Day 9: Today Sucked.

May 19th, 2021

Mile Marker: 190.5

Miles Hiked Today: 18

So, to get it all out of the way, today was not my day.

Planner and I hardly slept any last night because around midnight a terrible wind came busting through. It jolted me up as I thought my tent and I were going to blow away just like we were in a tornado.

Thankfully that didn’t happen, but I found myself waking up every hour or so to make sure I was in fact, still on the ground.

Around 5:30 we decided to get up and hurriedly packed our belongings before they blew away and headed up the trail with pits in our stomach. We knew we were fast approaching the “rock slide” that occurred this year and from what the hiker said last night we were not excited.

As we hiked on the trail and looked ahead it was clear that we could not tell where the trial went. I thought to myself oh that can’t be the rock slide, I bet there is a switch back. Then, quickly realized that the rocks that were laying ahead of the trail was it.

My stomach went in knots again and I felt my adrenaline shoot up with fear. There was a rope along the outside to hold on to. But it felt like you would fall, or you could take off your pack and squeeze, shuffle through the little hole in between the rocks. Since the trail is on the edge of the mountain, there really wasn’t much to work with.

The guy was right. If the rocks did move or shift at all, it was very unlikely that we would make it out alive. We decided to go through the hole since the rope was too much for us and we couldn’t see around it.

Aughhhhhhh!!!!!

I decided to go first and that I would go through and then drag my pack behind me. I wanted to make sure that if anything moved I could get out quick and not have a heavy pack in front of me. Poor Ozzy got dragged and pulled as my fear caused me to act as quickly as I could. I then watched and made sure Planner got through and as I went to step up on another rock, I slammed my head into an over reaching one above me. Ouch.

We then looked back at the rockslide, shook our heads, and kept going.

My hands and legs were shaky still from the spike of nerves. We then found ourselves in what felt like an uphill obstacle race. There were fallen trees everywhere. Some were huge and we had to lean/hug them to get over.

Some were small that we could step over. And some were positioned just right that we had to take off our pack and crawl underneath them.

As I was doing the crawl style under a small hole and huge tree I found myself slamming my hip into a branch I didn’t see as I came out. This time, it brought tears to my eyes.

Gahhhhhhhhhhhh!

I was tired of this part of the trail and mountain and just wanted to be off. To top it all off…. We had only gone a mile and half.

We hiked to the top of the mountain and had wind gushing us over. We zoomed as quickly as we could to the 5 mile mark at lower elevation, where there was actually a stream we could get water from.

I plopped down and made myself some well deserved oatmeal and coffee. It helped calm me down a little from the nightmare of a mountain. We then hiked through the beautiful pine trees, surprised that there was still snow.

We reached another creek and sat down to evaluate how much we needed to carry and which campsite we were going to head to.

Planner then noticed that the one we were shooting for to make a total 25 mile day was closed. There were about 15 miles that were open to hiking but closed to camping because of a wild fire last year. Our plans now were to go 4 miles to a campground and stay instead. This also meant that we needed to carry 6 liters of water to get us through the night and majority of the next day.

We headed out and I quickly noticed the pain in my second toe but decided to ignore it till we got to camp. Once we did I saw that my blister looked worse and that my second toe was swollen. It felt jammed so I pulled on it till it popped. I decided to leave it and air it out until after dinner. I was feeling all sorts of frustration and exhaustion.

I had made my dinner, took a bite, and almost started crying as it tasted like soap. I had washed my pot earlier without rinsing it good, thinking I would later and completely forgot. 🤦🏽‍♀️

My dinner ruined, my feet a mess, I felt my eyes water. Today was just not my day unfortunately.

I instead ate a chicken wrap, Chex mix, and snickers and then cleaned my blisters with alcohol wipes and Planners Neosporin. We decided that we would figure out in the morning how they felt and if we needed to go into town and spend some time off my feet.

I’m over today and this mountain. I feel like I hit failure after failure today and can only pray that I can sleep well and feel better tomorrow.

I guess it is what it is and we will take care of it.

Iz and Oz