Day 053 – 7/16/11 Osceola Road to Weaver Creek Road

Distance > 14 Miles.  People Met = 0

We’ve been enjoying walking with Barrett as we swap stories and life history.  Barrett confirmed a decision I made as being the correct one.  We took a detour away from the Western States Trail that went over the Sierra crest near Squaw Valley.  Barrett was on the trail.  He reported falling through holes 12 feet deep — and this was before some of the late snowstorms arrived.  He mentioned feeling some panic — and Barrett has been in a Desert Shield firefight — as he looked up at the wall of snow above him.  Yet with the right presence of mind he tromped down snow until he could get himself up to the top of the wall.  He said if he knew what was coming he would not have gone that way and, fortunately, we didn’t.

That is why our goal is to specifically walk over 5,000 continuous miles, rather than every inch of the American Discovery Trail.  There have been three causes to deviate:

Necessity:  this is what caused us to take an alternative route to the Western States.

Mistakes:  following an East/West trail with GPS waypoints going West/East with map and compass is bound to result in a few mistakes.  We ended up on the wrong road today and came out to US 50 north of where we were supposed to.  Fortunately, the mileage was only marginally longer.

Even Mistakes Can Be Beautiful

Intent:  sometimes the ADT route forms a V, while the map shows a more direct route.  We’ll usually opt to save some miles in this case, though the decision to do this at the start of the Reese River canyon led to greater troubles.

Overall our route will probably work out to the same mileage.  Deviations from necessity tend to add mileage; deviations by intent save mileage; and deviations from mistakes can go either way.  Whatever.  We are still on track to finish on May 24, 2012.  But first, tomorrow we finish Nevada!