The Walking Dom

Jul 4

Jul 4 Your work out is my warm up!

Mile 906 / KM 1458
Independence to Mammoth Lakes

Song of the day: "Fan the flames" by Sheer Mag
I miss: Bubbley drinks, bubbely drinks, bubbely drinks... and maybe Raspberry Martinis...

In the past two weeks I've experienced some intense ups and downs, both emotionally and physically. I have somehow managed to go over 8 passes in 6 days which means I can crush your leg day with a thought.

All the passes were beautiful and the Sierras are truly worth seeing, but you need to put some work into it, that's for sure. (I secretly still think BC is way prettier, but I wouldn't say that out loud here). Some of the passes are steeper and more technical than others, but surprisingly the most gradual one was the hardest for me: Muir Pass. I seriously almost lost my mind up there. When you reach the top you've still have 3ish miles of snow covered mountain to go down. I got to the top way to late in the day; normally you want to be over a pass before 11am, otherwise you might end up post holing for hours or you'll be sliding around on slushy snow which was the case for me. It was awful. The sun was beating down on me and it felt like being back in the desert. Other than that, lots of exciting good things have happened: I had an encounter with a coyote, I slept in bear country all by myself for the first time and survived, I crossed about a 1000 rivers and only fell in once and I met some new fantastic people out here. The trail has a way of picking you up when you're at your low point. Just when you're about to give up someone usually comes along and saves the day by being awesome. One night I descided to take an alternate route because of a high river crossing further down the PCT. I ended up walking through a quiet medow and meadows always make me nervous because if I was a bear I would totally hang out there. It's warm and cozy and most of the time there's a river flowing through with tons of fish in it and occasionally a snack sized blonde strolls along. So as I was walking along the river I started yelling Mariah Carey songs. That usually does the trick and scares away every living creature. In my head I was preparing to walk another 2 miles further to set up camp where the path would meet up again with the PCT, but then I came around the corner and I saw smoke coming up behind a big rock. Behind it sat Peter and his son Ken and their dog Sunny. They had just started a fire and had set up camp there and invited me to camp with them. We ended up chatting for hours and the night turned out to be absolutely lovely rather than deadly.