Going directly from low altitude life to hiking and camping at 11,500 feet turned out to be a bad idea. Last night Tina didn't get any sleep as she suffered from classic altitude sickness symptoms -- insomnia, headaches, nausea, and shortness of breath. This morning she found it very difficult to get going.
Since the altitude profile for the day didn't call for her to gain any altitude, she decided to proceed northward. But before long ominous clouds arrived complete with thunder ... and then the sprinkling started. After some communication with me to consider what weather radar was saying, she decided to proceed along attempting to make it to Crabtree Meadow before stopping.
Well enough but then Tina took the worst fall of her entire hiking career. She tripped and went downslope head first, hitting the right side of her head first with the bear canister thankfully taking the bulk of the remaining impact (as it skittered way). Tina then continued to roll and slide downhill until ultimately she struck a downed tree. There she was lucky again in that it was her pack that hit the tree first.
At first her head and neck hurt but that situation improved through the day and so she seems to have gotten away with just abrasions and minor cuts. Except that also she later realized that her sunglasses had disappeared in the process and by then she was much too far along to go back to look for them.
"Luckily" the cloud cover kept the missing sunglasses from being an issue today but tonight she's making herself an eskimo type slit mask out of duct tape.
A short bit later the heavens then opened up and completely soaked her and much of her equipment. Things got so bad that she ultimately just stopped along the trail and pitched her tent in the rain. As expected, that caused the rain to stop and ultimately caused the clouds to clear. It was 5pm by then so she spent the rest of the day drying out -- finally going in at sunset when the mosquitoes came out.
But by the end of the day, her headache and nausea was gone, she'd met a number of other hikers (who told her some positive developments about her coming Forester Pass traverse), saw her first pack train, and was settled in reading a new book. And so while it was a terrible day, it ended much better than it started and that's not a bad thing. :)
As for me, I got my haircut and new tires -- just as planned. ;-)
/David