04 1759.9 6/18/2021 sunny, some clouds. Got up at first light, did my toilet first, came back and packed up, was on trail at 5:05. Started my climb. I was glad that I waited until the next day, because there were blowdowns. Many and dense ones. I sometimes need to climb up and balance to tightrope walk to the next one and the next before slowly getting down. I realize that I did one mile in one hour and 45 minutes. I sent an InReach message asking Justin to head my way with another days food. The InReach messages looked to be out of order or missing some. Today I lost my InReach itself when I took off my pack to crawl through a little hole of blowdowns branches. I noticed it was gone later. So I got to water, filled up and then went back. In the meantime I had gotten LTE so sent Justin some messages. I got back and found it – whew! But that would put me even later. I finally got to my stopping point and Justin messaged me that somehow he had passed me. Oh no! So I told him where I was and he had to get back to me. He did over 4 extra miles through all the awful blowdowns. OMG! He set up his tent. We ate dinner together and went over what we should do next time. First use only InReach – no cell phone. Include time and trail mileage with each message. Tomorrow is an early zero day. My pants are in tatters. I’m all scraped up especially my shins and need a shower and bandages – many, many bandages.
See “The Blowdown Lowdown” for Justin’s description of the whole affair.
