Day 68- June 26th

-----Read Me-----

Alright guys, if this is the first update you've seen for a while, go back to the 14th of June. I just posted the last 13 days today! Enjoy!

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Today was day three of hanging out at Crabtree Meadow, our second zero here. Claire was feeling a bit better this morning so after waking up and making us some breakfast I decided to stretch my legs and go on a little day hike.

I have a paper map of the John Muir trail and some surrounding trails and on it I found a small hike nearby out to Crabtree Lakes, 6 miles round trip from where we were. I packed my empty backpack with only the essentials: some food, water, water filter, mosquito headnet, and my rainwear because mosquitos can't bite through them. 

It felt really amazing to have a 5 or 6 lb. weight on your back instead of a 45 lb. one. From Crabtree I took the John Muir Trail down to a part of the PCT we hadn't walked yet. That led me back down to the beautiful meadow and stream that we crossed to get up to Crabtree.

From there I took a faint trail which I hoped was the one up to the lakes. It was a very hard path to follow; many times it would disappear and leave me wandering around for a little while trying to find it. Eventually I climbed my way out of the valley and met up with a broader, slightly more well marked trail which I knew was the one.

Early on my hike I saw 3 marmots and a deer. There were tons of mosquitos as I passed small swampy lakes in the way up and hoped that the ones even further were not of the same sort. Boy was I surprised! Here's the first actual lake I came across after about 5 miles.

At this point on my map the trail ended. But, the trail most definitely continued on off paper. I followed a series of little waterfalls which led me up to a second beautiful lake:

I was in awe and walked around half the thing, climbing wayyyyy up next to the snowy mountain to get some more views:

Oh man. It didn't stop there. I skirted the length of the lake and the trail kept going! Very faint it weaved through the next marshy land and just kept going and going. As the trail kept on so did I. Sometimes I would lose it and start rock climbing over ledges and cliffs, getting closer to what I thought might be another lake... And every time it was! There must've been 5 or 6 lakes while my map just showed 3!

I climbed up and up, breathtaking views over every ledge, cliff, or waterfall. I ended up way in the back of the valley, about 7 miles away from where I started! There was a beautiful lake with a towering rocky mountain jutting up on its flanks. I've never seen anything so breathtaking...

I took a TON of pictures, here are some of my favorites from my "small" day hike, which turned out to be 12 miles instead of the planned 6!

Knotty stained trees all around...

Water so deep blue...

Waterfalls left and right...

Looking back towards where I came from

It was such a lifting, enjoyable experience; better than anything I've yet experienced on the actual PCT. And waaaaaay less people! 

I saw no one the entire time up to the 3rd lake. There I met some weekend get-awayers that gave me a bunch of food because someone in their party had bailed out on their hike and they had too much food. I also briefly saw and chatted with a family of 6 who was doing an intense backpacking trip from the next pass south, which was leading them down where I was coming up.

And that was it. Nothing else out there except me and the marmots and deer and mountain lion poop and bear tracks. Nothing except the sound of rushing water feeding the picture perfect lakes and occasionally big ice chunks breaking off the snowy peak and crashing down below. It was AMAZING.

Back at camp everything was fine. Claire was feeling a little better, I was happy and excited about the hike, making me feel MUCH better about our current situation. We had a little bit more food thanks to the other hikers, which helped relieve our dire food situation. I even met with the ranger and he gave me a written exception so we could go down Whitney Portal tomorrow legally!

Some bad news: A few days earlier, I thought I had gotten a mosquito bite on my ankle because it was bothering me and hurting and rubbing against the shoe tongue when going downhill. After resting it felt better and I didn't think of it again. 

Today once I got to the top and started going down, it became very painful and the pain multiplied and shot up my shin with every step. Back at camp after taking of my shoes and resting for a few minutes, I tried to stand up and walk around and I couldn't! We're thinking tendinitis or (hopefully not) a shin splint.. :(

This comes at a very bad time as we HAVE to leave this mountain tomorrow, and the way up is almost 3,000 feet in 5.6 miles, and then down 6,000 feet in 9.4 miles.. I also packed all the heavy items into my bear can to give Claire some relief. As she still has almost nothing in her stomach except for some crackers and soup that we made tonight for dinner.

Tomorrow will be a struggle for both of us to say the least, but we have to do what we have to do. And like I said before this is ironically the shortest and "easiest" way out of here....

We'll leave here tomorrow at 6:30am and hopefully be in Lone Pine by tomorrow night. Wish us luck.

-Thanks for reading!