June 26

After crossing Forrester Pass, the group convened and, following much discussion, a decision was made to leave the trail and get more supplies because the amount of snow was simply slowing us down more than we had anticipated. With twelve days of food on our backs, we had planned to cover a minimum of sixteen miles a day in order to travel about 175 miles. Since we hit the big snowfields, we covered only ten miles in a full day of hiking. Our logic concluded that if the upcoming passes will be just as slow going as this last one then our food will only last us ten days, instead of twelve. So, it is onward to Kearsarge Pass and then beyond to Independence, a drowsy town on Highway 395, RVs passing through on summer vacation and fishermen heading up to the high lakes, sitting at the very crook of the mountains, where the Sierra rises straight out of the desert.

Looking up at the Sierra from the bottom of this arid floor, I see these monuments of pure rock protruding vertically in piles against the placid blue sky. From down here, the mountains appear ominous and mythological, like an autonomous world that can only be entered with utter heroism, with limitless determination and strength of spirit. High up there is a place categorically distinct from this desert, composed of avalanches, waterfalls, foxtails, marmots, snowfields, meadows. Ive never seen anything like this before.

Resting has allowed me some time and distance to calm down about the upcoming passes. The danger exists, yes, but clarity of the senses is the antidote to letting these conditions overwhelm me. My focus must be totally narrowed around the action of my limbs, the fundamental contraction and expansion of muscle fibers, the simple motions; rather than the massive emptiness of space hanging below me or the flight of icy stairs extending above me. I must break the next one hundred miles into a series of manageable footsteps, the soles of my shoes shaping steps in the snow, the stem of my axe braced firmly between the mountain and myself.
Yesterday, I was surprised to awake to see my bag coated in frost, the moisture emanating from the nearby river where we laid out our camp. Shoes frozen into stiff blocks, noses running with cold snot. After we had finalized our decision to get more supplies, we began eating voraciously from our foodbags. Our decision had suddenly released us from our former food scarcity, from the meager rationing. My breakfast consisted of an oatmeal bar, two Snickers bars, and several granola bars. While walking, following the downstream flow of Bubbs Creek, we passed through a stand of annihilated pines, crushed and splintered into a chaotic mess of debris. The smashed poles all slanting away in the same direction. Evidence of a recent avalanche. Looking at the shattered trunks, I wondered what would happen to my own bones under the force of such an avalanche. Recognition of my own fragility, that the mountain is the boss. I am here under the terms of the Sierra.