Sleep - Sunday, May 25

The restorative power of sleep is mind blowing! We stagger into a campsite after 12 hours of hiking, dead tired, muscles aching, feet sore, overall body fatigue a 9 out of 10 where 10 is immobility. We cook a dinner while seated or laying, munch it down and crawl under the quilt; it is already dark. We might talk a bit, write on the blog or watch part of a movie on the iPad and the day is done. Each night I wonder, and worry, how we will feel in the morning. Often, I wake up during the night and revel at the stars, or enjoy the glow of the lights of Los Angeles far
below us before dropping back to sleep. So my sleep is not continuous, even though I am so fatigued when I fall asleep.

Yet, every morning we wake and marvel at the amount of soreness and pain that was erased during the night. Notice, I did not say that we wake perfectly refreshed and raring to go. Sometimes we do, but after a particularly hard day, such as yesterday, we feel renewed, but in degrees, not an absolute. The proof comes when we start on the trail. How much fatigue lingers from the day before? Within the first 100 yards we can tell if it was a full recovery night or partial.

Every few days, if the partial builds into something significant, a zero day is in order to reset the zero point-a calibration of sorts to redefine the baseline.

We found in the first few weeks of the trip we did not need zero days because we did not push ourselves to our limits.
Now that the trail requires longer milages be conquered each day to get to water we find the fatigue builds and a zero is necessary to reset. Such was the case from yesterday's labors.

We woke this morning just as the birds began to herald the new day but the sky was still quite dark. The memory of the two liters of water in the water cache back at the road haunted me as we only had 3.5 liters for two of us with 8.4 miles to go so I grabbed 4 empty bottles and headed back down the trail by headlamp to grab what water I could.

I found my memory served me well. There was 1 gallon jug with water among the 8 bottles lying around, and it was only half full. I filled two of my bottles and returned to camp to treat the water.

Sally was stirring by this time, so I cooked some oatmeal for her and downed a bowl of granola. We were on the trail a little after 6.

We both felt the result of our exertions from the day before, a reduction in vigor and energy. Still, we had 8 miles and another 3000' to climb to get to Guffy Springs, our source for water. We passed over a couple of roads on our way and saw a few old water caches, but all the jugs were empty. Still, we had enough water to make the distance so we did not dwell on the lack of additional water.

The terrain and scenery were breath taking. We were walking through mature stands of Douglas Fir and Jeffrey Pines, widely spaced with a fine thick duff carpet of pine needles. These trees provided something that is sorely missed when they are absent due to fire … shade. We were walking at about 7000' so the air temperature was comfortable, in the low to mid 70s even though the heat from the direct sun was hot where it peaked through the trees.

When we reached Guffy Campground we had finished off all our water, so I grabbed 7 one liter bottles and headed for the spring to fill them. The spring was a quarter mile away and down about 300 vertical feet. I did not realize how far it was when I started out and what a tiny dribble of water was coming out of the galvanized pipe sticking out of the ground so as the expected ten minute task approached an hour in length I began to worry Sally would be concerned for my safety.

When I finally returned to the campground with the water I found Sally sound asleep on her blue foam pad, oblivious to my status of "missing in action".

We ate lunch with three army recruiters out for a weekend of hiking away from the city, their kids and wives. Loaded down with water we hiked an additional three miles to Blue Ridge campground for the night.

As we sat on our picnic table a 27 year old named Zack from the adjacent campsite came over and asked if we were thru hiking. When we said yes he immediately replied, "Anything we have is yours. What can we do for you?" We spent the rest of the evening with Zack and Liz enjoying raspberry s'mores, banana boats, peach cobbler, hot dogs, corn on the cob, asparagus, baked beans and beer with shots of tequila. I drank water.

We had to excuse ourselves about 9:15 to get to sleep for the next day. We thanked Zack and Liz for their generosity and went to our tent for the night counting on sleeps restorative power to prepare us for another day.