A first on this trip, I got up TWICE to pee. It appears that the scarcity of water has motivated me to drink past dehydration. The sky was still clear both times I got up. Around 2 I was awoke from the earth violently shaking. Not another earthquake! We’ve already been through a 6.1 in South Lake Tahoe. To my immense relief, I just had to give Bunny the benefit of the doubt that she was right all along. I do fart in my sleep. All my stomach pain was gone. Testicular cancer? Come on Bunny!
When we turned the InReach back on, we had a message from Bear that we were in the clear from fires. The closet fire was a new one around Lake Isabella but it was still small in size. The smoke must have been from the Dixie Fire.
Once again, the trail was ours alone, at least for first 9 miles. That’s when we ran into a group of four older guys suffering from testosterone unawareness (or younger man testosterone envy—the diagnosis is quite tricky). It was probably a mixture of both. The lead hiker, the first we crossed, was of the latter. He had convinced 3 friends to hike from Kennedy Meadows to Tuolumne Meadows in 2 weeks. All four were from low altitude locations heading straight the Sierra without any acclimatization time. By the time we passed the 4th hiker, he realized he was done for after 2 days on the trail and was planning on getting off ASAP. My guess is the lead old guy will probably make it, but will injure himself in the process. The other 3 will wise up along the way, or slow down.
The second group was just a couple of overweight men from WA. They had planned to start at Walker Pass but switched to Kennedy Meadows because of water and heat. They had more realistic expectations for mileage and speed and I predict they will have a more successful hike.
The morning was 1600’ of easy incline, marking the last time we will go over 10,500’. The fighter jets were out again today trying to up their soil counts. Bunny was dragging a bit, but I didn’t really notice because I was dragging more. She has definitely gotten stronger since we started this trip. My cardio is still far from ideal.
Easy afternoon doesn’t quite fit the bill. It was a very pleasant downhill all the way to the Kern River. There were several nice camping spots in the woods on the south bank. We had a stone cooking area adjacent to the camp and easy access to great water. Things are looking much better.
Our food supply has turned out to be perfect for 10 days. The extra couple of meals Lev gave us took off any edge we might have felt otherwise. We should walk into Kennedy Meadows tomorrow carrying less than a pound of food.
I came up with a plan to finish at Walker Pass. If we leave KMS late Saturday and hike 7 miles, we can camp on the Kern River for the night. The next day we can hike 15 miles to the BLM camp which has a water spicket. Our only option after than is to hike 17 miles to the supposedly, uranium contaminated (plenty of people have left messages on Guthook that they drank it and their urine didn’t glow after) water source. That would leave us an easy 11 miles out to Walker Pass.
Where have the cows gone? When we dropped down to the Kern River Valley, more or less leaving the Sierra, we had come into private ranch land and saw cows mingling. We saw them in the distance, but as we approached, they ran away. We had seen a herd of 30 head on the other side of the bridge, but now they have all vanished. They must have had some bad hiker hunger experience in the past and are avoiding all hikers. Just as well, we haven’t had a good steak in a long time.
EFG