300 Mile Hike Day 9

Friday, July 21 2017

After climbing over 8300' and walking nearly 32 miles in two days, I was nearly sleep walking this morning for the first few miles. Luckily, the trail was giving easy miles. I wasn't paying attention to the trail or the sights and scenes.  I was contemplating man's search for meaning.  Or almost.  I was definitely deep in thought. Contemplating my search for meaning. I've always done long distance backpacking trips in my life and found they are like a retreat. When I come home, I have purpose and plans.  Or at least that was true when I wasn't 49 years old. In 1997, I came home with a 7 year plan and it played out perfectly. It seems the sense of purpose and subsequent planning that bounced around in my head as I walked this morning were not about what I'm going to do in life.  It was more about how I will deal with things coming up in the next phase of life.

The morning mileage

My feet were really hurting right there. Notice my improvised lacing system. But the view helped a lot!

We left our campsite thinking we could get water from a spring in 3 miles.  But it didn't work out.  The spring was dry. That has never happened to us before. We ended up walking 17 miles with the water we had when we woke up, about 2 liters each.  Paul was hurting along the way. Cj and I were only slightly better. A guy in a truck at a paved road crossing gave us a couple pints of water. It helped.

We stopped for lunch in a notch between two peaks. As soon as we sat down,  I heard the sound of a jet approaching. It sounded like military jets on a training run.  I quickly realized what was coming our way and said to CJ and Paul,  "This is gonna be good!" I thought we were going to get to see some cool jets fly over.  About a second after the words came out of my mouth,  we got the mother of all air shows! Less than 150 feet above us, inverted such that we could see inside the cockpit,  a war bird rolled over the mountain top and into the valley below us.  Then another. And another.  All were upside down and rolling down hill away from us. Words can't explain what happened. It was like nothing I've ever seen.  In the blink of an eye, any of those guys could have become a smoking hole in the ground.  I've heard pilots say they were "yanking and banking". These guys were absolutely doing that. It looked physically painful. The jets are actually in the photo right below but they are way down below us blending in with the scene.

After we finished our lunch and started hiking again, the first northbound hiker we saw talked of nothing else.  He saw it too and couldn't believe it.  So that's two years in a row we saw some military jets doing awesome training on our hike.  Last year we watched a Harrier hover with its tail against a steep mountain as Marines and equipment unloaded onto the mountain. 

CJ and Paul negotiate across a snowfield.

This is us leaving the Marble Mountains. They were definitely beautiful. 

Shasta always lurking on our horizon

I would have walked right by this thing and never noticed. CJ saw it and pointed it out. He said hikers love to amuse themselves. 

We ended the day at a lake in the Marble Mountains called Paynes Lake. It was beautiful. As we approached the lake I looked at my watch and saw it was Friday.  I thought it might be difficult to get a campsite if it was a popular lake. I mentioned my thoughts to Paul.  He said, "No its Thursday." I pointed at my watch and said no its Friday.  Paul had a confused look. CJ laughed and said, "It's Friday!" Paul looked embarrassed and said he'd had it in his head all day that it was Thursday.  We all went swimming to clean up and laughed about Paul not knowing what day it was.

How often in adult life can you truly forget what day it is?!

CJ fished but had no luck.   

Total miles: 16.4
Total up: 3241'
Total down: -2953

Woah. We did nearly 50 miles in three days.