Miles: 1075.3 to 1078.7 Mileage: 3.4 Day: 62 To reward ourselves for the 32-mile day, we turned off our alarms. Not that we slept late or anything. The sun hit the tent early and we were baking by 7 a.m. We got up and were about to leave just as a fellow hiker walked past […]
Miles: 1043.2 to 1075.3 Mileage: 32.1 Day: 61 Sure, 32 miles was suggested but I guess I never thought we’d bother. I figured we’d get to somewhere between 25 and 30, which would put us within 10 miles of the road that would allow us to hitch to South Lake Tahoe, and find a pretty […]
Miles: 1017.7 to 1043.2 Mileage: 25.5 Day: 60 The sun hit our tent early and the heat woke me up. Richard soon followed and we packed up. The air outside the tent wasn’t quite as warm as inside, but we got moving quickly enough. Just 100 feet further down the trail, we saw what would […]
Miles: 987.3 to 1017.7 Mileage: 30.4 Day: 59 When we woke up, mosquitoes were already surrounding our tent. We made a mad dash for the deet but even then the swarm wouldn’t leave. Under another blue, sunny day we started off with a ford. After that, the trail slowly went up 1,500 feet to Dorothy […]
Miles: 963.3 to 987.3 Mileage: 24 Day: 58 We slept in a valley, so the warmth of the sun didn’t make its presence known until we’d walked about a mile. As soon as I stepped into the direct sunlight, I was hot. Too hot. I stripped off my rain/wind layer, unbuttoned my sun shirt, took […]
Miles: 941.7 to 963.3 Mileage: 21.6 Day: 57 We’d heard the mosquitoes could be bad north of Tuolumne. But we hear lots of things on the PCT, so we bought a small bottle of deet and didn’t think too much about it. Oh, boy! The mosquitoes are bad north of Tuolumne. It’s not a joke. […]
Miles: 925.7 to 941.7 Mileage: 16 Day: 56 It rained overnight, but it was the most behaved kind of backcountry precipitation. It didn’t start until we were curled up in our sleeping bags; it was soft and without wind; and it was over well before we had to crawl out of our shelter and start […]
Miles: 903.8 to 925.7 Mileage: 21.9, plus 0.6 to Reds Meadow Day: 55 Today Richard and I hit 1,000 miles on the trail. This figure includes the 80 miles we slacked at the end of May. Yay! It rained overnight. It’s so nice to be under the cover of a tent in the rain. Hearing […]
Miles: 879.3 to 903.8 Mileage: 24.5 Day: 54 We got up and moving before the John Muir Trail hikers. But that’s not saying much. Most JMTers I’ve met so far are on vacation. For thru hikers, it’s more like a summer job. Fun, different, but not a leisurely stroll through the woods. There are miles […]
Miles: 852.8 to 879.3 Mileage: 26.5 Day: 53 Today was our longest day in weeks. It was really hard and exhausting, but really nice to know that with normal-weight packs and not super snowy passes, we still have it! We did just over a marathon. And while it felt like it and we are very […]