Day 33, Tuesday, March 26. TM 577.3—(10.8 miles)

The alarm always rings too early on the day we are leaving town. I didn’t get near the work done I would have liked too. I still have some food reviews to complete and a couple of articles I want to finish for the Trek, but they’ll have to wait for a few more days. As long as I keep up with this blog, at a minimum, I’ll be happy. Last year on the AT, once we started hiking with Good Chip Norris, I really fell behind and just kept some notes and filled in the details later. 

We all met for breakfast around 7:30. Young Kevin joined us since Wolf had scheduled Dalton to pick us up at 8. We were all complaining about how heavy our packs were because we are carrying 7 days of food and lots of water. We don’t run across a water source for nearly 17 miles once we get on the trail. After that one, we go another 19 before the next source. We are entering one of the driest sections of the entire trail. 

As soon as we got dropped off, I started falling further and further behind. We did see the register where Cheryl Strayed signed in in ‘98 which was kind of cool, but other than that, I was in a down mood. I couldn’t even keep up with Bunny. Kevin had asked how far we planned to go today. When I said just a little over 10, he kind of laughed. Now he and Ivy were completely out of sight. I could catch an occasional glimpse of Wolf, but he was pulling away as well. I was completely bummed out. 

Bunny and I stopped for a break after 2 hours of hiking and we checked our progress. We had climbed 1500’ and gone 4.3 miles with overloaded packs. We weren’t actually doing that bad. Each of us had carried out a piece of fruit to eat as a snack which we did. I had made up my mind to tell everyone to go ahead and ditch us because we didn’t want to hold them up when they were all so much faster than us. I looked up and saw a sobo hiker and waved “hi” to him. It was Kevin. 

This couldn’t be good. He must have left something behind. He told us that his leg was killing him with every step. He described what he was feeling and I knew exactly what was wrong because the same thing had happened to me last year coming down Carter Notch. There is an all or nothing muscle that works with your knee and it doesn’t give any warning when it’s about to fail, it just does. Kevin had stressed this when he hiked 27 miles into Hiker Town trying to catch us. 

In my case, Good Chip Norris had an ace bandage he had gotten from the hospital emergency room when the copperhead snake bit him and died. Luckily, Peter and Marcia were hiking up to meet us on the way into Gorham, NH (yes, I’m talking about the AT). Marcia worked my knee over and bandaged me up. The relief was immediate with the pressure from the ace bandage. I just needed to take it easy on my leg to give it time to recover. This is when we slack packed for 8 days. 

Kevin wisely decided to head back down to Tehachapi to see if a few days rest might help. If it does, he might try to rejoin us, but I don’t think he will. My guess is that he is going to take more time off to fully recover. He wasn’t really happy about all the flip/flopping we are doing. He said it kills the point of a thru-hike (which I agree with, but realize we don’t have a choice since we aren’t capable of sustaining a 20 mile/day pace). I do think we’ll see him again, but when he is passing us as a sobo. I think he’s going to head up to Seattle and wait until the snow melts then thru-hike from Canada to Mexico. I’ve been giving this concept a lot of thought for us on the CDT. 

It was sad to say goodbye to Kevin. We hadn’t really gotten to hike with him. He’s a good kid and I feel sorry for him, but I know he’ll be fine. He’s got a good head on his shoulders. It proved something to me, though. Not everything is as it seems out here on the trail. I thought everyone else was doing so much better than me, but they can hide their problems and keep quiet about them. Bunny and I can’t and don’t do that. We whine out loud all the time. We really have no right to when a double amputee is hiking the PCT this year, GCN hiked the AT last year in near constant pain from his knees rubbing bone on bone, and a blind guy, Daredevil, passed us in the Smokies like we were standing still. 

We decided to just hike our own pace. More than likely, our tramily is going to break up when we get to Walker Pass. Ivy has to go home for a week or two to finalize paperwork with the military. Wolf is probably going to go home for a while to let some snow melt if San Jacinto is not passable in a week. It’s sad, but we went through multiple tramilies last year. We’ve just got to keep pushing on. 

When we got to camp, Ivy and Wolf had their tents up and were relaxing. They both were feeling a bit beat up from today even if it was just 10 miles. The extra weight is getting to all of us. At supper, we worked out a plan for the next couple of days to get us back into an area of trail with more water. We need to do a couple 16ish mile days and then we’ll be fine. Our food load will be less and we won’t have to be carrying multiple liters of water. Ivy decided to play devil’s advocate—“What if there’s no water in 6 miles like Guthook says?” We’ll just be in a heap of shit then and shit is one of my specialties. I’ve got this. 

EFG