June 19, 2018
909.0-926.1
I don’t know if my feet had become soft from 6 days off-trail or if my cork SOLE insoles had finally given up the ghost, but my feet were killing me as we went up and over Island Pass. I had hoped to be able to conquer Donohue Pass that day as well, which would have been the last of the major mountain passes to climb in the Sierra. But alas, I was in so much pain by that afternoon that we ended up stopping to camp about 3 miles from the summit of Donohue. It was the balls of my feet. They had sore, painful spots like hot spots, only I can’t see any visible signs of hot spots. Ugh, I’ve covered almost 1000 miles. Am I supposed to be dealing with this pain until Canada?!? This is not what I had signed up for. But then, that’s been true of most of my hike so far.
Couch Potato talked about how lazy he is, but whenever I let him take the lead he definitely had more energy than me, at least during the second half of the day. We hiked the same pace all day and toward the end, it was he who encouraged us to go a little further, but we were both hurting so we didn’t go far. We hadn’t seen hardly anyone all day, but when we reached the campsite we planned to use we found two familiar hikers from the hostel in Mammoth Lakes already set up there. That was okay. We ended up hiking another mile or so before we found some nice flat spots near a stream. The ground was moist, but we had plenty of water for camp so that was nice.
I figured out that the best way to eat my dinner without getting eaten myself by the mosquitoes was to eat inside my tent with the rainfly off, that way the insects couldn’t get to me, and the breeze would blow away the scent of my food. At the end of a long day of hiking, it helped to be able to eat a warm meal in peace and not have to be constantly smacking away mosquitoes. I just hoped leaving the rainfly off would send enough of the smell away. I really didn’t want any bears creeping into my tent at night.
We hiked almost 18 miles that day. Not bad.
Sarah Hikes 
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