Day 93 (21 July) - Mile 1039.18 - 1060.49

Wolf Creek to Tributary of Pleasant Valley Creek

I slept really well last night. So well in fact that Share Bear had to wake me at 6:20 AM. I saw the time and jumped up and got my stuff together. I was rushing to get ready to hike because we have a long today. We were ready to hike just after 7:30 AM.

Ready for a long day.

Originally we were going to do this 70 mile section in 5 full days. We decided 2 days ago that we will complete it in 3.5 days, so we have to average 20 miles per day. Today we plan on hiking 21.25 miles. Plus, we are meeting Tim and Brad at the 9.5 mile point which will make our lunch break a little longer.

Looking at today's maps, we have three pretty good hills to climb before lunch and three to climb after lunch. Pretty much today is going to be a roller coaster of a hike.

The first climb started immediately.

Share Bear leading the first climb.

Just after 1.5 miles we came to a trail junction. The sign looked very new.

PCT sign of the day with Share Bear looking on.

We had this view for much of the first climb this morning:

Morning view.

When we got to the top of the second hill there was cell phone reception, except for my AT&T. As hikers arrived they were all quite excited to try their phones out:

Cell phone service on top of climb

We took a short break up there, but was anxious to continue hiking because Tim and Brad are meeting us 5.5 miles ahead.

The trail went down a while and we had a view of Noble Lake:

Self-portrait "Noble Lake"

Today's hike was so diverse. We saw so many different things. There were really cool rock formations including this black one:

Cool formations on trail.

When we were within 1 mile of Highway 4 where Tim and Brad was meeting us, Tim made an appearance. He's really getting into hiking in and meeting us on the trail. We hike the mile back with him and enjoyed lunch with ice cold Gatorade he brought for us. As we were eating lunch, Boston Scott showed up and grabbed a beer out of the cooler to drink with his almond butter and jelly pita sandwich.

We didn't want to leave, but we still had over 12 miles to go for the day, so at 1:30 PM we said goodbye to Tim, Brad, and Scott. We might see Tim at a road crossing tomorrow, if not, we will see him in Lake Tahoe in 2 days.

Just after lunch we crossed into Molelumne Wilderness:

Mokelumne Wilderness boundary

Here is another cool rock we saw today:

Taking a photo of cool rock as Share Bear takes a photo of another cool rock

And yet another beautiful view of a lake. This one is Kinney Lake.

Kinney Lake down below.

This afternoon the trail opened up and went through a field of green:

The beautiful PCT.

Then the terrain became rocky again with cool black rocks:

Rocky terrain.

After the rocks cleared up the trail started looking more like the desert again. We know that we will soon be entering the deserts of Northern California, but we are not quite ready.

Is the desert close?

I needed to stop to filter some water so we decided to take another break. It was now 4:30 PM and we had 5.5 miles to go till our campsite. We figured we would get there by 7:30 PM which wouldn't be too bad.

From our break point the trail goes up for the next mile, then down for 0.5 miles, then back up for one more mile. After this 2.5 miles it should be nice hiking for the rest of the day.

We hiked strong and got through the 2.5 miles in just over an hour. Now we only had 3 miles to go. Wow were those 3 miles long and hard and seemingly never ending. We looked ahead and thought we knew where the trail was taking us and then it would go in a totally different direction.  I got a second wind for a while, but with 1 mile to go I was pretty much done. This is when I saw this snake blocking the trail:

Snake on trail

Finally, a bit earlier than the predicted 7:30 PM, we arrived at our campsite. There were already 2 tents pitched, but we made ourselves at home and found places to pitch our tents. As we were setting up the tents, one of the guys arrived from collecting water. He just retired as the head of the civil engineering department at the Air Force Academy. We had a nice conversation about our Air Force  careers before the mosquitoes drove him into his tent.

I finished setting up my tent and cooked dinner which I had to eat in my tent to avoid the mosquitoes as well.

Tomorrow we plan on hiking just under 22 miles, so I better get some sleep, especially since these guys at our site said they were going to wake at 5:30 AM. Until tomorrow...

Our home for the night.