PCT day 71 – Taking it easy
I was up with the sparrows farts and I was hiking by 6:30am. I imagine growler was still asleep but I knew she would catch up.
Last night iPod said the next 10 miles would be mosquito hell and he was right. It was impossible to stand still even for half a second. About 5 miles in I ran into Ladies Man and I tried to stop to chat but I was surrounded by mosquitoes (all of them around me, none around Ladies Man). Mr Delite is off the trail with an injured foot which is sad.
I carried on another 5 miles and sat by Richardson lake and had a nap for half an hour. 10 miles in 3.5 hours. Half my day done by 10am! That's good!
Ladies Man came and sat with me and then 10 minutes later growler came along. We ate and chatted about our lives and when 1hr 45 mins had gone by it was probably time to move on! We hiked another 5 miles with a bit of elevation gain and I'm loving the moss on the trees and you can see the snow line.
We arrive at Barker Pass trail head and there is a lady there with trail magic - oranges, apples, cherries, popcorn and cream cheese! We sit on the picnic bench and eat our bounty, fresh fruit is so good! Ladies Man shows us an old arrow head he found on the trail which is pretty cool!
Another man Shiggy came along. He's from the check Republic and he is attempting to complete the trail in under 100 days, he started on May 16th!!! We share our food with him and as quickly as he arrived he was gone. Ladies Man points out that he is 'flying low' and he says it's so he can pee quickly. Nice. We stay there for about an hour.
We hike on and do the two miles of up whilst chatting which makes it fly by. We get to 1.5 miles away from our camp spot and I realise there is no water for the next 9 miles. We have been so used to there being water everywhere it's hard to go back to thinking bout waterless stretches again. We start walking backwards to a water source half a mile back and ladies man suggests leaving our packs and just taking our water bottles! What would we do without him! It feels weird to walk without a pack. Like I don't have full control of my body.
We get the water and climb the long switchbacks to the camp. On the way we can see the smoke from the fire which started a few days ago just outside Tahoe. It is so hot and dry out here that we are now outrunning the fires instead of the storms.
We had a lovely camp spot and we sit on the side of the hill and eat dinner and watch the sunset. Such a nice leisurely day.
