As projected, Tina pulled some long mile days getting into here (e.g., a 27.5, 24, and 25) and covered the 112.5 miles from Cajon Pass in six days total. We're now at mile ~454 in Agua Dulce. The next resupply point will be at Tehachapi Pass in ~105 miles which she plans to cover in about 5 days. We head out towards that goal early in the AM tomorrow. It looks like we'll be able to camp together at least two of those nights on the way.
In the news, we've started catching up and passing some of the people we were on the trail with at Idyllwild but then fell behind when we took the week off to attend Keith's graduation and let Tina's leg heal. Judging from the various trail registers, others are accelerating away from us and yet others are maintaining their week lead. My read of the relative proportions of all those is that we're moving at rates generally associated with the second quarter of the main pack but are physically back with the third quarter.
Some compression is already happening, however, as many near the front slow down so that they don't enter the Sierra's too soon. As you are likely aware, snow fall this year in the Sierra's is 450% of normal and so that traverse is expected to be much more challenging than is usual. The traditional first entry dates are around June 15 but many argue that a much later entry date makes more sense this year. I'm guessing that people are going to pile up at Kennedy Meadows (~250 miles ahead) and then head out and up like a giant wave of lemmings .. :-}
As for my own stats, lately I haven't had to do much hard cycling to keep up. That'll pick up over the next fews days as I go "off route" (the route being the Sierra Cascades Route) to seek out additional meet up points with Tina. Once we get to the Sierras it looks like we'll both be having a tough time of it but many details of that are yet to be worked out. In particular, I haven't resolved which side of the Sierras I'm going to go up or whether I may actually do a giant lap around portions of it -- the official route is on the west side but there is perhaps more utility for Tina if I go up the east side.
I'm working on a decent way to caption photos in Posterous galleries. For now, the ones up at the top are from the approach to Mount Baden-Powell (the sunset and tent scene are at about 8000'), the summit itself with the monument and 1500+ year old trees, one picture capturing the burned out but slowly recovering remains of the 2009 250 square mile Station Fire, and then grassy slopes around Soledad Canyon. Here are a couple more --
Tina about to leave the KOA on the 10 mile hike to Hiker Heaven. About ten other hikers camped there with us that night.
David caught talking on the phone with Jeff H waiting for Tina's arrival at Agua Dulce. :)
/David