| I'm lost and I'm hopeless... |
| I'm bleeding and broken... |
The view of Pleasant Valley was cool...
but the trail ahead looked very, um, unpleasant...
As the trail climbed from the creek, I was in so much pain I could barely walk, and almost fell to my death (or at least serious injury) crossing a big snow bank.
After taking that last picture, I pulled out my cell phone in the desperate hope I could get a signal and call for a ride to meet us at Blue Lakes that night. To my amazement, I actually had a signal...and it was even a digital signal. Too bad it only worked well enough to have the person on the other end answer, and then it would disconnect... We were forced to just hope there was a land line at the Blue Lakes campground.
Despite it all, we were still in relatively good spirits as we started the descent toward Wet Meadows, and stopped for a picture overlooking Pleasant Valley.
It would be our last stop for a while, however, as the mosquitoes, which had been fairly nice to us since leaving the car at Ebbett's Pass, decided to come out for food. The were landing in the repellant as we put it on. We couldn't stop, but we were too tired to walk, too. After numerous breaks, during many of which I was trying desperately not to hurl, we finally made it to Wet Meadows. After a brief discussion with a kid out there in his car, we decided the most expedient route was the dirt road to Blue Lakes. He told us it was about 2 miles.
About 3 or more miles later, we finally reached what we thought was one of the Blue Lakes. But it wasn't...it was actually Tamarack Lake, where we were supposed to camp that night. Much to our surprise, it was accessible from the road.
Lucky for us, the kid we'd seen earlier was passing by in his car and gave us a ride to the Blue Lakes campground. We asked the campground host where the phone was, and he laughed at us. Laughed. It certainly wasn't funny to me. But, he did say that you could sometimes get a cell phone signal about 2.5 miles up the road, so we set up camp and figured we'd go walk out the 2.5 miles in the morning, sans packs, and call for a ride. The mosquitoes swarmed once again, and we spent the whole night (from about 7pm until 7am) in the tent. Couldn't even have a decent dinner because there were too many mosquitoes out to cook, so we ate granola bars. It was also starting to thunderstorm again. Oh well, it'd probably clear by morning.
We woke the next morning to clear skies. Time to go get us a cell phone signal...
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