Waking up to bone dry water bottles is a downer. I got up and quickly got moving toward the spring that was about .6 up the trail. Mr. F had already started snacking, but I needed some water to help the food go down.
I was already dripping sweat by the time I found the spring, and the heat had started to give me a bit of a headache. The spring itself was more a stagnant pool than a flowing source, but it did have a little movement, so I stocked up. After a drawn out breakfast in the shade, I decided to keep moving. Mr. Fantastic still hadn't caught up though, which made me think he had either skipped this source or missed it.
By now the heat was getting rather brutal, dramatically slowing my pace as it caused my head to thrum with building momentum. I slogged along, sweat dripping from my elbows with each step, until I came to the halfway point. Hiking down to the shelter I finally came across Mr. Fantastic. He followed me back to the shelter and explained that he had stopped at a different crappy spring, just 20 feet before the one I found. Another long break was required for me to find any energy in this heat, and then we were off.
Had I not been planning to meet my parents today I would have stopped at that shelter, even with it's trickle of a water source. If you'd like to recreate the way I felt at this point, do jumping jacks in a sauna with a terrible hangover. Just keep doing that for about 5 hours.
The rest of the hike continued to be miserable, until about 1.5 miles away from our destination. We finally found a decent source of water, and took advantage. I soaked my Buff and wrapped it around my head, finally calming my pounding temples, and we each chugged a liter of water. Refreshed, and ready to face the final push, we kept on towards our meet destination.
The campground was the most welcome sight I could ever imagine. Mr. F collapsed on the ground, and I worked on explaining to Vince exactly where we were located. 15 minutes later we were inside the lodge, ordering dinner, and drinking the best tasting soda I've ever had. There was still no A/C, but in the shade we were cool. It was great to meet back up with my parents, and made it feel like I've been gone for no time at all. We found out it had been topping out over 100 degrees for the day, and that there was a forest fire raging further up the trail. Not having the energy to put too much thought into that just yet, we got in the car and headed for the Best Western.
The room was air conditioned, and we joyously showered and lounged. The Matrix was on, and we were exactly where we needed to be on such an insanely hot day. That's when the hail came.
The storm came on hard and fast, and we lost our precious power before we had a real chance to prepare. The loss of Internet was frustrating, but the loss of A/C was a little bit soul crushing. We wandered around the hotel room with head lamps on, doing our best impression of indoor camping, until we both finally passed out.
We plan to hike 8 miles with my mom tomorrow, but we'll see what the temperature does. It could be too brutal for any of us to be out climbing mountains.
