6/11 788-811(23 miles)
6/12 811-833(22 miles)
6/13 833-853(20 miles)
6/14 853-878+1.5mile side trail(26.5 miles)
6/15 Vermillion Valley Resort. Zero miles
6/16 878-898 (20 miles)
6/17 898-906 (8 miles)
6/18 Mammoth Lakes! Zero Miles

This will be a strange post.  I did not write any note during any of these days, and am writing all of these journals now.  Sorry for the strange format.  You will soon see why.

I awake in the morning after the storm and emerge to clear blue skies.  Perfect conditions. After losing two days of food from my sickness and the storm, I now only have 3 days of food left.  I estimate that it will take me four days to make it to my next stop.  I think it over.  I could turn around and head back down to town, losing days in the process, or I can push it and try to hurry to my next stop.  My old reptilian inner brain tells me to run run run! Go for it!  While my frontal lobe says, "Be rational.  Do you really want to go through the most difficult section of the PCT with a limited amount of food?"  As always, the lizard brain wins.

 So begins my continued hike through the heart of the Sierra Nevada mountains.  Every day I hike up and over 12,000 foot passes of ice and snow.  I climb from the valleys with their trees and grasses and lush green, up into the world of the alpine with its rock and snow and sterile wind.  This is some of the most difficult hiking I have ever done, and it was magnified by my lack of food.  I should have been carrying extra, when instead I had less than normal.  These days were a blur.  I would arrive at the base of 3-4,000 foot climbs, and then I would eat a bunch of quick burn carbs and race up as fast as I could while I still had food energy.  I would arrive at the top, drenched in sweat, gasping in the thin air, and then zombie walk down, my brain foggy from lack of food.  I climb up and over Glenn pass.  Mather pass.  Pinchot.  Muir. Selden. I write nothing.  All of my brain power is focused on putting one foot in front of the other.  Climb, descend. Climb, descend. Ford river. Climb, descend, ford river.  A pattern emerges.  I could feel my body shrinking. I could feel my pulse in my stomach when I lay for bed at night.  The only thing that kept me enlivened was the endless beautiful vistas I had at the top of every pass.  This place is perfect and beautiful and a backpacker's paradise.

Each day cannot be differentiated from the next.  My mind is blank.  I experience true hunger for the first time in my life.  My body is eating itself.  Regardless, I feel endlessly strong.  I fly up every climb, feeling like I could walk forever.

 At last I make it to the turn off to a backcountry resort called Vermillion Valley Resort. It lays in the edge of an enormous man made lake, or what was once an enormous man made lake that is now half the size it once was.  A ferry exists to shuttle hikers from one side of the lake to another, but I miss the final ferry of the day. I camp on the dry lake bed, next to the shuttle pick up point and eat the last of my rationed food:  bacon bits and prunes.

In the morning I awake and am shuttled by boat into the resort.  Even with my brain so foggy I enjoy the boat ride immensely. I laugh as I am hit with spray from the water as we fly over the still lake. The boat makes it to the shore, and I stumble up to the restaurant at the resort and order two breakfasts.  Before eating, I notice a scale next to the door of the restaurant.  I stand on it and look at my weight: 173 pounds, twenty pounds down from my starting weight of 193 pounds.

Over the course of the afternoon and evening I eat five enormous meals.  I pour food and drinks into my stomach.  I come back to life.  In the evening I step back on the scale and find that I now weigh 185 pounds.   I was like a dried out sponge that was now once again full of liquid. My mind returned.  I was back.
Unfortunately, my recovery ended up costing me over 150$ in under 24 hours. All of it was on food.  Backcountry resorts can be mighty expensive.

I decide that I need to make some changes in my diet.  This last section was far too hard on me.  So far on this trip I have been hiking without a stove.  With the bulk of my calories being bars, and nuts, and dried fruit.  For dinner every night I was eating cold, dried mashed potatoes, mixed with tuna or bacon bits.  I have gotten so sick of mashed potatoes that I eventually would just pour the powder in a bunch of water and gulp it down.  I vow to never eat mashed potatoes ever again in my entire life.  Thanksgiving? None!

I depart Vermillion Valley Resort and head back onto the trail with my body heavier, but my wallet much lighter.  I rush through the next bit of trail until I reach the town of Mammoth Lakes, California, where I currently am.  In town I buy a stove, and a new means of purifying my water- chlorine dioxide drops.  I suspect that my filter was ruined during a cold night when it froze, and that is why I became sick.  I take a much needed rest in town.  I eat a ton of pizza, rest and regain my strength. I buy pasta and tortellini and plan to make elaborate trail dinners.

The deer in the Sierras have NO FEAR of people whatsoever. They have been walking through my campsites and have tried to chew on my backpack(presumably for the sweat residue).  Another hiker had his socks stolen by a deer.  If deer do not fear us, what will stop them from taking our place on the top of the food chain?!  Oh yeah, their stupid little hooves.

I am feeling great after a little bit of rest and ready to hit the trail.  I will soon be done with the Sierra Nevada mountains and will race my way though Northern California where the trail gets easier.