Day 74: More wetness today and my butt chaffing is legit taking my soul right now. I fell in the morning. No not on snow, on freakin mud. I am so annoyed with myself. I’m not athletic. Who was I ever fooling. I can’t even walk. And I think I may have upset Scotty because when he offered to help me up I said no and brushed him off. This day we had some craaaazy crossings. First we had to cross Wilson Creek. But the trail runs next to it for quite awhile so we just stayed on one side of it which ended up working great. One thing I really remember about this morning was how frozen my feet were. Shoes weren’t drying over night, then with all the crossings, and walking consistently in snow they were helping me feet stay warm. The numbness was extremely painful. I tried to find little pockets of sun to stand in while waiting. Then we did Benson Pass. Somewhere along the way we left Scotty. He said he wanted some alone time so stayed behind while we climbed the pass.
I can’t remember for sure but I think this day Hefty and Tim jumped into a lake that was legit all ice except for a small pocket. I gladly denied that invitation. Later we had Piute Creek. Probably the most interesting creek we crossed. It was freezing cold. We all stripped down to as little as possible. And attempted to cross on foot. Jitterbug is tall and got closest and barely went under right at the end. For me, I had no chance. So with my pack on my back I swam across. And swimming with a current, with a pack on, and in freezing water is anything but easy. Once we crossed and we’re drying off for a bit Scotty came. We hollered at him and he tried to Javelin toss his trekking poles across the water. The first didn’t go so well it landed in the water. I tried to grab my pole and grab it but couldn’t reach it. Then when I tossed my pole to Jitterbug I missed and mine also went into the water. Tim being a bad ass just got back into the freezing water and grabbed both of our poles. HERO!!!
Then we were off again. Later I don’t remember where we were heading down from but me Hefty and Jitterbug went on a rock descending adventure. I shouldn’t have followed these 2. They’re fucking bad asses. But we ended up cutting off like 1.5 miles of trail. We got to some rocks where we saw Crushers group again. Tim and Freckles showed up soon after also complaining about that sketchy hard descent. But here we are….but where is Stats? Nobody knows. No one knows if he cut the trail or followed the trail. And Yardsale was missing too. We kept eating and hanging out, I was getting worried. Should we head back out and look for him? What if we get lost or hurt going back? Finally, Yardsale arrives and she took the actual trail route and said Stats was behind her. And he soon came too. After a small break and drying out gear we headed out again. Our next crossing wasn’t so deep we had to swim but it was still pretty deep. We again took our clothes off, or most of them. Then with packs on our heads we headed across. We ended up hiking about 17 miles today. We planned to cross Kerrick creek before setting up camp but there was a great campsite just about a half mile before it that we are staying it. It’s big, dry, and open. So nice. Again trying to just dry shit out as much as possible. Scotty created a little like smoke drying set up. He is always trying crazy things. It didn’t quite work out, but it was sure fun watching. I’m really struggling right now, just with always being with people. I feel like I’m always having to try so hard to keep up, which in turn makes me really fatigued, and makes me fall more. I miss desert hiking. You knew how many miles you’d made in a day and about how long it would take. You knew how many days until the next town, I don’t think I brought enough food this section. And you could just hike, alone, without thought or worry. I miss it. I’m hoping after Sonora Pass the snow will be far less. In previous years there’s usually none after then, but this year has been crazy so far. So who knows.