Second Day, June 25

Wow the wind died down and the mosquitos came out. Had to pace while eating my dinner beans. I'm low in elevation after doing three passes today. Hard as hell. The first was kinda nice and took me right up to the divide with a lake at the top. I dropped only a bit, then followed another creek up to 5600 or so, a giant heap of loose slate. It was reasonably easy to avoid the snow on both sides. Then I descended and momentarily forgot that I had another pass to do shortly. Oh good, I've got flat mile along a big river--nope! Right back up, and higher than last time. Avoiding the snow was manageable on the West side, but there was a cornice (not really of the sketchy variety, just saying the drift made it all the way to the top) and looking down the East side was alarmingly white. No solid way down, and it looked like the largest basin had an avalanche at some point this winter. I tracked back and forth connecting solid ground, but was sinking in snow and getting wet and cold (the storm had held off on the climb, but finally started raining on the way down.)

Close to the end, I sunk in to my hips, fell over, and got a Charlie horse all at the same time. It sucked. Then a minute later it happened again with the other leg. Also, I was able to make the corner of a ridge, and realize that if I'd just contoured a tiny bit at the top, I could have had a rock way down most of the way. I'd seen that ridge from the top but it looked so steep I didn't want to traverse to it. Most things aren't as steep as the look from far away. Poor choices.

I stopped at the bottom of Two Charlie Horse Pass and took a multivitamin, chugged some flavored drink, and got moving. I got warm again, and had good walking until the last hour or so when it got boggy. I knew it would, I just wanted to cut across the valley rather than following the stream well out of my way. 

Two of seven full days done. I hope to cross the divide tomorrow at a 6100 foot pass. If it's bad, I can come back a ways and go over lower. I think 6100 will be the high point of the trip. I highly doubt my 6800 foot pass is clear at this point, and I'm covering less ground than I expected. (That's fine, that's why I drew a bunch of shortcuts!) My pack is too heavy but it's mostly food, so I'm eating my way out of that problem.