June 21

End: Tyndall Creek
Daily: 8.7
End: 747.7

Short day? Really? Today was the hardest day we've had yet. We started at 9:20, thinking we'd get to camp by 2 ish.

Then we had to slide straight down a hill (I self arrested 4 times), ford 3 creeks (the second two were scary!) and find our way over a huge bluff when the boot pack led us the wrong way. We got to camp by 5.

So we followed this bootpack say too far up this open field, turn up to go over the hill we thought we had to go up, before we realized we were probably in the wrong drainage. We decided to to try and go up through a pass we think might be the right pass and look for a lake that would tell us where we were. We ended up going way far above where we actually needed to be, and saw the lake a hundred feet or so below us. That was a surprise. So the whole detour probably added about an hour to the day.

Despite how hard today was, it was so fun! It was how I thought the Sierra would be - fording rivers, playing on snow, getting lost and seeing beautiful things. I don't think I could have done it and still been happy if I hadn't had Chris there. Getting lost alone is so different than getting lost with another person. I knew if worst came to worst, we had our tent and we were used to sleeping in the woods. Plus, today was the longest day of the year (also naked hiking day, although nobody participated).

It's time to sleep - we're leaving at 6 to get over Forester pass, the tallest pass we'll have to do. Then the next day we'll go out over Kearsarge and into Independence.