The Sierras: Brutal in every way
I have officially made it through the first section of the Sierra Nevada mountains, ~100 miles from Kennedy Meadows South to Kearsarge Pass. These have easily been the hardest miles of the trails and I have come face to face with my limits. The only word to describe the mountains at this time of year is brutal. Brutal elevation stretches your lung capacity and very commonly leads to altitude sickness. Much of the 100 miles was on trail over 10,000 feet and if you aren’t very specific with your fluid intake, you can quickly become disoriented, headachey and fatigued. Brutal UV exposure reflects off of snow and burns any piece of exposed skin. I currently have sunburns INSIDE of my nose and many people I know have much more extensive damage. Brutal snow coverage makes every step more difficult. Much of the trail (perhaps 80%) is still snow covered so navigation becomes much more taxing. The snow is beginning to soften and so any step taken after sunrise has a large chance of breaking the top layer of frozen snow and sending you sinking up to your waist in powder. Due to this, you have to wake up around midnight in order to have any hope of making decent miles for the day. Brutal isolation makes any resupply quite difficult. In order to get more food for the next stretch, I had to cross over an 11,200 foot mountain pass and walk 8 miles down to a car park to get a ride into town. In order to get back into the mountains, I will have to repeat this journey in reverse.
However, this brutality goes the other way as well. The snow, which brings all of the aforementioned grief, highlights the brutal beauty of the mountains. Everyone hiking right now agrees that this is one of the most beautiful places on earth and the snow serves to amp that beauty up to its max. However, you cannot survive on beauty alone and the taxing nature of this section is weighing on everyone taking it on. We all commiserate with each other that despite the incredible and supernatural beauty of the landscape around us, we all just want it to be over, to be back on a real trail, and to be able to walk normal days illuminated by the sun.
I would be lying if I said I’ve taken all this difficulty in stride. I often have thought about abandoning my yo-yo attempt, taking time off and waiting for the snow to melt so I can walk the trail in normal conditions, but I can’t bring myself to actually do this. There’s a reason that so few people have done what I am attempting to do, it is a task of enormous difficulty. However, if I can push through the next 3 or so weeks of absolute all consuming brutality, then I will be on my way to joining that group of select few. So I push on, because I don’t really know how to come home having, in my eyes, failed.
Besides, I always expected the Sierras were going to be a training ground of mental and physical fortitude. I am still in the early innings of my voyage, and I am not yet strong enough to do the borderline unreachable. My thoughts turn to a hiking hero of mine, Heather “Anish” Anderson, the first woman to hike the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail in a single calendar year. Someone once said, paraphrased by me, that any of us COULD do what she did, but we don’t, because she’s willing to put up with all kinds of misery that most of us squirm away from. She’s just tougher than you and I. So in a few days I go back into the brutal mountains, to face what I need to face. To get tougher.
