Day 58: Too Many Sausages
June 7, 2017
Mile 475.30 Horseshoe Meadows Campground to Mile 750.80 Chicken Spring Lake
Back on trail today, but first we gorged ourselves at the Alabama Hills Cafe for breakfast. After eating an obnoxious amount of eggs, potatoes, and bread items we ran some errands before hitching a ride back up to Horseshoe Meadows Campground from 3000 feet in Lone Pine to 10,500 feet.
This is quickly becoming a food blog.
Just as we were about to begin, though, I somehow managed to lose the spacer in between sections of my trekking pole so it would no longer stand up. So I had to spend about 15 minutes wiggling that out before finally getting the thing to work.
Starting to get gnarly.
Really got into the snow in earnest shortly after leaving the campground. Since it was midday the snow was fairly soft making crossing it slow going even with microspikes. After several miles Dr. McDirty and Cougar said that they were going to take a five minute break and advised Glowworm and I to continue. This turned out to be a mistake. After hiking for a while more Glowworm and I stopped for a break to let them catch up, but they never came. Several people passed us and said that Dr. McDirty and Cougar were ahead of them. So we decided to keep pushing to Chicken Spring Lake above 11,000 feet in hopes that they were there. By the time we had arrived it was near dark and we had hiked eight miles including Trail Pass up to the PCT. Cougar and Dr. McDirty were fortunately already camped by this beautiful half frozen alpine lake in the shadow of a treeless pass. Definitely one of the most stunning views I’ve seen on the trail so far.
Our campsite on Chicken Spring Lake.
Polish sausage had already outdone its welcome by the time I got around to making dinner. I stupidly did not check the calories per serving before purchasing eight links each worth 310 calories. I normally have a 100 calorie tuna packet for lunch and another for dinner and so after eating one sausage link for lunch on top of my massive breakfast I was not at all hungry when I sat down to eat dinner. But since I had more food than I could fit into my bear can, I had to make some room. So I ate half a sausage before pawning it off to Dr. McDirty and only a third of my cheddar and broccoli rice. There was no way I could fit any more in my body so I wound up burying it in a home 200 feet from our tent. Bleh. Never again will I ever get Polish sausage and cheddy brocs again. They are forever ruined by this night.
