So here’s the story of this journey from Mrs. Scarf’s point of view. Most of you know I trained hard and it paid off. Awesome thanks are owed to Prof. Peter Starkweather who as the perfect educator knew when to push and when to cheer me on. Personal trainer Joey was also huge because he helped make me strong. And Kyle as a constant encourager, given that this was all his crazy idea in the first place – but I am proud and glad of the journey.

But, now let’s talk about the math….Peter told us it would be from about 9,000 ft to 11,000 feet up on a 7.5 mile each way hike. Mind you, this is Ret. Professor Starkweather, biologist and all around good guy, but he didn’t do the math right. The summit was actually 11,760 and the hike was closer to 8.5 miles long, both of which he attributed to a ’rounding error’! #misled. (BTW, if you ever really want to mess with Peter, tell him you’ve got a ‘theory’ about something. His head will spin around in circles…it’s kinda funny…)

Moving on. On Friday June 8th we got a late start (yes, I was stressing that) and hit the trail around noon, a full 1-2 hours later than I had wished, but it was what it was.

We had picked up Kyle in Bishop and then headed to the trailhead outside of Lone Pine after much gear-sorting by Kyle, et al and breakfast.

And then we went up, and up, and up some more on about a 4 mile hike to get to the Kearsarge Pass summit. It’s just beautiful and there were waterfalls everywhere, the sounds of which escorted us up the trail. Some of it was forested and other parts not. Granite boulders at times but nothing too hard. I’d seen the topographical maps from Peter, so we knew more or less what to expect. And it went really well.

Until about 15 minutes after we’d passed the 10,000 ft. mark, and then it happened. I stopped briefly to catch my breath…and there wasn’t any to catch. No oxygen was to be had. So I kept going and let Peter catch up to me and then we both caught up to Kyle who was ahead of us a bit. I ate, and then Peter took a couple of pounds off my pack. But it did get better, gradually.

What I remember from that point was that, again, you just had to keep moving, heading up and up and up, but I know I was very, very slow. Most humbling of all are the 20-something PCT hikers who are practically trotting up the hill, moving around us like we were standing still!

But as you can see, it was worth it, and no amount of pictures can do it justice. It’s a thing of fantasy, a Tolkien Middle-Earth worthy feeling you experience looking over that scene.

But we had to keep moving, because it was 5pm by that point, having taken us 5 hours to get to that summit, and still with 4.5 miles to go. The hike down was horrid. Body pounding, knee crushing loose granite made to cause painful falls, of which there were none on that stretch.

But we did stop for dinner at an idyllic spot, so please join us.

And here is the final picture I took that night. The shadows were getting long, and Peter had made it clear to me that even if we had to put on our headlamps we had to keep going, as there was no other in-between place to stop. We had to finish.

But we made it and rolled into camp just as the final rays of light reflected off Charlotte Lake still barely visible to us. We set up camp quickly, crawled into our tents and bags and dropped dead. We had a few other antics beforehand though, but you’ll have to wait for the next post as this one is already so long. More later!