Sunday, May 17th--Day 25

Today sucked.

Every day that has sucked so far had something good about it. The only good thing about today is that it's over.

We got a late start, hitting the trail at around seven. Once again, the sun was blazing by eight. After stopping at a water cache and filling to capacity, we began a long, steady climb into the mountains. No shade, no breezes, and whenever we stopped walking, we were accosted by black flies and bees. It was slow going, and we had lunch at one pm under a bush that provided a tiny amount of shade, swatting at flies the whole time.

After lunch, we pressed on up the mountain in the heat, stopping every few minutes to lean on our poles and breathe as flies tried to get into our ears. The worst part of the day came soon after. We found ourselves swarmed by gnats. They hovered and swirled as we walked, floating just in front of our eyes, noses, and mouths. I walked with my face down, unable to see ahead, because everytime I looked up I got a faceful of gnats. Clouds of gnats. I'm still going to be blowing them out of my nose tomorrow. Gross.

We did make it out of Gnat Town eventually, but the trail kept going, and I was exhausted. We were pushing on to the Acorn Trail, which will take us down to Wrightwood. We climbed farther and farther and I felt worse and worse. At one point, I hit a wall, and dropped my pack and sat motionless in the middle of the trail for a long time. I don't think I've ever been so exhausted. Finally I picked myself up, caught up with Tom and hiked on. We made it to a campsite (a perfect, beautiful campsite) 0.2 miles from Acorn Trail just as the sun was going down. Tonight's dinner: buttery homestyle mashed potatoes with Spam and mango chipotle salmon (not as good as it sounds) on a tortilla.

We go into Wrightwood tomorrow morning. I'm told they don't have an ice cream store, which is criminal. If I don't get ice cream tomorrow, I'm burning that mother down. Night!