Eliza woke up with snowblindness this morning. We had been above 10000 ft for much of yesterday afernoon, and I hadn't noticed that she wasn't wearing sunglasses until we had already been up there for hours. I had read that in snow above 8000 ft or so, reflected UV rays could damage the eyes, but I hoped the exposure hadn't been long enough.
At first, she was unable to open her eyes at all. They were swelled shut, oozing, irritated. She was in a great deal of pain. Slowly, they improved and with the aid of my baseball cap and sunglasses she was able to face the morning sun. We had thought that a good night's rest after yesterday's ultra exhaustive snow-trudging marathon would clear the slate for a fresh new day. For Eliza, unfortunately, this wasn't the case.
She felt better at length, though. We stopped shortly after setting out in some shade and debated stopping for the day and just resting, but ultimately she figured that she would probably be bored so she might as well be walking. I could have read my book, or written in my journal, of course, but she would still have to deal with the pain in her head. So we kept on going, and by mid-afternoon she was doing well enough to enjoy the fine descent down out of the mountains towards San Gorgonio pass and I-10.
About 10 miles down, we were stopped so that Eliza could do some dirty business up off the trail with the trowel, when we noticed a helicopter hoering around above us. Eliza was understandably annoyed at having her picturesque mountainside doodie interrupted (we've pooped in some of the most beautiful places in the world these past two weeks) and we both wondered what was up. It coldn't be the border patrol this far up? A mile later, we came upon Marge, the Old Gal. She had a leg pain that wasn't letting her go on and someone had called in the rescue team. She was in high spirits, but I am sure she felt bad about having such a big fuss made. Later we saw firetrucks and ambulances and more helicopters, even a plane; all had been called out on account of Marge's bad leg. For Marge, the worst part must be that this is the second time she's had to be flown out of these mountans in the past few year. Last time, it was a broken leg on Fuller Ridge.
Our day ended after we crossed the windy valley, made our way under the Interstate, enjoyed some trail magic candy that had been left by some trail angels (we laughed that never before in our lives would we be even remotely excited by the sight of a styrofoam cooler with a couple sticky cans of juice and a bag of melted tootsie rolls inside stashed under a tree by the highway), set up camp at nightfall by the great moaning turbins of the windmills of the Mesa Windfarm.
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