Ready, Set, Wait- I Forgot My Down Coat, Oh brother...

7/22/15 Wednesday. 5-6 miles & 50% chance of rain.

Here we are in Mammoth Village ready to leave Colleen and bus into Red's Meadow.

In the night my mind randomly dropped the thought that I didn't remember seeing my down coat in my clothes bag when I set up my tent in the Bristlecone Forest last night. Panic! I called home & it was confirmed that it was in the home closet & not in my pack...wow, how could I have forgotten to pack it??  Colleen offered to let me use her down vest with hood, yes, yes, yes!  I stowed it in my pack gratefully.  After breakfasting we did one last mental check of our stuff and one last picture, a sendoff prayer with goodbyes to Colleen & in no time were riding the bus with other hikers up to Red's Meadow for the start of our trail south.

We started hiking at 10 am finding the trail along with 2 guys coming from Red's. The day was warming up with clouds on the horizon.   The JMT is a much more crowded trail than the PCT usually was, we'll need to get used to that. Going through an old burn area we are gaining 1800' elevation over the next 6 miles.  We startd at Red's at 7500' and will be ending at Deer Creek at around 9100'. There will be lots of huffing & puffing until I'm acclimated.

During the first miles of the trail I struck up a conversation with a man in his 30s & his dad from Vancouver, the younger man was a Dr. hiking with his dad who had angina & symptoms quite like my leg issues last year.  He suggests I talk to my Dr. about claudication, narrowing of the vessels & arteries in my legs.  His dad's symptoms are very much as I described mine last year except I have no heart issues with mine.  He encouraged me to monitor my exertion, rest before it got too bad & check with my Dr. when I got back.  Imagine That,  A Diagnosis!  The Trail Provides Again!

We passed 2 big red cinder cones just off the trail which are uniquely beautiful.  There seem to be lots of dark clouds, I'm hearing some thunder but so far no rain. We finally stopped at Deer Creek, got water & decided not to go further because it looked like raIn.  There were many people camped all over so we chose to go farther from the trail and water to find a nice spot in the boulders and trees.  At 3:45 pm it started to rain.  We spent time in the tents reading, getting used to being on the trail again, there was a small window where we ran outside & did chores, then it really opened up and poured, adding hail to the mix here is a photo from my tent to Peggy's.

We ate dinner just inside our tents, played a game of Farkle (a dice game that I packed), I went for a walk around the boulders near our camp and was in bed by 8:15pm.