A beautiful scene to recover by…at the banks of Wallace Creek that I will need to cross tomorrow, like it or not.

We watched the sunset over the mountains from our sleeping bags

Figure 8:

I woke up with an emotional, mental and physical hangover from yesterday’s events. Fighting to make it out of that creek alive yesterday was one of the most terrifying experiences I have ever had and certainly the closest I have ever been to thinking I was going to die. Daddie Gizmo was laying next to me in his little 25 inch side of the tent. I immediately layed on his chest and started crying a little. The trauma from yesterday was setting in and I knew I did not have the strength to hike out today. Since the sun was blazing on our tent we decided to pack up and move down the trail to some shade and figure out what to do. My right thigh that took the brunt of the beating in the creek is really hurting me. The rest of my body seems to be ok except maybe my neck. Feel like I have some whiplash. By far the worst part of this is not having my hiking poles to get out of here. I’m really concerned about the lack of safety now going up and down the snow. My new pole was a whippet and meant for ice climbs since it has an ice axe on the end of it. Hiking without poles is a pain normally but in the snow it seems dangerous and my tolerance for risk right now is pretty low. That aside, I am still feeling a wreck this morning. We can’t keep going north to cross Forrester Pass because you need an ice axe and mine is somewhere in Wright Creek. I feel terrible that I didn’t make it across the creek and now we have to turn back. I keep apologizing to DG and he keeps telling me I’m being silly. I hate seeing other hikers passing by to keep going north and knowing that we aren’t. It hurts my heart. I’m disappointed we won’t be traversing the highest pass of the PCT today, as planned. Missing those views and experiences make me feel like I let my teammate down. We hiked a half mile down back to Wallace Creek to set up camp for the day since I need a day to rest my mind and body in order to have the confidence and strength to climb back up over this snow and ford through another creek to make it out safely. Admittedly, I shed a few tears down that half a mile. I picked up a big branch and used it as a walking stick to relieve some of the pressure on my right leg. It hurts but I’ll push through it to get out of here. We are in the middle of nowhere and need to figure out the best way to exit in our current situation. We scouted out a couple places to cross back across Wallace and retrace our steps to a road and civilization. My heart sank looking at the rushing water. I had told him I might be able to do the crossing today if we found a place that is calm enough, but it’s not calm enough for me after yesterday. I just don’t have the guts to do it today and that’s what I told him. Tomorrow morning, nice and early when the water is at its lowest, we will cross. And I will be scared out of my Fing mind. But what else can I do? My view of the Sierras while I am writing this is absolutely breathtaking. I love being here. I’m going to enjoy the next few days as much as I can because I don’t know when we will be back. At this moment, I don’t think right away, but I definitely want to experience natures beauty here again. With hiking through snow and ice and the melting snow making the creeks dangerous, the Sierras are a like a chick you date that is simply gorgeous and great to look at but manages to make everything more complicated somehow. In the afternoon Sauce and Giggles, who we had stayed next to at the Timberline motel in Lone Pine, crossed the river to our side. They gave me a really really great hug and chatted for a while which made me feel a little better. They hiked Whitney Mtn yesterday and shared the trail conditions up Whitney Portal which is the path to the mountain from the PCT. Hearing that the trail that way seemed better and less icy than we expected we decided to get out of theses mountains via that route tomorrow. Early evening, by a stroke of divine intervention another group crossed the creek later and came to ask us if we had lost a pole. The pole they had was not the one I lost but we very gladly took it. Wow – getting that pole is HUGE! DG and I felt a lot better getting out of here tomorrow and crossing the creek in front of us having three poles between us. Now for some rest under this beautiful starry sky.