Day 8: Kersage Pass and Lone Pine

Perhaps it wasn’t just the extra miles that made the day hard. It could have been the fact that in the last 2 days we hiked incredibly hard terrain, climbed the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states, and didn’t stop hiking until 8 pm last night. I've jump to the end of the day's events before starting from around the time the sun said "good morning" so I'll back up.

Stretching as I climbed out of the tent I felt every joint in the lower half of my body cry a little tear. I think yesterday's events had taken every single muscle and ounce of strength out of my legs. At mile 6 my hip started to give me some troubles and my pace slowed so much that I couldn't even see Replay's bright bandanna up ahead on the trail. At a trail sign our path pointed up the mountain while another pointed directly next to the water. Ah yes my positive thoughts were wandering down the flat easy path not up the mountain.

Walking up the switch backs I started talking to myself and hoping that a small wood nymph or fairy might lend a helping hand to pull me up. I did manage to catch up to Replay while she was snacking on the final bits of food in her pack. She pumped me full of positive thoughts and told me to keep my eyes on the prize. It was only 3.5 miles until a nice cold beer or a lovely glass of wine. so with that in mind I kept pushing on and on and on until we passed the 3.5 mile marker and continued onto the 2 more not seeing a hitch hiking spot in site!

Around 1:30 I cam upon a gentleman with a large map of the area in his hands. When I inquired about our point on his particular map he mentioned that we were nearing Glen pass. What! We both screamed. He then mentioned that his friends had just left him to hike over Kearsage Pass. It was 2 miles back to to Kearsage Pass, 7.5 miles to Onion Valley campground and our military training the additional 2 miles that we were back tracking had taken all the energy out of us. So with no water, only a packet of egg noodles for lunch we turned around. Within 35 minutes we found water and by 2:00 we had consumed our last bit of food. Around 3:00- yes today was all about the time watching for me- we were finally heading over the pass. At 5:00 we were in the back of Bob and Royland’s boxy Honda heading down the 22 miles to our resupply destination!

We showered quickly and threw our clothes in the wash. Not being a vetran hiker this was an interesting experiment on how to find enough semi clean clothes to wash those which were too too smelly. Wearing an interesting get-up Replay and I decided dinner was a must do even without the proper dinner attire. Dinner never tasted so good and as we were walking bak to our beds we splurged on high priced ice cream. Better yet we induldged in the surgary treat in bed! I think this might be what my heaven is especially when there is an 80's movie on TV.