June 21

943-968

June 22

968-993

These two days blend together, so I will combine them into single post.

After a quick breakfast in town, we get back to the trail in Yosemite national Park and stop by a natural, bubbling, spring that was apparently popular with settlers in the area. We fill our bottles and enjoy the novelty of the bubbles. It mostly tastes like iron.

We gain 5300+ feet of elevation on each of these days, over very steep and rocky terrain.

Every step requires a little extra mental effort that drives us a little crazy. The other maddening factor are the clouds of mosquitos.

They are horrific. If we stop for breaks to eat or collect water, we are swarmed. We can visibly see clouds of them in front of us in the trail, waiting to feast on us. The worst of it is in the evening when we are cooking dinner. The C02 from our stoves attract more of them.

Waiting for our water to heat up turns into a blood bath. The only way to combat them is to don our rain gear and head nets which causes us to sweat profusely. Later, when we are back home, we will laugh about this. For now, it is torturous.

The terrain, however, is gorgeous. Sweeping meadows surrounded by granite domes are a Hallmark of Yosemite and they are in full display as we make our way through the park. We are only doing 25 miles, but we are exhausted at the end of each day from the effort. The first night I walk out of the tent to use the bathroom. I stand outside while keeping my eyes closed to make it easy to fall back to sleep. I don’t realize until I feel urine running down my legs that I have peed all over myself. Good God. I hang my pants from a tree and go back to sleep. The next morning I rinse them off at our first river crossing. We are truly devolving.

In the mornings our ligaments and tendons all tighten up and we look like reanimated corpses during our first few miles of the day.

We stumble, and limp, and drag ourselves down the trail, before things limber up and we can walk at our normal pace. If someone were to watch us during the first hour of the day, they would be shocked that we are able to hike 25+ miles.