7/18 The Sierras Part 4: Tuolumne Meadows to South Lake Tahoe

As I rode the bus back up to Tuolumne Meadows from Yosemite Valley, I felt physically tired, a little sad to have said goodbye to my JMT hiking companions, but feeling much better about my walk. I was going to hit 1,000 miles in just a few days. I knew I would be alone, and the terrain coming up was supposed to be tough, with a lot of ups and downs. With my victory over the John Muir Trail under my belt, I felt ready to take on the challenge.

But the trail can knock you down just as easily as it can lift you up. The next week's emotions felt a lot like the elevation profile on my maps. Really big highs, but really low lows.

My first day out it rained all day. All my rain gear soaked through. I was frozen to the bone, my fingers so stiff from the cold that I couldn't even cross them to wish for sun.

That morning, as I was trudging through the awful weather, grumbling to myself miserably, I suddenly looked up to see a bear. I had only seen one other bear on the trail, and never up close like this. He was a big one, his cinnamon brown fur wet from the rain. He hadn't noticed me yet, too occupied with digging up grubs from a stump no more than a foot off the trail and only about 15 yards in front of me.  For a minute I stood watching him, frozen; partly from fear, partly from wonder and awe, and partly from being just plain cold. When my brain kicked back in, it reminded me that I needed to keep moving to stay warm. This bear was in my way, and I needed to get by. I was going to have to scare this bear off myself, alone. I couldn't show any fear. I had to be bigger than this bear. I had barely registered these thoughts, when suddenly I stepped forward and yelled fiercely in a voice I hardly recognized as my own, "HEY GET OUT OF HERE BEAR!!!"

The bear jumped in alarm. I guess he hadn't noticed me at all, and was now surprised to see a tall, skinny, wet, alien creature in green and blue nylon advancing towards him, waving and clacking big metal sticks and yelling at him to buzz off. He must've decided the stump he was after wasn't worth picking a fight with me, because he promptly ambled off to the safety of the trees. My adrenaline surged as I watched his scruffy wet butt running away from me. I had become the dominant animal. This sopping wet patch of dirt path was mine, and he was not welcome on my turf.

The weather cleared briefly a few times over the next couple of days, but only long enough to get my sleeping bag and clothes from soaked to mildly damp. Up on the high passes, you could see that it had snowed quite a bit. Several hikers ahead of me got caught in the white out and had to turn back. The rivers down in the canyons began to overflow and flood. I had to be careful to time my stream crossings for earlier in the day, when the water levels were lower. I walked 20 miles or more a day just to keep my blood flowing and my body temperature up. The morning I woke up and poked my head out of my tent to finally see the sun, I literally jumped for joy, whooping like a maniac. I dried my things out fully in the afternoon sun, and for the first time in days I slept in warm dry clothes and a warm dry sleeping bag.

The weather was far more pleasant from there on out, but that didn't mean the hiking was easy. Each days hike was littered with lots of hard, steep ascents followed swiftly by sharp, rocky descents. The footing was loose and I tripped a lot. The high point of the stretch was the morning I woke up and decided to hike 19 miles over Sonora Pass by 1, hiking 4mph to make it in time for lunch at the resort. The climb was starkly beautiful and exposed with excellent views.

Funnily enough, I actually had a bad fall this morning while taking a descent a little too quickly. I skidded out on the loose gravel coming down the pass and scraped up my leg up badly. I didn't have any bandages on me, so after I washed the dirt and grit out of the wound I had to just let it bleed till it clotted on its own. I arrived at the resort where my resupply package had been shipped with blood all down my leg. It looked a lot worse than it was, and it didn't really even hurt, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me feel like the toughest hiker on the trail, hiking with my leg all bloodied up like that. A woman at the resort asked me if I was alright, and when I jokingly told her a bear had attacked me, she actually believed me!

From Sonora Pass on, I averaged 22 miles a day. The trail was still a roller coaster of elevation gain and loss, but I walked hard and made it happen. My biggest day was a whopping 26 miles. I walked a marathon! I wasn't hiking with anybody in particular on this stretch, there wasn't anyone else to motivate me to walk so far. That was all me. I did it just because I wanted to see if I could. I've had two decades of competition and athleticism in my life, and the taste of victory over a challenge or a goal you set for yourself is still not soured.

1,000 miles!!!

But that week of pushing myself did, understandably, wear me out. By the 1,000 mile marker, I was so ready to be in South Lake Tahoe. My energy flagged hard at Carson Pass, 15 miles from town. As I walked down to the visitor's center where the trail crossed the road, I could feel fatigue finally taking me. I met some wonderful day hikers, a group of neighbors who live in the Tahoe area who reminded me a lot of some wonderful neighbors of my own back home. They were so impressed with my journey, how far I've come. They asked all kinds of questions; what I ate, and how much, whether I was alone, where I slept, how I got water, and so on. They walked with me all the way down to the visitor's center where the PCT crossed the road. A volunteer was there cooking hotdogs and offered to let me weigh myself on the scale in the cabin. I weighed myself, and was concerned to see that I had lost a grand total of 30 pounds in my 3 months on the trail. I now weighed the same as I did when I was a preteen, going through my growth spurt. Not good. That definitely explained the excessive fatigue. One of the day hikers I'd met offered to drive me to town and take me to a buffet at a casino on the state line, and I happily accepted. I hastily scarfed down three hotdogs before hopping in their car.

On the ride down, I found my thoughts were preoccupied with worry over my health. I had lost the 15 lbs that I had put on for this trip a long time ago, around mile 700. Back then I still felt very strong physically. The Sierras had taken a lot out of me. I started feeling the burnout setting in my second week up in the high country, and it seemed like I was crashing harder and harder each time I reached a town. Overtraining syndrome is extremely common in long distance hiking, and I knew I was exhibiting the symptoms. Persistent exhaustion, muscle inflammation, loss of appetite, weight loss, etc., I was moving steadily down a track that leads to illness and chronic injury. I was going to have to figure out a better way to do this, and soon, if I was going to keep going...

I spent several days in South Lake, resting, recovering, and reevaluating my situation. My schedule discouraged the time off, but it was necessary, for both my physical and mental well-being. I had some hard questions to ask myself, some complicated feelings to sort through. A change was coming my way, that was clear. That change revealed itself to me on my last day in Tahoe, and as a result my hike's course would be altered drastically from there on out.