God’s Woods

     It’s seven am and the sun has almost risen over Old Greyback.
     I’ve been hiking since 5:30 and been up since three a.m. when I threw back the covers, turned on the lights and my angry cats howled at me in discontent.
     I had to hit the road.
     I had mountains to climb.
     This was last week when I could walk with out limping every where in pain.
     Even before the horrible terrible thing lodged in my foot my training for Mt Whitney had been suffering due to my busy social life and that wretched thing called work.
     I was fifteen days out from my second ascent of Mt Whitney and weeks behind in my training.
     When I scaled Mt Whitney last June I had been up to running twenty miles on a good day at this point in my training.
     The good news was my legs, calves and hamstrings felt no soreness at all from the previous day and nights intense work out ( I got home from work at nine p.m. and worked legs for two hours. The next morning I ran four miles, ran stairs for twenty minutes than did something like 200 squats)
     All that before getting up at dawn to conquer some San Gorgonio miles one more time.
     It was an awesome spring time hike through the trails of San Gorgonio
I Followed the trails through spring meadows full of wild geranium, wallflowers and bucks brush covered in poofy white flowers.
      I managed to run five of seven miles on the way up the alpine trail. I did have to slow to a hike the last two miles or so as I approached Dollar Lake, my turn around spot.
     By the time I took a few pics of the terribly dry Dollar Lake my legs and calves were killing me and I was so ready to turn around and head down the mountain.
     I felt very discouraged that I only did fifteen miles on that day but I managed fifteen miles in five hours taking very few breaks.
     At that pace I could do Mt Whitney in less than ten hours and the South Fork Trail I did today was much steeper than Mt Whitney!
     A good day of training in the San Gorgonio Wilderness.
     Mt Whitney here I come!