It was cold when I woke up but I was warm and cozy in my new sleeping bag liner. Josh was not so lucky and was totally bundled up. We threw our clothes into our sleeping bags to warm up before we dressed. We broke camp late, around 6:45 and continued up the meadow.
The trail turned to forest and we dipped down to parallel the Kern River. Josh has been having problems with his big toe and we stopped for him to soak his foot in the cool water. Our spirits were high being in the treeline and walking next to water. Did you hear that? THERES WATER HERE!! :-D
It was slow hiking, taking a million photos and laboring under the weight of our bear canisters. We stopped to eat at a little creek in a burn out area and spotted a bat flying around in the day time! I've never seen a bat out in the day time. We were passed by the herd from Kennedy meadows and set out after them. The trail climbed thru a wide pass and dropped us back down into the Kern River valley where we caught the first glimpse of the High Sierra. The terrain was easy but we huffed and puffed with our heavy packs. At last the trail dropped out on a grassy knoll next to a beautiful bridge with swallows fluttering about. It was like a scene out of a movie. We joined a couple other hikers on the grass next to the river and we remarked how lucky we were to be there. As we headed to our shady spot we noticed someone had constructed a tiny model of Stonehenge in the grass! We filtered water ate and Josh soaked his feet while we watched as one hiker decided to collect their drinking water directly down stream of another washing their socks. It was kind of comical actually. It wasn't like one didn't know the other was there they just didn't care or it didn't dawn on them. Shortly after we forced ourselves to pack up and head out. We wound our way thru the last of the meadow and the trail began to climb steeply paralleling cow creek. We took it slow and steady as we went pushing on to the next viable water. Soon the creek dried up, as did our energy and we thought we were going to have to dry camp. We continued climbing and shortly after a military plane did a loud fly by we happened upon a woman camped on a ridge. We asked her if she could confirm water and she read us the same water report we had read. We hoped for the best and continued on. We were within a quarter mile of the proposed water source and were totally spent. We decided I would set up camp and Josh would slack pack to the water. I set everything up and dove inside the tent to get out of the path of the hungry Mosquitos and watched anxiously for Josh's return. He arrived shortly after with a full 3 liters of water. Hooray! I jumped out to start cooking dinner (outside of the tent, you should be proud) and we were stoked to eat a hot meal for the first time in ages. After dinner we dove in the tent to try and get warm and called it a night.
Right now it's 2pm the following day and were listening to Happy Nomad and Butterfly trying to figure out how to get Happy Nomad down the mountain. He's broken his foot! It's hard to watch. I'll go write about that now.
Until tomorrow, goodnight.
I've never seen that section of the Kern before, usually I just speed past on my way to the Postpile. I'll have to put that on the to do list. You guys are just killing it.
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