Start: 0630 - near Cow Creek
End: 1730 - near Diaz Creek
Miles (today): 21.5
Miles (cumulative): 765 (657.5 PCT, 89.5 alternate, 18 off)
Hot hands are heavy but totally worth carrying - it gets pretty chilly up here! I also love my lined running pants (I guess they are hiking pants now), my puffy gloves, and my hat. :) It's not chilly the entire day but when you get up in elevation that wind can be brutal!
Hiking in the Sierras is wonderful and weird. One minute I'm hot, then I'm cold, then I'm both (I love the sensation of the hot sun on my skin mixed with a cold breeze). None of it matters when I look at the views, though - then I forget about being hot or cold for a while.
We hiked up to around 11,000 feet (from 8,500) and are now back down to 9,600 feet. So far the uphills and downhills aren't too bad - we'll see how long I'm able to say that as this IS just the beginning after all.
The trail felt really busy all day and it seemed particularly crazy this morning - I was constantly looking back to make sure I wasn't in someone's way. I'm not sure how I feel about this, it sort-of gets in the way of finding my 'zone'.
We still can't get all our food to fit inside our bear canisters. Last night we hung the extra food from a tree; Tonight there isn't a good tree from which to hang anything, so all the extra food is in one of those sacs that are supposed to contain odors and I'm using it for a pillow. I'm perfectly ok with this - last night I felt very uncomfortable being so far away from my food (you are supposed to leave the bear canisters away from your tent), so sleeping with some of it makes me feel better. Seriously, the thought of not having any food stresses me out a little. In the desert I was worried about my water, here I'm worried about my food. Like I said, this is like a completely different trail!
We saw several F-18s (at least that's what Nick thinks they are) flying pretty close to us all day - it was amazing!
Along the trail:
saw this nailed to a tree - weird and cool
