This morning, I woke to condensation in the shoulder area of
the quilt and quite a bit inside the bivy in that area. The tarp was bone dry both on top and
underneath. That clinched my conclusion,
it was my breath causing the condensation during the night.
The plan for today was to bushwhack across the plateau,
starting with a climb up to a peak at about 11,500 feet. This first part of the climb was on a wide
ridge with deep valleys on either side. The
path to the peak was pretty mild, but continually crossed outcroppings of rock
and boulders that made the hiking somewhat difficult. My breathing slowed me a bit, but R1 showed
me a way to take longer, deeper breaths that made it a lot easier. I didn’t have any symptoms of altitude
sickness, just the inability to get as much oxygen as I was used to during the
uphill climbs.
On the last approach to the peak, the boulders fields became
nearly continuous and more difficult.
The peak and its approaches gave some really impressive views.
Heading down from the peak to the ridge and across the
plateau, the boulder fields became larger and more challenging. During this period I had a few mishaps. On one jump down from a particularly tall
boulder, I landed poorly on my left foot, and I think I hurt one of my toes. At the time, I thought I had broken it. On another crossing, I tripped and had to
skip across a couple of boulders.
Another time, a large boulder I was crossing shifted abruptly and threw
off my balance. I skipped a couple of
boulders till my trekking pole caught; and I had to go down to prevent breaking
it. Luckily I didn’t seem to hurt anything. After those fields, I was careful to put my
left foot down flatly to avoid further damage to the toe.
When we got near the edge of the plateau, we came upon some
wooded areas. We wanted to descend to a
lake a few hundred feet down, but had difficulty finding a way down. The woods were difficult to get through and
were mixed in with more boulder fields. We
finally began a deep descent through heavy brush and woods. At some places we had to ‘walk’ across bushes
on a steep slope. It was kind of like post-holing through deep snow; you didn’t know what your feet would find or
where they would stop. I couldn’t see
the ground under the bushes.
When we got near the lake, it became one continuous boulder
field. The others seemed able to cross
it with relative ease, but I had a difficult time. We stopped for water in the boulder field
next to the lake. It had only been about
five miles since the last water, but I don’t think we made more than a little
over a mile per hour during that stretch.
That’s where I saw R1 use his Sawyer water bladder for the first and
only time.
After we got water, we went on around the lake and up the
wooded hill to a set of pretty nice camp sites.
It had been windy the last two days, and the wind seemed to get worse as
the evening came on. You could hear it
roaring through the trees.
I commented to R1 that the fallback plan of going back down
the nice 14 mile trail to the trail head the next day didn’t seem to be very
feasible. He agreed that it was too late
to make that change once we got to the peak earlier in the day. We had a camp fire again in a really nice
fire ring. We thought this area was
pretty inaccessible, but it must have been used occasionally by hunters or
backpackers.
I set up my tarp with a particularly high pitch for good
entry but a very low end towards the wind.
It was my best pitch yet. I also
decided to not use the bivy, despite the night’s wind. I would also keep my head out from under the
quilt. This way, I could confirm my
theory about exhaling the moisture that was causing my quilt and bivy
condensation.
Fortunately, the night was very warm, and the breeze
actually felt pretty good. The roaring
wind made it pretty hard to sleep, but the strong winds didn’t seem to make it
down under my tarp.
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