I didn’t have much time to log today because I spent most of the day trying to knock out the 20 mile goal I set for myself. A majority of today’s first half was beautiful and dry trail. Which made me happy and helped keep good time on our daily progress. We caught up to the Lazy Fucks this morning, who had passed us up earlier this morning while we were still asleep in our tents. We all hike the rest of the day as a group.
now the Sierra is for real behind us
There were several climbs today but nothing too crazy. 10 miles into the day we went over a snow covered peak.
I saw some back country skiers carving the bowls and then hiking with their skis back to repeat. It looked super fun, and I would totally be doing that if I wasn’t hiking the PCT.
We pulled over mid day and had lunch at Bullfrog Lake. So many huckleberries (day hikers) around, it was a little overwhelming. We call them huckleberries because they only come around once a year. I definitely miss the remoteness of the High Sierra. I am growing more and more weary of populated areas.
Volunteers at the ranger station gave us ice cold lemonade, which was amazing. This took place at the Eldorado National forest station. From here we made the silly assumption that the trail would continue to be a cake walk. It turned out to get worse, with snow, and muddy swampy messes. Towards the end of the day Righteous grew more frustrated with the terrain quality and the weirdly odd climbs we had to do when it seemed like the day was about to be over. Everyone is sick and fed up with hiking in snow and/or swamp. We are all praying that Tahoe comes soon and that the trail dries up for good so we can get some big miles in.
5 miles outside of the hitch into Tahoe, we set up camp. Im really excited to get town tomorrow. I read the OR snow report and it looks not so good. But I still have 400+ miles of California to hike before that becomes an immediate concern, so I’ll deal with those problems if and when they exist.