11 nights in a row without getting up to pee. I think it’s safe to say, I’m dehydrated. I don’t feel bad. In some ways, it’s kind of nice. Bunny is already trying to get me to change my off-trail salt habits to put salt on watermelon and cantaloupe. She likes the new me…too weak to argue back.
Sassy started out nauseated and it went downhill from there. She’s having the same symptoms I had last week. I had narrowed it down to a combination of 7 factors: poor fitness, over weight, age, altitude, heat, electrolyte imbalance, trail nutrition. Only 3 of these factors are the same for Sassy: heat, nutrition, electrolytes. To the untrained health professional cum trail expert of all things unasked for, I have diagnosed her problem.
Sassy got gluten slipped to her in town last week when we went out for Italian food. The symptoms didn’t appear until we were on the trail the next day. It was too late for her. She has terrible diarrhea for most of the day where she lost lots of electrolytes in the process. Our usual trail diets are too low in caloric content to make up for the loss, so she couldn’t rebound. Instead, the heat caused her to get worse to the point of mild heat sickness. She displayed symptoms of nausea followed by dry heaves to eventually vomiting up liquid in her stomach. Because of her nausea, she didn’t want to eat, which just compounded matters. (Also, she got a bit testy about talking about it, so we just offered what advice we could without igniting her kick-boxer instincts). At this point, she just needs to make it off trail and get food and then she’ll rebound.
I came up with a trail designation for this instance—“Sicilian Sourdough Started Sassy’s Severely Sickly Seventy.” From henceforth, we will refer to this section of trail from Echo Lake to Kennedy Meadows North as “sssssss.” That is, assuming Sassy survives to Kennedy Meadows. If she doesn’t, we will be forced to shun all offers of sourdough cheese bread from Italians for the rest of our days (we love Sassy, but we don’t want to be too harsh in our response to her memory. We will accept sourdough cheese bread from all other ethnic groups—she would have wanted it that way).
The trail wasn’t terrible today if you weren’t dehydrated and weakened from sourdough exposure. For Sassy, it was a series of 3 mile hells. We stopped every 3 miles to get water and cool off. Bunny and I would soak our sun shirts in water which kept us cool for over an hour of sun exposure. Sassy tried this a day or two ago, but it didn’t work for her.
Late in the day, we met a 3 generation family with 4 kids ages 6, 8, 12, 14. We stopped and chatted with a very inquisitive 6 year old who was fascinated by the whole hiking experience. The mom used to go by “Sassy” when she was young. Grandpa, who was 71, may not have wanted us to know his age, but the young guy was on a roll.
We made one last stop for water before our last moderate climb of 700’. All was well (except for Sassy, just accept that she is feeling like crap until Kennedy Meadows), until we hit a steep portion of climb on a trail with loose rocks. This is the worst case for her hip. Bunny’s hip started throbbing which caused her to wobble and go slow. We told Bear and Sassy to go ahead to find a campsite.
Bunny was in terrible pain and on the verge of tears. We weren’t hiking even a mile per hour. I made her stop and get out the CBD/THC cream and apply it to her hip. While she was doing that, I took out as much weight from her pack and added it to mine. This far into the hike, I had less than two days of food so I had plenty of room and my pack was feeling light.
Once we started the long downhill (1000’ to our camp) Bunny got distracted by the sun hitting the opposite valley wall. This got her mind off her hip and gave the cream a chance to work. She realized she was moving better and we were able to pick up our pace. As it was, we didn’t make it to camp until after 8. Bear and Sassy had left signs on the trail to let us know where to find them. We had just enough time to set up and cook before it got dark.
While we were coming down, Bunny began to lament that she didn’t know how she’d be able to keep up if we tried to do bigger days if she couldn’t even handle a 13 mile hike. I didn’t have heart to tell she had already done more than 14 miles. Bear and I only let out information on an “as needed” basis. Both women have access to Guthook. Our (Bear and me) goal was to get in a 15+ mile day today, if possible, to get us into striking distance of Kennedy Meadows tomorrow. Both women only asked us how much further to go and neither one thought to ask how far we had already gone.
While we were eating, Sassy said that was the hardest 13 miles she’d done. I looked at Bear and he pretended deafness. Like an idiot, I said “keep going.” Sassy said “14.” I said “further.” Bear finally spoke up and said “Let’s check the gut…15.3 miles.” Sassy said just a single word “assholes.” When she went to the tent, I told Bear not to mention the 2500’ climb we start with in the morning. Neither woman was in the shape to hear that until we’re about 700’ into it tomorrow. They know how to use Guthook, but choose to trust us.
EFG