for a couple minute break. After about a half hour, I had cooled off a bit and tried standing on my foot. It was a little tender, but I could walk. I guess I just pulled on something that was still trying to heal? I'm not sure. After I knew I could hike again, we put our packs back on and walked around the corner and guess what we saw? That damn suspension bridge.

After crossing it, we bumped into the backpacking family and the two lightweight guys we had met this morning on Pinchot Pass. All of them said they had a lot of difficulty with this downhill section and that it was up for the "worst section of trail" award thus far. Good that I wasn't the only one who had a hard time with that section, but I should probably have just taken a few deep breaths instead of going so crazy I ended up hurting myself. Lesson learned. I'll try to be more patient from now on.

We took a good, long break near the creak and soaked our feet as long as we could stand the cold water before we got moving. We kept a steady pace going uphill, while watching some storm clouds roll closer. After passing the Baxter Pass trail about two miles later, the trail leveled out so we picked up the pace to try to race the storm and see how far we could get before we'd have to stop for the night.

Pretty Dollar Lake

 Storm clouds rolling in

We ended up making it to Lower Rae Lake before we set up camp for the day. We made our favorite dinner (ramen noodle soup with chicken and vegetables), split a brownie my parents had baked and shipped to us at Muir Trail Ranch, and had cocktails to celebrate Aaron's birthday. Also, I carried a light up "Celebrate!" pin (also shipped by my parents - thanks!), which Aaron sported for the better part of the evening. This was Aaron's third birthday in a row where we have been able to celebrate in the backcountry. Hopefully for the next one, I won't have such a crazy meltdown moment in the middle of it. Oops.

You can enlarge any of these pictures by clicking on them.