Leon Turnbull Photography

It was 17.8 miles back to my car in Crescent Meadow. Most of it was downhill but still a lot of elevation gain (about 1800 ft.). This is a huge day hike for me. I have only done that much maybe once or twice before. I had enough food to spend an additional night but I was ready to go home. I wanted to make sure that I was back to my car and home that night. There was nothing else I needed to see (I was just backtracking on the same trail), and the mosquitoes were out now with a full invasion force (and I was out of mosquito repellent – I did not bring enough of it). Basically, I just wanted to go home. I was up at 4:30AM and on the trail by 5:30AM. Even at this early hour there were mosquitoes out. I hoped by the time I lost some elevation they would all be gone, however I had some off and on for the entire hike back (mostly, it was not too bad except in a few areas).

Along the way I saw three more waterfalls (including this one on Lone Pine Creek). This makes the total for the trip to be 11 waterfalls in 6 days. Not too shabby.

You may be wondering how my feet did on this trip. If you remember, I have had injured feet this spring. On the last couple backpacking trips I did, I was in so much pain on the day following the trip that I literally could not even walk. During the trips, usually they (one or both feet) were sore in the morning, but then loosened up once I got hiking, but on a few days my feet were hurting for the whole day. Afterwards though, is when I had the pain, but it was just for about one day and then it was fine. However, in between trips I did not do any other day hiking or exercise as I normally would do. I wanted to have complete rest for the next trip. But those were just 2 or 3 days trips. The High Sierra Trail was to be my biggest trip of the year. Six days in the wilderness. How would my feet be after a couple days on the trail? Would I make it back or be stranded miles from anywhere? Even the day before I started this trip I went to a couple stores and my feet were hurting. This was not a good sign.

Well … the answer is that my feet were completely fine for the entire trip! I had almost no issues at all. I think there were just a couple days where they were a bit sore in the morning but were fine after I started hiking. Even the last day which was a huge 18 mile day I had no problems. The day after I got home my feet were sore but nothing as bad as the previous trips. Was it a miracle? Was it because I took ibuprofen every morning? I think it was probably a bit of both, honestly. I am sure the ibuprofen helped, but I think God helped as well. Otherwise, I would have been stranded 18 miles from my car and not able to hike back.

I made very good time on the hike back to the car. I estimated I would be back by 3:30PM but it was 2:30PM when I finished the hike. I was tired without a doubt.

And … it all ended with a beautiful surprise …

Literally … within the last two minutes of my six day hike … I finally saw a bear! There was a baby bear sleeping by a tree just off the trail, right before the parking lot. I would not have even seen it at all except that someone else pointed it out to me. I did not even see it at first after she pointed to it. It was in my head that it was a light brown colored bear for some reason, probably because all the trees were that color and so I was looking for a brown bear hiding beside the brown trees. Then it finally lifted its head and I saw that it was a dark brown colored (almost black) bear! It stood up, stretched, and then flopped back down on the ground. So cute! And I got it all on video. I was so happy to see him.

I drove out of the park. I stopped in Fresno for pizza. I drove home. Good night day 6.