I'm working on just 5 hours sleep, but.........
We started exactly at midnight. I think the SPOT page might have showed differently because we were at the trail head for several hours waiting to go.
The trail up Bubbs is very nice, flat and a little sandy. Someone told me once that the 1st two miles of the grade is leftover from trying to put a road across. Four miles up we took the right turn and headed towards Avalanche Pass. Even by headlamp the trail is easy to follow - just head UP. Plenty of explosives went into this tread for sure. The trail had gained nearly 5000 feet in less than 10 miles, but it wasn't really that bad of a climb. Probably a lot to see, I don't know, it was still pretty dark.
Hit the pass at 0615, 45 minutes ahead of schedule. Sent the 1st "I'm ok" message. As I found out last night, none of the messages went thru. I haven't checked yet, but I'm guessing operator error.
Soon we headed downhill towards the Roaring River ranger station. Couldn't remember where the water crossings were reported, but we had the lightweight fake crocs ready just in case. The trail loses a little over 2600 feet in 6 1/2 miles and is easy going. No difficult water crossings, no drama of any kind. Now we had to gain 4500+ feet in 11 miles. I thought that this would be a piece of cake, but I have never been more wrong about anything in my life. The trail wanders around chewing up miles while never doing anything about the elevation. Somewhere along the trail "Shorty's Cabin" popped up on the GPS. Seems the Garmin folks loaded it on their 24k maps. We dropped our packs and headed off trail following the GPS. No luck. I wonder if it's really still there? We spent 30 minutes looking, but we were nearly hour ahead and gaining so I didn't sweat it. After 6 or 7 miles without gaining much elevation, I knew we were in for some fun near Colby Pass. I took a look at the map near Colby Lake and about lost my mind. The lake is just over 10,500 feet. The pass is 12,000. The distance from the lake to the pass on the map was the thickness of my thumb. The distance between Roaring River and the lake was the width of BOTH of my hands. Seems we had spent the last few hours screwing around like a teenager with a new credit card and now the BILL was due. Before you ask - Yes, I had looked at the map before the trip. Not in any great detail, because that isn't my thing. For the most part my brother takes care of the route, the numbers, the navigation. I take care of other stuff like logistics, etc. So I dug deep inside of myself and we headed towards Colby. Signs at Roaring River warned this was an unmaintained trail. Looked maintained to me. Tree falls over the trail, someone cuts the tree clear. Plenty of "steps" and other trail stuff on the trail. What does "unmaintained" mean? (SERIOUSLY - please tell me) The trail was lightly used for sure, but easy to follow. The last two miles to the pass was pure hell for me. I was light headed, stomach was upset and I wasted major brainpower trying figure out what idiot designed this nightmare. We would gain 500 feet in much needed elevation only to give 200 feet right back. The only reason I even got up the last 700 feet was because I wanted to find out who Colby is, who designed his trail, where they lived and why they did this to me. I've been on a lot of trails in the last 14 years, mostly in Kings Canyon. This is the worst piece of CRAP I've ever been on. Actually I was distracted from the trail long enough to puke every once in awhile. My brother thought it was altitude. Ok, I have a history of getting a little loopy over 11,000, but that usually happens at the 1st big hike of the season and this didn't seem the same to me. Of course "Big" brother thought he was right. As soon as we took our pics at the Colby sign it started to hail! WTF?!? I hate this damn trail. My eyes feel too big for my head, we need to get down NOW.
Headlamps on and my brother telling my how much better I'll feel once we lose a few thousand feet we flew downhill. The trail was worse on the other side. No way would I ever want to go the other direction. By 9:15 we had dropped about 2000 and I still felt bad. We still had 5 miles to go to Junction Meadow, but neither one of us could stay "on point". When hiking by headlamp and trying to maintain your speed, the guy up front has to follow the trail. You watch where you feet are about to go and scan ahead for the trail. It does take a little brain power. The guy in back just cruises. All he does is watch his brother’s feet. We had just hiked for over 22 hours and gained nearly 10,000 feet. I hadn't slept since Thursday night and I KNOW why I feel sick. I need to sleep. This ain't altitude. We simply pulled off the trail and broke out the bags and bivys. We were scheduled for 4 hours and we were actually a little behind (maybe 20 minutes - YES we track it THAT close) so we bivyed for 5 hours or so. I say "biveyed" and not "slept" because I didn't get much sleep. I must have got some because I don't remember where those 5 hours went, but I do remember looking up at the stars several times thinking that we were about as far from a road as you can get. At this point there really aren’t any “bail out” options - not that I ever would, but it was something that made me think. During the night, about an hour apart each of my calves cramped. They would spasm and then lock up tight for what seemed like forever before releasing. This has happened to me before, but never both and never on a hike. Just after 0100 big brother said it was time to go. I woke up hungry which was a good sign.
So my "fuel"? The frosting worked well, but a whole can was too much. A squeeze tube would have been better. As for the rest - besides the bagel I had to force it down, like usual. And as usual the stuff my brother brought seemed better than what I had. He ate my candy bars, I ate his Ritz crackers.
Packs shouldered we again got back on the trail headed towards Junction Meadow still looking for a chance to put the water shoes to work. They stayed in my pack the entire trip.
My wife had not got a message that we were ok or behind, but when she got up Sunday morning she quickly figured out what had happened. Even without an ok message, she never worried (and she ALWAYS worries). That says a lot for how well the tracking works. It seems that the same artists who threw the approach to Colby together worked on this section as well. The last 5 miles into Junction Meadow sucked. No way could we have pulled that off without that break. At one point while following the river downhill they had us do a HUGE climb. Well, it seemed huge; I mean I did JUST wake up.
We were still slightly behind getting into junction meadow but I felt ok and thought we could make it up. On the way to Wallace Creek we discussed the summit. The original plan called for taking the detour, but we now decided that "The Crossing" in 48 hours was more important than getting the summit and finishing after midnight. Hey - don't judge - it's our hike, our game, our rules.
The climb to Wallace Creek was nice. Now there is a MIANTAINED trail with a good grade. If I remember correctly - its part of the High Sierra Trail. We started making up lost time and soon headed towards familiar ground as we marched towards Crabtree. I felt ok, but I knew that I still was short on sleep and the climb out of Guitar Lake had always been tough for me. I was thinking about trading a nap for my chance to summit. The route into Crabtree is the PCT and is very nice trail. A little up, a little down, but mostly up. Started to see a lot more people. From Bubbs Creek to Junction Meadow we had only saw one person and she wasn’t very social at all. Later I realized it was because she has just gone over Colby Pass!
The nice ranger at Crabtree checked our permits and commented on our seemly lack of gear. We assured her we had more than enough and headed out. Down the trail a group told us it was a little windy on the summit and they were going to wait until Monday to go up. I had a ride waiting and needed to get home so we smiled politely and kept going. We were still slightly behind schedule but I was feeling worse. My brother was on top of his game and feeling strong. We decided to split at Guitar Lake. My brother would go for the top and I would nap and set myself up for success on that LAST 2000 feet. I filtered 100 ounces of water for him and told him he would be safe getting water above 10,000 feet when he needed more. I offered him the filter, but he trusted me. What? A little brother can't use his big brother as a guinea pig?
At 1:15 he was off and I was sleeping on my pad, boots off, bare feet up on my pack, head resting on a zip lock bag of dirty socks. LIFE IS GOOD! Twice my snoring woke me up. An hour later I knew if I went back to sleep I might not wake up until midnight. That and my nap spot was about 3 feet off trail and I could hear people coming by asking each other if they thought I was ok. I guess I must have looked bad all happy like that. I filled up 96 ounces of water, forced more food down, tended to my feet and got on the trail at 2:30. I paced myself so I never let myself breathe hard. I took about 5 short breaks on the way up and hit Trail Junction at 5. The schedule had us getting there at 4 and gave us 3 hours for the Whitney side trip. On the climb up the wind felt sooo good. I never got hot the whole way. I talked to a group of 7 who seem pretty pissed when I commented how nice the trail over Forester Pass was. (That's how they had come and thought it was pretty tough). They reported seeing my brother at the top and said he was probably alone up there. I briefly thought about making a dash to the top, but then did the math - if I did a 3 hour turn around (my average time, not sure how long it takes anyone else to do the trip from Trail Junction and back) I would get back to Trail Crest after 8 pm (the clock was still ticking while I was talking to the other hikers). I wish I could say it was the wind, but I didn't want to put the 48 hours at risk so I went down. I hit Trail Crest at 5:18 and the sail that my backpack had just become almost sent me over the side. Ten minutes down the trail I got on gloves, my wind top and wool hat. Well, I brought the stuff; I might as well use it. No one was coming up. NO ONE. I passed 3 kids on the way down the switch backs and then saw no one except for some crazies at each camp until after Lone Pine Lake. The trail was a ghost town. 3 hours and 58 minutes later my lovely wife was taking my boots off. After a bottle of water and a baby wipe bath I climbed into the waiting bed in back of the Suburban. I was sore and tossing and turning, but tried not to make much noise so she could sleep. She still had to take my brother to Bakersfield where he left his car and then get us back home. I had just fallen asleep when my brother got in at 11:20. At 11:22 both of us were laid out in the back of the Suburban and we were headed away from the mountain. My brother slept, resting for his drive from Bakersfield to SF, while I surfed the web.
This whole adventure would be IMPOSSIBLE without the support and hard work of my wife. She dropped us off at the trailhead and then “camped” with our 11 year son in the back of the truck. In the morning she drove 6 hours back home, only to leave 26 hours later to drive to the Portal. After a few hours rest in the back of the truck again, she drove for over 5 hours to get us all home. All that pretty much robbed her of a four day weekend. I love her more than anything!
I'm going to get ice cream - Body Bugg claims I used 17,500 calories.
I'll try to smooth this out more later....................................DUG
