I am back at Tanner Rapid. I had hoped to be hereby 7am but the Beamer Trail had other ideas.

I had planned to get up at 3am to be out of camp by 4am and that would have been wishful thinking. It was a good thing that I decided to get up and get moving at 2am because camp was packed by 3am but I was still not ready to go. I had breakfast, cleaned up, and was out of camp at 420am. I got lost/misplaced several times on the Beamer and had to backtrack a couple of times to find the actual trail. There were a couple of really scary places/moments where a misstep could easily have been my last. It seems the Beamer in the dark will always be my nemesis.

The sky was beautiful this morning while having breakfast. I saw several meteors but there was no clear radiant, they were just random.

Filling up on water here and then heading for the top of the Redwall.

1100am

I am taking a break. I have traveled a little over 2 miles and probably have another 2 to go to the base of the Redwall. It has been slow going and Asinine Hill was assinne fur shur. Still a lot easier going up than down though. It was about 1.5 miles and 900' of elevation gain. I am up to 4,242' now, 1,400' of gain from the river.

3pm

I am finally at the top of the Redwall but unfortunately I can not be happy about this because what had started off as beautiful has turned into a very bad day.

First, there was a fall in the Muav section of the trail, next to the hoodoos down there. I ended up with a nice gash on my forehead as well as some lumps. There was blood all over the place which had me scared at first. But after cleaning the wound the bleeding stopped rather quickly and the bumps disappeared as well. After a short rest I was back on the trail again. While I was tending to my injury I noticed a person standing on a cliff above me who was looking at me. They never called out to ask if I needed help and I never saw them again. They did not have a pack on or anything and it seemed an unlikely spot to be day hiking to.

Then, a little more than an hour later, I took a bad turn on one of the switchbacks coming up here and felt something go "pop" in my right hip. After that I was no longer able to put any weight on that leg without experiencing a lot of pain. I took the pack off and sat down to try and sort things out in my head and eventually came to the decision that I was not going to be able to get out of here on my own and that I needed rescue. I triggered the SOS feature on my Garmin GPS. They put me in touch with GC SAR who asked if I would be able to get myself to the top of the Redwall, where they could possibly get a copter in. I left my pack down on the trail and hobbled up here using my hiking poles. I was closer to the top of the Redwall than I thought and probably could have been here in another 10 more minutes or so. Now, instead, I am waiting to be evacuated. This screws everything up. How? Why?

Some other hikers came down the trail while I was in the middle of providing info to GC SAR. They asked if I needed help and I really did not know what they could do so I explained to them that I was already in the middle of a SOS call and needed to continue with that. They offered to take my pack to the top of the Redwall but at that point I did still not know how far up it was and did not want to inconvenience them and really did not want to be separated from my pack. I appreciated the offer but at the time I really needed to continue what I was doing. Whoever you were, "Thank you."