August 12

Had coffee with Gulig at "Popcorn Spring" this morning, he had his oatmeal. We forgot to resupply stove fuel back in Dunsmuir, so we are conserving what we have for the next one hundred miles. Still though, we have coffee. Gulig has been broken by the trail: blisters, chafe, cramps, exhaustion, stiffness, etc. We had to bail him out of the last section at McCloud Reservoir, because we couldnt make enough miles for the days of food we had allotted. Sometimes, he is reduced to a hobble but his sense of humor remains fully intact. To him, the whole ordeal is laughable.

The trail today is winding up and around the Castle Crags upturned granite towers the most intense climbing Gulig has seen yet. I am seated by a spring, waiting for him to turn the corner, hoping he looks alright after 2500 of climbing. It takes the arrival of an outsider to see for real the intensity of this life something like chronic aches and everpresent sweat and general self deprivation has become so routine to me, I no longer notice. But I can see it in Guligs limp and the way collapses to the ground when we take a break.

Day one hundred today.

Wonderful hiking along the inside of a bowl an overwhelming panorama of the Crags and Shasta. Along more ridges into glacial bowls. For lack of water, Hobbles and I were forced to descend into a basin, to fetch water from a lake through shrub-lined slopes: very counter-productive, adding two extra miles onto our day. Now, three of us camped in the middle of a trailhead parking lot.