Note: This post is out of order. It is from earlier in my hike when I didn’t have time to keep my blog up-to-date, so I’m posting it now.
It was very cold last night. I woke up at 2:30
and checked the thermometer on my backpack. It showed about 28 degrees in my tent’s vestibule. This is no good because my thermometer is next to my water filter, and my water filter becomes damaged if it freezes. It is now useless for treating water.
Since we had camped at the lowest area we could, it was all uphill from here, so we started slow in case Elizabeth’s altitude sickness came back. But, it didn’t seem to, and soon enough we were passing everybody.
At one point, we saw a plume of smoke rising from the side of an adjacent ridge. It didn’t look like a spot that someone could make a campfire.
As it happened, there was AT&T phone coverage right there, so we found someone with AT&T and called the fire in. It turned out to be under control already.
We were going into Lone Pine today for a resupply, so we took Mulkey Pass off the PCT, to the Horseshoe Meadows trailhead.
We reached the trailhead, and started trying to hitch out. This was not a popular area, so prospects looked poor, but we were fortunate enough to get a ride with a father and son who were starting the John Muir Trail tomorrow, and were parking their second car here.
Soon enough, we were down in civilization, in Lone Pine.
We checked into the hostel, and called the local clinic. They agreed with Professor Kind’s diagnosis — Elizabeth had altitude sickness yesterday.
As we resupplied, I found that every store in town was out of replacements for my water filter. So, for now I’ll be using MSR tablets to treat my water. It won’t taste as good as filtered water, and I’ll have to wait before I can drink, but I won’t need to spend time squeezing water through a filter into my water bottle any more.
We had dinner at a restaurant called The Grill, which surprised us by bringing out our food almost immediately after we ordered. I kept emptying my glass of water, and they kept refilling it. I guess I must’ve been dehydrated.
In the hotel room, we had a dessert of Ben and Jerry’s Milk and Cookies ice cream, with beer from Mammoth Brewing. Elizabeth liked the Double Nut Brown Porter so much, she wants to be sure we resupply in Mammoth now.
We set up orders with a service called Sonora Pass Resupply to bring us a resupply at a difficult point down the trail. They drive a truck into Sonora Pass, where they deliver resupplies to hikers, and mail back their bear canisters (bear canister requirements end around Sonora Pass). Using their web site took a long time, but it’s a difficult place to hitch into town.
Then, we fell asleep.