August 19th
Segment 12
We slept in this morning and started hiking into the sunrise. There’s no way a picture can show what we are seeing or experiencing. We keep trying to capture pictures of the mountains we’ve climbed or descended and they look like nothing. We started into our mountain climb right away after we crossed the creek this morning. Straight into switchbacks.I fell asleep last night listening to the water of the creek. The tinnitus in my ears drowns out the silence of the forest and that makes me sad. I stopped taking Motrin a couple years ago when I started dealing with my chronic pain and fatigue differently. Maybe there’s a way to start the healing process with that too. Going to have to learn about it.
Speaking of senses I started this trip with a runny nose that wouldn’t quit and I’ve been on generic Zyrtec for about a week and it’s helping with the sniffles but my sense of smell is diminished and I love all the smells out here but they are dampened. Sage, moist dirt and vegetation, the lichen, the pine forest, so many wonderful smells that I love.It’s not even 8:00 and I’m warming up so much with the sun filtering through the trees and warming the day. Had to stop and take my night time cozy clothes off and put on my stinky daytime clothes. I was hoping to do creek laundry yesterday but with the threatening storm there was no guarantee of drying them. So I stayed with my normal one pair of socks and one pair on underwear washed and drying in my tent overnight and on my backpack during the day. Jay laughed at my wool undies. He says they sound hot and itchy. But they’re actually quite comfortable they are antimicrobial and antibacterial and oder resistant and dry fast. And they’re like $30 a pair and I bought them just for backpacking!
Found a water bottle on the trail and left it on the side hopefully someone going downhill will pick it up. I don’t plan on carrying other people’s trash into the woods but it’s sad to see. Jay always told the boys when we were packing up camp to leave it better than we found it and pick up 10 pieces of trash before we leave. What a good thing to teach your kids. Too bad more dads didn’t do stuff like that. We would see less garbage in the woods.It’s just after 10:00 and in the last 3 hours and 3 1/2 mi we climbed 2,008 feet! And we’re not done yet! About a half mile back I had to stop. My hair was in my face touching me, along with my shirt and my hat. Everything was irritating and causing anx. I finally caught up to Jodie and just needed 5 minutes to sort myself out.We are so slow going up the mountain with all the stopping we literally average a mile an hour. But when we look back we have come so far. Where was that mountain we climbed yesterday, it disappeared behind the corner of another mountain that we are on.
Most mornings like today start out with a clear blue sky and the promise of a warm sunny day. The clouds slowly drift in one by one and pretty soon they start covering the sun and changing the temperature within minutes. Every afternoon is a possible storm waiting to happen. We are always watching to see what’s coming next.We hit 200 miles today!! And summited 2 passes near 12,000 ft! The victory felt great but the miles have been hard today.
At our last rest stop before the second summit we made a new friend, Maggie the young priest from Minnesota on holiday backpacking. We visited with her for a while. We are camped again by a rushing creek and it’s luling me to sleep.
Jodie’s blog: bikehikerepeat.com