I slept in until 7:30 again, though this time not by choice. I wanted to get up but my body just said "nope, no thanks." I decided that was a sign that the fatigue was accumulating and I needed an easy day. I knew that today would start with an 1800 foot climb (my camp was at 9100), and that Cottonwood Pass would rear up around mile 19. I decided to take it slow and pull maybe 20 or 21 miles. That never happened.
Once I got moving I flew up the first hill. I don't know if I was better rested than I thought or what, but soon I was near 11,000 feet and had a spectacular view over Owens Lake (pictured). The lake is mostly dry, drained by the LA Aqueduct. In the foreground you may notice a pink hue, which is caused by algae and bacteria.
The trail for a while followed the contours of the mountains, sticking mostly around the high 10,000s in elevation. My pace sped up, and then a strange thing happened. I started seeing everything like I was a spectator at an imax theater. Everything around me started getting more vibrant and I felt like I was high. I realized, with my pace, it was probably oxygen deprivation, but the more I felt out of it the faster I went. The pine trees on either side of the trail started looking like a hallway, and I thought of Grieg's "In the hall of the mountain king." I tried to play it in my head, but ended up with Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G Minor instead, which then somehow morphed into Smoke on the Water. Anyway, I was grooving down the trail, swerving to avoid pine cones, which kind of felt like riding a roller coaster. Anyway, after a while I hit a downhill stretch and came out of it. I still felt really good, but was back in a more normal frame of mind.
During the second half of the day, after the trail had descended into a bowl headwater, the trail took another steep climb. The first 1000 feet were tough, which brought me to a saddle 400 feet below Cottonwood Pass. The final climb, however, was a bit anticlimactic, with the trail leading gently to the top of a meadow (pictured). This small meadow drains into Big Whitney Meadow hundreds of feet below. From here the trail passes Chicken Spring Lake (pictured) and flirts with timberline. Views are pretty spectacular as the trail turns northwest, and include vistas of Big Whitney Meadow and the Western Divide (pictured).
Soon the trail winds down to the Siberian Outpost, a high elevation meadow, before dropping to 9800 feet where I am camped beside a tributary of Rock Creek. As I hiked through Siberian Outpost the lighting was unreal. Although the sun was still at least 6 fingers above the horizon, it looked like dusk. The forest of lodge pole pines around me looked like someone had turned down the color saturation and jacked up the contrast. The result was a retro look that made everything seem ancient and mysterious. Combined with the soft light slanting into my eyes through the canopy, it felt like I was in some mythical forest. I had never experienced such dim lighting with the sun still so high. I figured with the sun setting the light would be traveling diagonally through the atmosphere, and therefore more would be absorbed or refracted by the time it reached me - as opposed to noon when the rays would have a more direct and thus shorter course. I dunno, I had a lot of free time to make shit up.
So here I am, 29 miles for the day. Not exactly the rest day I had planned, but I think tomorrow should be shorter as I move into position for an attempt on Mt. Whitney.
