In the last 3 days, I have betrayed every belief I’ve held since birth. I’ve eaten mushrooms, tuna, shrimp, and eggs. Yes, it is very clear, even to me, that I am traveling with the wrong crowd. The connection as to why I dislike the first 3 is very clear: shit. Mushrooms grow in it and sea creatures swim in it and filter it through their gills. I dislike eggs because I was raised Catholic and Catholics hate abortion in any form. Eggs are merely chicken abortions and I cannot condone it (with the exception of the rooster raping the hen).
Bear woke us up at 7. I found it hard to believe that Sassy was up, but I watched her stagger along behind him clearly disoriented. When I saw her again, she had successfully fired her first shot of the day. I only mention this because right before we left Shelter Cove near 10, Sassy fired a second shot. She’s back!
We met at the store/restaurant where 3 of us ordered the recommended breakfast burrito (with eggs where I began my descent to hell) while Bunny was the outlier ordering pancakes and bacon. Bear spent the entire time trying to figure out how to address a bounce box of food to Fish Lake. The only address he has is a mile marker on a highway and they only accept UPS shipments. Bear is persistent. His 40+ years of working for NASA are finally paying off. He broke the code and successfully entered an address that the UPS website would accept.
Finally on the trail, we noticed a strange phenomenon. Every 100’ of elevation change, we noticed that a horse dropped a load of ballast. This went on for 1600’ of elevation change. This was more precise clockwork than Sassy who can’t decide if she is firing a single barrel or double barrel. Finally, when we got to 6600’ we saw a rather large man and woman each carrying a saddle. Either the horses completely disintegrated carrying their massive loads, or they finally broke under the pressure and the couple ate them. They had a very scared dog with them that was convinced he was next. He ran towards us begging assistance but the couple approached us as well. I was scared. Normally, I won’t leave a dog in need, but I knew it was him or us. I kicked in the afterburners and we headed uphill to freedom.
We stopped for a snack at a nice snow melt stream. There was enough flow to filter and fill our bottles while we did the mosquito slap dance. Up to this point, I had not had any problem with skeeters, but everyone else was complaining about them. Bunny had bought some new eucalyptus repellant and it seemed to be working.
The only climb we had today was now behind us. We’ve got just 50 miles to our next resupply point at Diamond Lake Lodge. Bunny and Bear checked and we had phone service, so I called the Lodge to see if we could get rooms for Tuesday night. We are now committed to at least three 15+ mile days to make our reservation. We decided to kick up the mileage we had planned for today. We were thinking of just doing 12 because of our late start but decided to push for 17. Bunny was easy to convince once we showed her the penis in Summit Lake sticking out into the water and large enough for 4 tents. She wanted that penis and was off in a flash.
I was running to try to catch up with her. It was 6.5 miles to go and she was like a horse heading for the barn. Trying to keep up with her reminded me of Shaun Perks on the Camino when he got a taste for a beer about mid-afternoon. No one could keep up with him. Bunny started knocking out 18 minute miles. That’s 3.33 mph. The only other time we’ve gone that fast was after our escape from the serial killer last year in Washington.
We made it to camp in just a tad over 2 hours. We just couldn’t maintain the pace all the way. Bunny was afraid that nobos would beat us to the site. When we arrived, there was only one other sobo couple we had met last night just starting to set up. We picked our spots and set up our tents. The sketos weren’t completely overbearing, but we knew they would get bad as soon as the sun started going down and the breeze stopped. It was apparent we were going to be eating in our tents once again.
There was enough of a reprieve for us to wash off in the lake, get water, filter some and boil what we needed before being forced into the tent. I did pee before heading inside in the hopes of buying time for the little bastards to die down after dark before I have to get out again. There is a steady high pitched hum of thousands of bloodsuckers just outside of our tent. Bunny is flipping around like a fish out of water. She didn’t get in a preemptive pee before heading in.
EFG