Day 98 (26 July) - Mile 1092.27 - 1112.59

Echo Lake to Seasonal Phipps Creek

I hate waking to an alarm, especially when I'm in town and sleeping in a bed. The alarm went off at 5:50 AM because we wanted to get back on the trail by 7:30. I got out of bed and took my last shower for at least 5 days and went downstairs. I'm excited about getting back on the trail, but I'm going to miss this rental house in Tahoe.

We wound up leaving the house around 7:30 AM, the time we wanted to be back on trail, but it was expected. Every time we leave town it is very hard.  At 8:10 AM we were all out of the 4Runner and ready to hike. Tim, Brad, and Mary decided to join us for the first mile or so of the hike.

Everyone is ready to hike.

The trail started out beautiful, climbing above Echo Lake a bit and then following a rim around it. About 20 minutes after starting up the trail Mary twisted her ankle and fell. She did the same thing last time she hiked with us. The problem is she is busy looking around at the scenery and not paying attention to the trail...I am quite familiar since I am really good at that too. After the fall, she was ok by the way, Mary and Brad turned around, but Tim continued for about 15 minutes more before calling it quits.

Tim's turnaround point.

We said our goodbyes to Tim. We will see him in 3 days when he resupplies us on I-80.

Share Bear and I continued on. The trail went around the backside of Echo Lake where I took this awesome picture:

Echo Lake

A bit further and we entered Desolation Wilderness:

Entering Desolation Wilderness

Today was a day of rocky trails that were challenging to hike, and multiple beautiful alpine lakes. Here is Aloha Lake...how incredible is this?!?

Aloha Lake

This area is just amazing.

PCT sign of the day

We were just hiking along when we met up with a family out on a day hike. When we told them that we were PCT hikers they were amazed and asked how many miles we had hiked so far. I took out my phone to check and noticed that we missed mile 1,100 by 0.71 miles. There was no way we were going to hike back, so we took our picture here at mile 1,100.71.

Proof we just passed PCT mile 1,100

1,100 mile pose

Three miles later we stopped for lunch. There were these pesky yellow horse flies around and I swatted one before it could bite me. It barely survived. I got it on a stick and managed to get this pretty cool close-up of it:

Yellow horse fly

After lunch we had our one big climb of the day, a 2.5 mile, 1,148 foot climb up Dicks Pass:

Sign indicating our direction up Dicks Pass

As usually, as we climbed we had no idea where Dicks Pass was.

Somewhere up there is Dicks Pass

Seventy-five minutes later and we were standing at the top of Dicks Pass:

Dicks Pass, 9,377 feet

This photo was taken by Poppins, a PCT hiker we met as we climbed up to the pass. She calls herself a LASHer (Long Ass Section Hiker).

The top of the pass seemed like a great place to take a self-portrait.

Self-portrait "Dicks Pass"

Of course below Dicks Pass is Dicks Lake:

Dicks Lake

We continued hiking strong. We want to hike at least 20 miles today even though we started 1 hour late today. We were at the top of Dicks Pass at 4:20 PM and still had almost 7 miles to hike to reach our goal. After a few breaks we stopped at Middle Velma Lake, our possible last water source before our planned campsite 2.67 miles further. 

Middle Velma Lake

It was now 6:30 PM. Both Share Bear and I were anxious to make it to camp. We were both tired from going to sleep too late yesterday. Plus, the rocky trail today made our feet and ankles tired. Plus, we were both pretty hungry. We pushed up our speed for the last hour and managed to hike the 2.67 miles in exactly one hour. Pretty impressive considering we had to climb over 250 feet. We were also motivated by the crazy amount of mosquitoes that appeared right at 7:00 PM. It was as bad as it has ever been.

We finally arrived at our campsite at 7:30 PM and the mosquitoes were relentless. We put on our bug nets and setup camp. We both cooked dinner outside, but had to eat in our tents to escape the wrath of the mosquitoes. As I lie here typing the blog, all I hear is buzzing outside the tent from said mosquitoes.

What a day, we hit 1,100 mile and managed to hike 20.31 miles even though we started 1 hour later than usual. Tomorrow we plan on hiking another 20 miles, but we will see how that goes. Until then...

Our mosquito infested home for the night