The first unexpected change...

Well, today is August 10th. We are currently in the city of Mammoth Lakes. Definitely not on the intinerary!

So, after 1 week on the trail Miles and I decided to call it quits. The reasons go a little something like this...

Day 1 - about 15 minutes into the hike Erin gets a blister on her left heel. We stopped and applied the first peice of mole skin to it. About 30 minutes later Erin gets a blister on her right heel! We stopped and applied the second peice of mole skin to it. During the whole week I went through about 30 peices of mole skin!

Per Jaime's suggestion we took the "Mist Trail" up to the top of Nevada Falls, rather than the longer, but flater John Muir Trail (JMT). Seriously, I thought I was climbing Everest! Sweet and patient Jaime would look at me every now and then and say, "working hard?" I would respond through heavy breath, "YES!" Jaime finally decided to break away from Miles and I and meet at the top of the falls. Miles and I were moving rather slow. Me with my 50 lb. pack and Miles with his 60 lb. pack took the Mist trail step by step. Painfully slow. Most of the trail is literally giant steps carved into the rock. By the time we finally got to the top of the falls Jaime was about to give up on seeing us. He had taken a nice nap and thought we decided to continue on and passed him by. Nope, we were just extremely slow! So, we had lunch at the top of the falls and said farewell to Jaime. Ofcourse we didn't let him leave without filling up his little bag with trail mix and whatever else we could get rid of! Every ounce counts, and we just had too many ounces on board! And so day 1 set the pace.

We continued to go very slow each and every day. Mostly because of my blisters and also because the JMT is a hard trail with some serious up-hill!! By the way, I cried on day 1 of hiking. And I cried on day 2 of hiking. I think I didn't cry on 3 of the 7 days we were out there.
Seriously tuff stuff, this hiking is!

So, long story short...we were making an average on 1-2 miles an hour each day (including stops) and we had to make an average of 10 miles a day, and my blisters were killing me, the mozzis (mosquitos) were awful (like nothing I've ever seen - serious swarms - you could hear them at night buzzing around our tent), and around day 5 over dinner Miles says to me, "so, how do you feel about stopping?". I wouldn't dream of mentioning it, but since he brought it up I thought about it for 1 day and came back with a big fat YES!

So, here we are in Mammoth. We hiked for 7 days to Reds Meadow and then took a shuttle down to Mammoth. We plan on taking a bus tommorrow to Reno and then catching a flight to Southern California. We will then spend the next 2 weeks hanging out in San Diego and Lake Arrowhead and other various areas, and then I have my 10 year high school reunion on the 27th of August. After that we will head to the Bay Area for our annual Slosh Ball Party/Goodbye Party on September 3rd. On the 6th of September I have my final tooth adjustments (: yipee! And then we're off to Micronesia!

I'm sure Miles will chime in later on his version of the JMT experience and we have lots of beautiful pictures to post. All in all for me it was a good experience, but I'm glad it's over. We way underestimated the difficulty of the trail, and I'm just proud to have made it one week in the wilderness! I also covered 66 miles of trail (from Yosemite Valley to Reds Meadow), and I climbed over 13,000 feet of up-hill! Our highest elevation reached was 11,050 ft. on the top of the Donahue Pass. The views were spectacular, but honestly I was in too much pain most of the time to really take it all in.

The absolutely most wonderful thing that I got out of this part of our trip was seeing a side of Miles that I never have before. I have one amazing husband! I am truly lucky to be his partner in life. He had nothing but encouragement and positive comments for me every day. He completely took care of me, and seemed happy to do it. He tried his hardest every day to make my life easier and my pack lighter. He was and is my "knight in shining armour". Truly and amazing guy!

So, there it is. JMT done. Perhaps we will meet again you crazy trail. I must admit I dammed John Muir and his trail at least once a day. Hiking brings out the pessimist in me. People would pass us every day and say their hellos and things like, "have a fun hike!". All I could think was what?!!! Fun does not belong in that sentence. However, now that it's over...I can say that parts of it were fun, very small parts.

Thanks for listening. I'll "blog" again soon!

Erin (: