It was delightfully cold last night. I even put my socks on. I contemplated zipping up the foot box of my quilt, but I couldn’t work up the motivation to do it once I was already horizontal. I justified it to myself by saying that the next night would be hot anyway, so there was no use it spending the 30 seconds doing it up for one night. Ridiculous, I know.
It was so cold in the morning I donned my fleece, again. I had bought myself a treat in town for breakfast one day: 3 glazed donuts. They weren’t getting any younger, and it was our first day out of town, the best time to eat the big/heavy stuff. I’d go back to my 4 pain au chocolates/day for the other days in this section. I was a little worried because donuts aren’t exactly known for making you ready for endurance activities but the temptation to deviate from monotony was too great.
The first two went down fine. I really only ate the last one because I brought it. It kept me full for quite a while. I’m glad I had them, but I’m glad I’ve got something a little less sweet for the rest of the days.
I didn’t catch this, but apparently the two French people we camped with last night commented multiple times on the sizes of our food bags. Specifically that they were large. I’d like to think our friend Brandon back home would be proud since his was always much bigger than ours on the PCT last year. In any case, I had no words for our emaciated French friends other than, “yep.” We’re still losing weight, and I’m packing close to 3,500 calories per day. To be fair, some days I don’t feel like eating it all, but I don’t think we’re bringing too much food.
Today’s walk was actually pretty great. A quick, 30 minute climb to start the day and then a descent that started off typical but then dumped us on a dirt road for a while, a welcome surprise. After the road we had a well designed trail! It was pretty smooth and relatively gently graded. It was also in the shade by a river. Where have you been, excellent trail?!
We descended something like 4,000ft, down to a village where we couldn’t find a trash can. Apparently there was cell service there, and shoutout to my friends who I now know read the blog, Paul and Ragnhild. You guys rock. Anyway, we descended down only to have to climb up the same 4,000ft on another mountain. Before that though we got to walk a paved road a bit. Unfortunately almost none of the climbing happened on the paved road.
The climb started off steep and while I was immediately on the lookout for a place to dunk my shirt in the water, I’m not sure why. When I did find a stream, I took off my pack and my shirt was almost entire saturated with sweat anyway. Well whatever, I dunked it in water, ringed it out, and put it back on. I would now also benefit from evaporative cooling on my hood.
3,000ft into the climb, we decided to break for lunch. We sat in the shade, rather than by the river in the sun, knowing that the sun takes a lot more out of you than the river gives back. After lunch, I knew I’d be sluggish as that food bomb I just dropped in my stomach vied for blood with my muscles as I walked uphill. I drank more water to help the digestion process along, but all I could really do is wait.
I thought there was only one trail going uphill, so I didn’t bother to check my map, as I followed various cairns up the mountain. We seemed to be heading in approximately the right direction. When I did check I found we had ascended the adjacent valley. Our options for correcting were:
- Continue on our wrong path, which supposedly met up with our trail anyway, but about which we had no information.
- Go back downhill to where we made the mistake and take the right trail.
- Try to traverse over the wall of the wrong valley into the right one.
It was really between the first and the last one as we couldn’t bring ourselves to descend the few hundred feet we’d just gone up, even if they were in the wrong direction. Hiking gain is like a precious resource, once you’ve earned it you don’t just go throwing it away. We didn’t know if the traverse would work but as we kept pushing forward, we never found ourselves blocked. Eventually we rejoined the trail and it was a quick climb up to the pass.
From the pass we could see our future campsite immediately below us. It was a refreshingly easy pass to descend and we had some lakes to ourselves, save for a few cows. It was around 3:30 when we first arrived and we talked about continuing on for the day. We didn’t need to, this is all we had to do for the day, for our current food reserves, and to hit our deadline. We decided we’d stay since we’d done our whole day and finishing the hike earlier doesn’t really do us any good.
I went for a swim, got hot, went for another swim, and got hot again. There was no shade anywhere. We went looking for some and ended up back where we started. I tried to curl up next to a rock in the sliver of available shade that I didn’t fit into at all. I fell asleep for almost an hour which will probably mean I’ll be up during the night. As it got past 18:00 we pitched the tent, but not before performing some half hearted stretching on the ground sheet. We then made dinner, which was chickpea pasta with an aged hard cheese, olive oil, and roasted red peppers. It was much better than cous cous and a welcome change from our usual ramen, instant mashed potatoes, and cheese we normally eat. Unfortunately it wasn’t filling enough, so I supplemented with Biscoff biscuits. Or are they called cookies? They’re rectangles, shaped like biscuits. I threw away the packaging so I can’t check, but I’m laying down writing this and if you learned anything about me and laying down is that once it happens, I’m not getting up again. Not until tomorrow. Or I have to pee.