Day 50 The full title of this post should be “Onion Valley Campground or how a broken USB cable got me stuck in Independence and going to the toilet got me out of there“, but that’s too long for the system. Anyway, I had been to and fro about staying another night in Bishop or hitting the trail today but now felt more for getting back, so things had to move quickly for that to…
Day 49 Today so much happened, but I’m not going to say that so much happened that I don’t know how to start, because chronologically would be a good way, but after this meta discussion, I thought what the heck, let’s embrace the post modern non chronological storytelling and cut to the end. It ends with me eating dried cranberries, drinking a glass of riesling, and listening to Explosions in the Skies from the speaker…
Day 48 My alarm blasted me out of my comfortable sleep way too early. I had prepared most of the things I needed to climb Mount Whitney, which was the aim of the day and left my tent and everything that I didn’t need in there to be pick up when I got back from the ascent. While Mount Whitney isn’t part of the PCT, many or perhaps the majority of hikers choose to take…
Day 47 Early in the morning, as I got out of my tent in the pitch darkness to get my bear canister, I suddenly heard loud howling from a group of animals. I do not know if these were wolves or dogs and didn’t expect either here. Neither did I know how far away they were. It could be reflections from across the valley or something much closer. Needless to say, my pulse went up…
Day 46 As per usual, I got up before the sun, but today it was unusually dark because the moon wasn’t up. Living in cities it is easy to forget how much light it really makes. As a result the stars were extraordinarily bright. It was also quite cold but I slept well (wearing two pairs of long johns). I couldn’t help thinking a bit about bears while trying to fall asleep, though. I took…
Day 45 Last night when I got back to my tent, one of my shoes from the first pair were missing. They had been sitting outside the tent, and it seemed nowhere to be found in the dark. On the other hand I found another shoe under a nearby tree that had been chewed up by some domestic or feral animal. Hmm. I therefore postponed getting up to next day in order have the morning…
Day 44 If you have been reading the blog you probably already know most of the deal of a zero day: Laundry, resupply, showering etc. Today was mostly about that, though it took quite a bit of effort. I had ordered some stuff from REI, and on the shipping label, my name was basically cut off, so it was difficult and we (e.g. me and one of the employees at the general store) very nearly…
Day 43 Today, I was off to a rough start as I woke up to serious pains in the right side of my hip whenever I moved. I had had this in a much, much lesser degree in the beginning of days since Tehachapi. One would think it would be from the hip joint based on the location, but it is actually a bursa (slime sack) that has gotten inflamed on the outside of the…
Day 42 As usual I got up early to beat the heat. Today I was hiking by 3:30 am after way too little sleep. I started noticing that the landscape was changing as there came more and more exposed rocks signifying that we were near the Sierras. At around eleven I had my second breakfast and afterwards wanted to go the next stretch. It was a 550m (1800 feet) ascent, which again would not be…
Day 41 As mentioned before you can only get to the trail three times a week by bus here from Ridgecrest, so instead of having to take two zeros and wait until Wednesday to get back to the trail I did what in hiking terminology would be called a “nero”, which is a day where you do nearly zero miles. So I checked out as late as possible from my hotel, wen to do a…