Day 56: wow, I'm really in the sierras!!! :D

Wednesday 6/13/12
Miles 722-740 (18 miles)
Elevation 10,073

Kyle wandered into camp this morning at around 7am. By the way, I apologize if any of Kyle's family/friends are reading this, because I realized my last blog entry basically said that Kyle was lost, and in hindsight, thats a pretty crappy way to leave people hanging, especially since I had no idea when I'd get reception again to update this blog. Lol. Anyhow, he decided to take the extracurricular route. :D

So today was pretty epic, it's seriously starting to feel like the Sierras :) you can see from all the pics of the scenery I took today. It's funny because the last few days were like a hybrid of high Sierra and high desert landscape. There were tons of trees and water and random cacti plants and low shrubbery here and there. But today was lots of tall trees and rocks. And epic views!

Man we went up pretty high in elevation today. We did a 2,500ft ascent and hit about 10,500ft at one point. Then it was just a bunch of up and down from there. Lol.

We stopped for a midday break by a creek, it was nuts how in the 3 hours we were there, the water flow dramatically decreased. A couple other water sources we passed by were either really low or completely dry. Must be due to the low snow year. I'm so incredibly grateful there is no snow, but it's gonna kind of suck for the late season hikers, I hope there's enough water for them.

So today I turned my phone on to check my gps and I randomly had 3GS service and 3 bars. That was trippy! I thought I was in the middle of nowhere. Lol. I guess there was some community way down in the valley.

One of my favorite things about the hike in these parts is that we're constantly going up and over ridges/saddles. It's so cool and exciting for me as I approach these areas, because as I'm going up toward the top I'm so excited to see what's on the other side. :) I really look forward to that, since the physical aspect of going up with my heavy pack really sucks. Lol. But it's all good I'm getting used to it. It's almost like starting from Campo all over again, except I have more experience :) I remember my first day on the trail I did 16 miles and I was soooooo tired. I did 18 today in higher elevation with a lot more uphills and fee pretty good. I thought about doing 2 more to make it a 20 mile day but I passed a nice flat area with an amazing view and I just couldn't pass it up. So we're camped up here. The sunset was pretty amazing :)

You know, the ironic thing is, there is a *lot* more flat ground now than there have been in the last 700 miles. It's so counterintuitive because, being in th sierras I would think it would be way more sheer. But the trail isn't. I mean we are way up in elevation, but the land itself is sooooo incredibly different.

Gosh it's so amazing :). Then again there hasn't been a moment of this trail that *wasnt* amazing. <3. Anyhow, I'm going to go pay attention to the campfire now. I love fire. :). Goodnight <3