Day 100 (28 July) - Mile 1133.08 - 1153.87

Campsite at mile 1133.08 to Campsite under power lines

What an exhausting day. We did our 20+ miles as we have the past few days, but at the end of today I was totally done. My feet are tired and a sharp pain on my right foot seems to flare up now and then. I'm lying here in my tent with my sleeping bag under my feet to elevate them hoping it will help. My foot raising is time limited until I get cold and need to get into my sleeping bag, so I'm hoping for a warm next hour while I blog.

I slept really well last night at woke right at 6:00 AM. Share Bear announced that she needed 10 more minutes...no problem here, I can always use more time to sleep in.

Even with the extra 10 minutes, we were ready to hike by 7:17 AM. We invited Free Lunch to join in the photo even though he wasn't ready to hike yet.

Free Lunch and us are ready to hike

Last night's camp was dry, so we both needed water badly. We had 2.80 miles to get to Five Lakes Creek.  On the way we saw some beautiful scenery:

Morning view

Moss on trees

We arrived at the water source and Candyman from last night's sunset photo was there filtering water as well as three other hikers. It's weird that it feels like we hadn't seen many other PCT hikers on trail, now we are seeing a bunch.

We filtered and drank and filtered some more and was ready to hike on. Our goal is to go 8.82 miles to another creek for lunch, but there is over 2,000 feet of climbing to get there, so I am a bit skeptical, but we will try.

We hiked another couple of miles before taking our five mile break.

Share Bear leading us to our break spot

While breaking we saw Footprint who we met when we were going up Kearsarge Pass and she was going down with Audible, Bear Bait, and Princess Mountain Man...that was a long time ago. As we were ready to get back on trail, Wild Child came upon us. We met her back on one of the passes in the Sierra Mountains.

We wound up hiking with Wild Child for the rest of the morning which includes hiking past a ski resort:

At the top of a ski resort

Self-portrait "Getting pretty hungry"

We made it 1.28 miles from our planned lunch stop, but there was a nice looking spot, so we stopped there instead. Plus, the 1.28 miles included a 438 foot climb that I felt I needed food to accomplish. Wild Child stopped with us and we enjoyed a 1.5 hour lunch.  Actually, Wild Child took off a bit earlier than us, but she is trying to hike 25 miles today, so she needs some extra time.

After lunch, we started the climb up to the creek for much needed water.

We got there pretty quickly and Wild Child and Free Lunch were there filtering water. This is the last advertised water source for 10 miles, so everyone is going to need to stop here for a fill-up.

While we were filtering, Swede and Irish showed up. We hadn't seen them since Tuolumne Meadows. It's crazy how many people we are seeing today.

After filtering water we still had over 9 miles to hike and it was around 3:00 PM already. We had heard of a bar & grill at Donner Pass that gives PCT hikers a free beer, so we had a thought of going there and eating dinner before hiking the last 0.5 miles to our planned campsite. With all this in mind we got back on trail and climbed the last major hill of the day

When we got to the top we were greeted by Tinker Knob:

Tinker Knob

And then we were greeted by this awesome view of the upcoming trail:

The incredible PCT

Share Bear headed down the trail

The trail at this point got really rocky and we got really tired. We now has about 6.5 miles to go, which seemed like a lot, but we pushed on.

We tiredly climbed up to another ski resort and then headed down. We arrived at this sign at 6:17 stating we had 2.5 miles to go to get to Donner Pass. Cool...now we are getting there.

Only 2.5 to go

Onward we hiked and arrived at another ski resort. The trail took us right under a ski lift.

PCT sign of the day with ski lift

Finally, after a really rocky and steep last mile we made it to Donner Pass. 

Arrived at Donner Pass

Before walking up the road to that bar & grill we heard of, I gave them a call to see if they were opened. A machine answered that said they were only opened on the weekends...there goes that.

We cross the road and continued up trail and saw a woman and her son. After talking with them for a bit, they offered us their water which we gladly took since we have another dry camp tonight. People are so generous out here.

Ten minutes later we found our camp. We set up our tents and ate lunch for dinner since again we are dinner for lunch today. I was pretty glad that I didn't have to cook since I was quite tired and just wanted to get into my tent, but I knew that I had to eat first.

Tomorrow morning we meet Tim and Brad at a rest stop on I-80 for resupply. It's 3.4 miles to there, so we should be there around 8:45 AM...something to look forward to.

I am now at the end of the blog and I do need to get into my sleeping bag. So, until tomorrow...

Home for the night