June 3-4: When problems arise, they never come as one big - BOOM- problem. They always start as one little incident hat leads to another that leads to another (each progressively larger) that eventually comes to the big problem. And more often than not, the starting incident happens in town.
In my case, the inciting incident was forgetting my hiker Waller in Adams car. Then I had to spend extra time in Kennedy Meadows. Where the port-o-potties were overflowing. And there was only one water faucet. And lots of people in the vortex. Drinking beer. Passing around bags of chips. Sharing pizza.
So day two back on he trail, I started not feeling so well.
It started out nicely enough- hiking out on the early morning just as the sun was coming up.
Climbing up to 10,000 feet and the trees.
Playing leapfrog with. wallaby and Pine Stick, and enjoying not having to carry so much water. At a water stop around 2, I ran into Minotaur and Spike, who I had not seen since Mt Laguna. They had jumped ahead and were south bounding this section of trail. I ended up taking a long break here- this is when things started going south. I was just exhausted! I felt nauseous, headachy, stomachache. I figured it was the elevation. This is the first time we had been above 10,000 feet. While many people at the spring wee talking about going another 7 miles, I wa planning on 2. Tops.
Playing leapfrog with. wallaby and Pine Stick, and enjoying not having to carry so much water. At a water stop around 2, I ran into Minotaur and Spike, who I had not seen since Mt Laguna. They had jumped ahead and were south bounding this section of trail. I ended up taking a long break here- this is when things started going south. I was just exhausted! I felt nauseous, headachy, stomachache. I figured it was the elevation. This is the first time we had been above 10,000 feet. While many people at the spring wee talking about going another 7 miles, I wa planning on 2. Tops.
I got 1 1/2 miles in. Then I just had to stop. I was just so tired and feeling horrible. I set up my tent, forced myself to eat something, and was asleep by 5. The thing with elevation sickness is that if you sleep, you wake up feeling better.
I woke up feeling worse.
His was not elevation sickness. This was the result of the domino effect. Too any days with dirty bathrooms and only one water faucet. It was 14 miles to the next town, Lone Pine, whereI had not been planning on stopping. I was now.
Ok- so I know that on Facebook, people like to exaggerate for comic purposes, especially when they have a bad day or get stuck in traffic, or get sick. If you are one of those people, the next time you are tempted to complain about how horrible it was to lie on the couch and binge watch Netflix between trips to the bathroom while you were sick, just remember-I win. I bikes 30 miles at 10,000 feet with a backpack, digging a hole every 45 minutes and carrying out the used TP in a ziplock. Be grateful you had Game of Thrones.
And granted, I had this:
But I wa too miserable to appreciate it. Fortunately, there was Lone Pine.
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