Day 76

​14.3 miles hiked   
 
Town day today!!! Which means, a warm bed to sleep in and a shower and laundry! Woohooooo! 

Today we are getting off trail via Bishop Pass. 
We are going in blind because our app doesn’t show the elevation we are about to do. Just the switch backs and the mileage. 
And there are a shit ton of switchbacks… 

2.6 miles to the turn off where we start the pass. That part was easy terrain. We saw a beautiful bridge and creek and crossed that just before the turn off. 

Then started the fuck ton of switch backs. God damn. However, the views were beautiful. The first 3 miles of the trail we followed a water slide and then saw the waterfall it came from. Gorgeous. Then we came to a spot for some lunch by the creek. I ate some chili ramen and candies. 

After lunch we continued on to the valley/basin before the final steep climb up to the top of the pass. It was so nice to walk through. A little flatter terrain with ups and downs mixed in. 

Once we were about a mile and a half from the top I really started to feel my altitude sickness coming on again. I had to stop and rest about 4-5 times. I knew I had to get up and over this pass asap. 
I hiked slow and steady because of how sick and dizzy I was feeling. We hit a false pass (brutal) and I kept trudging on. 
Once we hit the top of the pass we cursed it to hell and started to descend. 

What a horrible scary descent. We traversed over our first snow pass. I fell, but, I was okay. I was just wet and laughing over it after. 

Then we passed a bunch of bones from an animal. It was a lot of bones though so I guessed that it had to be a few animals. Later I found out that it was a pack of mules that passed away after falling down a rock slide there. 

On the way down Woodstock was ahead most of the time because I was going slower due to my ankle. The rocky terrain was not doing me any favours. 
I met some hikers I haven’t seen since mount Whitney and quickly caught up with them. Then hiked on. Caught up to Woodstock eventually and we hiked the rest of the way down together. 
We found service 3 miles away from the road and were already going to miss the shuttle so we stopped for a bit to talk to family and friends. 
It was unbearably hot though so we wrapped that up quickly and then kept pushing till the end. 

We we got to the bottom finally we walked to a place to find a hitch and I just collapsed and laid on the road. I was so tired. Dead tired. We missed the shuttle so we had to get two hitches to get into town. One in a truck with horses behind us, and one on top of 2 ladies car camping gear. We perched on those like birds. 

While in the second hitch I got service so I booked the hotel in the car and they drove us to there. 

We quickly got our laundry together and heading to the laundromat. While we waited Woodstock went to grab us MacDonald's and we ate it in the laundromat like the true hiker trash that we are.

Once the laundry was done we went back to the hotel. Showered. And then laid in bed for the rest of the night until we fell asleep. 

I will never do this pass again. But my god was it one of the most beautiful trails :)