Day 218, Aug 31, Backpacking cont.

 

We sure slept well last night, another 9-hrs of deep restorative sleep, cause hiking at this elevation had worn us out.  That and the fact that our hammocks are so dang comfortable.  I love good sleep; makes for needful energy the next day.  Which indeed we needed, cause the hike back down canyon to our truck was almost as grueling as it had been going up.  The steepness of the terrain made the trek down wearing on the hips and knees, the flies were worse than ever, but the real kicker was the temperature.  It reached 101 degrees at the valley floor, and since much of this hike was along exposed granite faces, we endured tremendous temperatures on the way down.

By the time we reached the truck 4 hours after breaking camp, I was experiencing symptoms of heat exhaustion:  was light headed, was panting, and felt nauseated.  Luckily we had plenty of drink in the truck, and the air conditioning blasting full force helped quickly cool us down.  On the hike down we passed so many poor souls going to Mist Falls 4.5 miles up who looked as parched as us. There was an East Indian family of three small kids, mom, dad, and grandma who we came across resting in the shade but who appeared obviously quite worn from the heat.  I worried about them and hoped that they turned back.

We'd been dreaming of and teasing each other about the Diet Pepsi and ice cream we'd purchase at the lodge at the trailhead and spent hours quite drooling over the prospects.  Reaching the lodge however, we realized neither of us had brought along a wallet.  Disappointed to the max, we returned to the trailer about 90 minutes drive away, sullen, parched, and exhausted, where we retrieved wallets and hasted our way to another lodge close to camp.  Sitting in the shade of the lodge's porch, we drank Diet Pepsi and consumed Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream til we were happily bloated and refreshed.  

Was an absolutely stellar backpack trip which we will not forget.  The heat was our worst enemy on the trail, but our campsite high in the range and next to The Kings River was cool and exquisite and mostly bug free.  Paradise Valley lived up to its name.  We were, however, grateful for the shower, clean clothes, and snug bed Bambi promised.

Good deeds:  The 35-mile extremely windy road from the bottom of Kings Canyon uphill to our campground high in the national park is not somewhere you wanna have a car breakdown.  When we passed a minivan with its hood up, we knew the young couple aboard needed help.  Sure enough, their car was overheated and they required radiator fluid or water, neither of which we had in the truck.  We did, however, travel back down canyon to a spring, filled a jug with mossy water, and provided a rag to use as a strainer.  The couple filled their radiator, and we followed behind until they made their way to a gas station several miles up canyon, there to get the radiator fluid they needed.  Feels good to be of some small help to others cause we sure have been the grateful recipients of other's kindnesses many many times.

PS:  While attending a ranger program in The Badlands, only about 20 people of the 100 in attendance had ever seen The Milky Way at night. Sad city dwellers. How is it that we lucked out and camped in the Sierra Nevadas when there was no moon? The night was so deeply dark and the heavens so brilliantly star studded and The Milky Way so magnificently arched across the blackness of the sky that I didn’t mind multiple nighttime bathroom trips just to gawk at the heavens.