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Lotus Petal Race 12in12, Race #9.

Continuing the tradition of self-made-runs, I happened to pick Yosemite National Park for Lotus Petal race #9 - The High Sierra Camp Loop - a 51 miles through land of mystic wonders and majestic mountains and green lush valleys.
Friday lunch at Lake Tenya!
Hello Toulumne Meadows!

Yosemite and Eastern sierras are close to me. The entire sierra region from Sonora pass to Whitney feels like second home.  Spent many a nights in those neck of the woods and every trip back there feels like home.

HSC loop (High Sierra camps) is God's country.  A total of 6 camps make the loop, 5 of which are only accessible via horseback or hike-in.
Tenaya Lake

Base of HSC #1 Vogelsang
This trip was in making for a while but kept getting postponed for one reason or another and finally both me and Vishal's (my running partner for this trip) aligned on Sep 30th.  

We were a week late as beginning of fall (Sep 24) made all the nearby campsites close.  Also days are a few hours shorter than peak of summer.  Finally, this is 'hyperfasica' time, when bears have a few weeks to load up on calories, before they head up for their winter hibernation slump (consuming about 20000-25000 calories a day).   Last thing we wanted on our run was to meet a hungry bear:-)

With first light at 625am and last light at 710pm, we practically had 12 odd hours to finish the run, thats 4-1/4 miles an hour basically a sub 15 minutes/mile pace.

With up hill hike averaging 25 minutes/mile and downhills "runs" in 12-13 minutes/mile, we had a shot at finishing the entire loop.  Also per my planning of going south first and covering the strenuous vogelsang, merced lake, sunrise lake stretch - if we hit the tenaya lake junction (mile 33ish) by 2:30-3pm, we should be able to finish the rest of the run (May lake and Glen Aulin) around 730-800pm.

Yeah right!

On the way down from Vogelsang HSC.  
By the time we hit Merced (mile 20ish), we realized the so called downhill "runs" were slower than uphill "hike" :-) Stony paths and steep descends (at times on sheer granite) made you look every step and all the compute-power-consumed-in-decision-making-every-step of the brain was depleting.   And then came the biggest uphill up to sunrise camp at the hottest part of the day, reducing our uphill per mile to about 30 minutes a mile.
Very close to Sunrise HSC.

Was pretty clear by then that May Lake and Glen Aulin camps may have to wait for some other time!

Lake Merced and Half Dome.
With a promise to give a hug to Uncle Glen and a kiss to Aunt May in near future, we decided to stop the run at Tenaya lake at 33rd mile.

Hitchhiked back to the car (thanks to a wonderful person, Marc from switzerland, who was just wandering around the valley looking for a place to spend the night!).  We invited him over to our tent and served him deciduous indian dinner and american ale (hot food and chilled beer tastes a thousands times better after a good day's run).
With Marc!

No Gaiters meant that sand kept getting in shoes
3 more marathons to go, can't believe I have made it this far.  It's the support of family and friends, trust of my donors and some guardian angels looking over me.

Rise and Shine!  Awesome view from our campsite.
Started fund raising again and an overnight email request resulted in 1300$ from Harry/Anju, Avi/Vivek at work...we have officially crossed 31,000$ mark.

March to 50000$ continues and we have 90 days left...please help spread the word and donate what you can.

Fire, Hot food, Chilled Ale - Life is good!

To donate go to www.tinyurl.com/arun12in12lp -> Click on "Donate to this fundraiser"

God bless,
Arun

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