A few weeks ago, we took a quick trip to Mammoth Lakes California for a wedding. We left Thursday morning and drove the 9 hours through some of the less exciting parts of Nevada.
Sidenote mostly for myself: always get gas when you have the chance in rural Nevada.
This was my first trip to the Eastern Sierras, so I was excited. As fate would have it, I got sick on the way down and stayed that way for a full week. I blame allergies and running an ultra one week prior.
Friday morning, I was still functional, so the Mrs. and I climbed up to a ridge above Crystal lake to get a good view of the area.
That afternoon was the wedding, which was grown ups only. I volunteered for babysitting duty and got progressively more ill whilst a moderately sized militia of children enjoyed minimal supervision during their reign of terror.
Sleep and coughing dominated my time until Saturday night. During that interval I stayed confined to our condo, lamenting the fact that there was so much amazing trail out there that I wasn't enjoying. By Saturday night, I was completely stir crazy and feeling worse, but decided to get out and see how it went. I had picked out a loop around Gem and Agnew lakes during one of my non-comatose moments that was 12 miles with "2000" feet of vert. As with most trail distance/elevation estimates, this was a significant underestimation. It was over 3000 feet of climbing, which was even harder considering how crappy I felt.
My time estimate for finishing this loop was not particularly accurate, either. I ended up getting back to the car minutes before Deanna was planning on calling 911. I can't blame her as it was right as the sun was setting and I was an hour late! She has been my most trusty shuttler and has put up with a lot of poorly estimated meet-up times.
The loop was fantastic despite the problems. There looks to be so much more to see in the Eastern Sierras; I would love to spend more time in this area.
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