Day 13

Day 13, July 15th (Alexandra) COLD! OMG! It was below freezing last night at 11,500 ft. I was warm in my sleeping bag, but even J didn’t make a sound until the sun hit the tent and things began to warm up. We had a slow morning. I felt feverish and my stomach was giving me issues. We slowly made it made it down the rest of the pass, hiking down 3,000 ft on a trail that made no sense. By mid morning ( and several IB Proffen later) we were crossing the canyon floor, all 6 miles of it. We finally saw someone we recognized – the guys from Ohio that we met at MTR. They are super fast walkers and were meeting a friend near a pass junction. We kept on and saw lot of people who are out hiking for the weekend. The Conte Canyon floor was filled with a variety of lavender . I was excited to recognize a herb! It was a hot day and I wore long sleeves to protect my arms from the sun, but I fear the back of my neck got burnt despite my hat. By the time we reached the junction at the end of canyon we were beat. We still had 3.5 miles to go and we know it wasn’t going to be pretty. We started walking with me in front (which we do when we are tired) and came around to a field full of ferns (nothing unusual there) and I saw the black furry dome on top of the ferns, like Kelty’s head. I stopped, turned off my ipod which was playing some Fleetwood Mac, and said to J “There’s a bear” to which the bear poked his head up and looked at us. Jasin pulled out his camera and the bear ran another 15 feet away from us. I was so excited about this bear, he was beautiful! It was only our second bear sighting in two weeks. We met a fellow JMT thru hiker named Russel from West Virginia and we showed him the bear. He hadn’t seen a bear yet and he was very excited. We kept walking and then I spotted a deer right next to Jasin. We walked another mile and another bear comes walking down the trail right at us! I love these black bears! I can tell J was not happy with all these bears, especially since we were looking to camp in these locations. J was very particular about our camp tonight, so I have let him stress over it. The end of our day never seemed to come, J kept pushing us farther and farther away from where we last saw a bear until I was near tears and exhausted. Today we did 11.5 miles and I think the bottom of my foot is bruised. Love, Mtn Bear Momma!