June 12th, 2021
Mile Marker: 743.9
Miles Hiked Today: 25
Little sleep last night so I went ahead and woke up early and made some oatmeal before the gang woke up.
After my oatmeal I suddenly realized that I had drank from the wrong water bottle. Since I threw away a bottle, I changed which water bottle was to be my “dirty” bottle. Meaning this was the one that was dunked into dirty water and then I would put my sawyer squeeze on top of it.
I had unfortunately made a tremendous mistake. I announced it to the team, but let them know that I would hold out for as long as I could if I got sick.
Around 6:30 the crew started heading out. We unfortunately had a steady 4.7 miles of incline that kicked our butts. We are now at higher elevations and our packs are heavy with the bear canisters and cold weather gear. We would check our Guthooks app to see how far we had traveled only to be let down. Almost every time it was less than we thought it was.
It seemed that the morning wasn’t going my way.
The views however, are starting to become everything I have wanted!
I love hiking in the pines listening to the birds and animals. It just feels so much more vibrant and alive.
I also saw a marmot for the first time today! I saw it running down the trail and yelled out to Planner asking what it was. It was the cutest little thing.
Our water sources weren’t as prevalent as we would have liked but we at least had them.
This one wasn’t the best either but luckily after we filtered with our sawyer the water cleared up.
It was a day of hard climbs that made our shoulders ache but also a day with stellar views.
We arrived at a well flowing creek and had dinner. We were told not to camp next to water as these areas were typically in the valleys and cold air settles there. So now we have our dinners at the water and then hike up a few more miles.
We landed at a pretty amazing camp spot that we think may be our best yet. Especially if it gets windy.
We all decided to take a group photo and later in the night did a massage train to loosen up our shoulders. 😂 It was a tough 25 miles but we had to do it. Since Mount Whitney is coming up we wanted to plan to reach base camp Sunday and summit early Monday morning so we unfortunately had to push the miles.
Planner thinks this photo is the quintessential photo of us. 😁
It’ll be nice afterwards to slow back down to 20 mile days.
Fingers crossed I don’t get sick during the night from drinking the bad water. Ughhhhhh so frustrated with myself, but what can I do. It was an honest mistake.
Iz and Oz
Izzy + Ozzy 