Not everything goes to plan, and your experience is dependent on your perspective.
We had planned a 9 day backpacking trip from North Lake to Onion Valley via portions of the SHR, trail, and other cross country routes. We weren’t able to do a backpacking trip last summer due to COVID and the Creek Fire shutting down all of the national forests in CA. The summer prior, I was still on a slow hip and back recovery and unable to carry a heavy backpack. This summer, my hip was back at 100% and we were able to go earlier to beat the odds of another wildfire-related closure. I had injured my foot and ankle several weeks prior trying to talus-hop on the Dana Plateau in new, soft shoes, but had been very careful and “good” about resting prior to our trip. We were hopeful.
We knew a monsoonal pattern was setting up and that we’d likely be trying to outrun the weather almost every day of our trip except the first one. We packed the bare minimum of food, hoping we wouldn’t be too hungry for the first week and that we’d be able to supplement by helping eat up some of the invasive brookies out of the high alpine lakes. My foot was taped and we were hopeful and ready to roll.
Our trip didn’t go to plan. The weather was far more monsoony than we had anticipated, and we got a day behind on day 2. On the afternoon of day 3, my foot was aching badly while we were laying in the tent, and I knew I had to make a decision between “toughing out” 6 more days of mileage and cross country travel or being able to recreate the rest of the summer. Tears were shed in Leconte Canyon as my guilt set in and made me feel like the entire thing was a lose-lose scenario. I was forced to talk to Alex about how I was feeling instead of bury it. We both decided it made the most sense to cut off part of our trip and take our time going out over Bishop Pass….maybe we’d do a little side trip on the Palisade Traverse, but we’d just stretch out the mileage and take things one day at a time. At first it was really hard to accept that I needed to just hike what I could and then focus on resting my foot. Somehow “the mountains aren’t going anywhere” is both true and not always helpful— after all, the mountains may not go anywhere, but our ability to get back to some of these places (as I’ve learned these last few years) is nothing to take for granted. But Alex was incredible supportive and firm in our decision to respect our bodies, which made it a little more bearable. We came out two days early so that we could do some day hikes and sleep out of the car. We were able to hike up to the pass (Kearsarge) that we would have exited at, which felt incredible, regardless of how we got there.
It was the best medicine. We were both exhausted from a difficult 7 months in new jobs, and by the end of 9 days felt like ourselves again. We didn’t touch our phones the entire time. There’s something incredibly healing about being in the southern Sierra that’s hard to describe in words. For my body and heart, it’s simply needed.
My hip injury taught me that sometimes I need to say no to my ego. This summer taught me that I can actually put that into practice. I know when to push, and when not to push. Even with us taking the rest of our trip easy, I wasn’t able to run again for another 6 weeks but was able to hike and we still got in our monthly turns. Good thing I didn’t try to “tough it out!” Even though it still sucks to change plans (particularly when it affects other people around you, aka Alex), this summer taught me that my worth isn’t tied up in the number of miles or vert we did in 9 days or how fast we did our route finding, or whatever. It’s all about the experience of being out in a sea of granite with your loved ones. Although next time, we’ll make sure to pack more food. :)
