On the nature of this "trip"...stuck in our tent yesterday for most of the day, we talked about what to call this soujourn into the wilderness. Is it a vacation? Maddie will argue strongly that it is not, evidenced by her statement during yesterday's deluge, "if this is a vacation, then I need a vacation from this vacation." I suppose for some, it is indeed a vacation. And truth be told, I feel like it's a unique one for myself. We both agreed that it's more of a challenge than anything. Regardless, we could not be happier to be testing ourselves on this adventure.
Back to the day's events. As per our plan, Maddie woke up at 5:30 to check the morning weather. It gusted and rained off and on throughout the night, to the point that one of our stakes came loose, requiring me to scramble outside and rectify the situation in a rather zombie-like fashion. It felt like the middle of the night, but Maddie humorously informed me that it was only around 10:30. Oh being on mother nature's clock. So when 5:30 rolled around, I was delighted when Maddie told me it was cloudy and there was a sort of residual drizzle...let's call it a drizzidual. This is not to be confused with a thick drizzle, or thrizzle, often the harbinger of an intense downpour. I flat out refused to vacate my cozy cacoon with a drizzidual outside, so we delayed our departure by an hour.
We basically ended up leaving around the same time as several other groups. As our hiking clothes were still quite wet, we put them on last and booked it up the trail to keep ourselves warm. It's too bad we were confined to our tent for so much of the last 16 hours because Evolution Lake is stunning, definitely one of my favorite spots so far. On that subject, if you were curious what my favorite spots were so far, I'll give you my top 3, knowing that the list could very well change over the ensuing 9 days.
1) Lake Virginia
2) Marie Lake
3) Evolution Lake (followed closely by Garnet)
There was a low level anxiety to the morning's hiking, as I really did not want to be caught heading up a pass in a ligtning storm. For the time being, though, the sun was poking through patchy gray clouds enough to keep us moving. It was a relatively slow climb because the trail was really rocky and taxing on Maddie's heel. We managed to keep a steady pace to the top without the interruption of any temperamental weather. At the top of Muir Pass sits the famous Muir Hut, a stone hut built in John Muir's honor. It was some sort of peace of mind having a structure in which to hide during a potential storm, but it was a bit crowded and smelled funky. With the promise of cell service atop the pass, I wandered everywhere, even scrambling an additional 100 feet or so up the nearest ridge in search of reception. My efforts were futile after having diligently conserved my battery for the entire morning. Disappointed, we sat down to enjoy lunch while marmots cased the area surreptitiously. Sneaky little guys...
With boots tightened, and a solid lunch of bars, jerky, chocolate, almonds, and dried fruit, we set off down the other side of Muir Pass. Despite some incredible scenery of desolate mountains and lakes, it was one of the slowest going, unrelenting, rockiest sections we've hit thus far. With dark clouds covering most of the sky, we figured it was only a matter of time before we got drenched for a third day in a row. To our delight and surprise, the rain stayed away...for a while.
The 3000+ foot descent to Le Conte Canyon got moderately easier as we went along, but consulting our maps, we clearly weren't going very fast. Our goal was to get to Little Pete Meadow, but between our fatigue and an inexplicable spell of nausea for me, we called it quits at a campsite 1.7 miles away. We settled down and I went to make dinner of dehydrated tomato sauce and corn pasta. Let me just say again, as with the oatmeal, how much food preparation for this trip is a labor of love. The time and effort to dehydrate these planned meals is impressive, and when they work out, you feel very proud. But when they suck, well, it's a bummer. Tonight's dinner falls into the, it sucked so badly I've never had so much difficulty choking something down in my life category. The whole endeavor was of the let's-wing-it variety, as I didn't have two separate cooking vessels to both cook the pasta and rehydrate the sauce. This required me to get creative, and we both agreed I took the best approach of par-cooking the pasta, and rehydrating the sauce to finish cooking the pasta. To put it gently, it was an abomination. The pasta got gummy, the sauce didn't quite fully rehydrate, and a nasty scorched mixture of sauce and pasta stuck to the bottom of the pan, making clean up impastable (I'm all about the made up words today). But we got it down and I chased it with a tortilla filled with vanilla almond butter. Luckily the rest of our meals are pre-made and with directions. To add insult to injury, by the way, it started to drizzle shortly into the cooking process. I would say that tonight's dinner makes me want even more all those things I've dreamt about for so long now, but honestly, I can't think about food. In fact, I don't even like typing the word food right now. Yikes!
Le Conte Canyon looked beautiful on the way down and we had some incredible views. Although one of the buggiest spots we've chosen, our nice spot by the river is peaceful. All in all, we are feeling pretty good. My back is starting to ache after the long days of hiking, but it's nothing too hindering. Really looking forward to getting back to physical therapy when I'm home! I've tried doing some exercises out here, but it's generally pretty difficult to muster the energy after a grueling day.
We're really looking forward to seeing Matt in a few days. I sure hope that our lack of correspondence today doesn't worry anybody after we told them we were likely to get service over Muir Pass (John, I hope you convince my mom not to call the parks services for a rescue mission). I'd say morale is solid, despite the letdown of not being able to talk to family, and we are looking forward to our climb up the Golden Staircase tomorrow afternoon. It's time for bed here, so goodnight everyone and hope all is well!
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