Timber

There was a gorgeous sun rise this morning. Not unlike any other morning but today we got to see it rise behind snow topped mountains and it was magical. Started the day off with crampon right away and wore them for the majority of the day. AH crossed the river without his pack to test it out and was not too enthusiastic about crossing it again with all of his gear. After a little bit of searching we were able to cross our first major creek on a log. Once we were across and had set up camp, a large tree fell over not 100 feet away from my tent.

Throughout the day I had thoughts creep into my head about going home when we reached Independence instead of waiting to get to Yosemite. I will evaluate my situation when I get there.

Crampons are amazing but they kind of hurt your feet and your ankles especially if you walk sideways on a slope in one direction for a really long time. But. On the bright side I feel like wolverine when I wear them. So. Winning.

Much of the time you do not actually know if you are on the trail or not unless you are constantly looking at your phone (which has an app which tells you your GPS location relative to the trail) but that takes up a lot of battery and you would probably run into a tree. In the snow you can’t just look down and see the trail so you have to try your best and occasionally look at the map to correct your course. Because of the snow we got a little lost but we ultimately found our way back onto where the trail would be. A couple of feet bellow us buried in the snow.

Tomorrow will be a relatively short day to set us up for our summit of Mt. Whitney the day after!