Day 99 (27 July) - Mile 1112.59 - 1133.08

Seasonal Phipps Creek to Campsite at mile 1133.08

I slept really well last night, but woke up still pretty tired. I packed up my stuff and exited the tent and the mosquitoes were right on me. Darn it. They usually stay away in the morning, but not today. We quickly got our stuff together and decided to hike some before eating breakfast to find a place without mosquitoes.  We left the mosquito infested campsite at 6:47 AM.

Ready to get away from the mosquitoes

We hiked for a good hour before stopping for breakfast. Unfortunately the mosquitoes were still bad, but I had to tolerate them since I was starving. We are quickly and were back on trail.

Oh...I forgot to mention that we saw Smiles on the trail this morning. I met here way back in Acton at the KOA, like 2 months ago. Her father is on the trail with her for 5 days, so she was hiking slower than us, but it was cool to see her again.

This is what most of our morning was like. A wonderful pine forest infested with mosquitoes:

Our morning view

Exactly 6 miles into the hike we arrived at Richardson Lake where we took our morning break.

Richardson Lake

When we arrived we saw Camel Sock who we met at the start of the Sierra Mountains like 4 weeks ago. She has decided to turn her thru-hike into a section hike and travel to India and Bali in August and September.  We get it...this trail is really difficult and doesn't seem to get any easier, especially mentally.

After breaking for about 30 minutes we continued on. By the way...the PCT and the Tahoe Rim Trail are still combined as can be seen in this photo:

PCT sign of the day - combined with Tahoe Rim Trail

I love the way these moss covered trees look:

Moss-covered trees

After the break we hit a 4 mile climb. It wasn't too steep, so it wasn't too bad, but it seemed to go on forever. Share Bear was more energetic than me this morning, so she led up the climb:

We finally made it to our lunch place goal of Barker Pass Trailhead right at 1:00 PM. 

Self-portrait "Barker Pass"

We were so happy to find a picnic table there along with Camel Sock and Fox. We joined them and decided to cook dinner for lunch since we had a picnic bench and there were no mosquitoes. While cooking lunch, Free Lunch showed up and joined us. We wound up staying there till 3:00 PM which wasn't good since we had 11 more miles to hike to our planned campsite...OY!

The climb from before lunch continued for 1 more mile. At the top we finally had a view of Lake Tahoe:

Self-portrait "Lake Tahoe admired by Share Bear"

And then another climb started and went on for a while. At the top of this one the PCT and Tahoe Rim Trail split after being together for 50 miles.

The splitting of two trails

Right after the split we started hiking on a crest for a while with beautiful views:

Amazing

After hiking for a while we still had 4.5 miles to go to our planned campsite and it was 6:30 PM. We knew we could make it if we had to, but we didn't really want to, so we started hoping to see a campsite earlier. As long as we hike at least 20 miles today we are good. In our guidebook there is mention of a ski hill, but not a campsite, but we hoped there would be one.

We hiked on and arrived at the ski hill, but the trail remained on a ridge so we had little hope of finding a place to camp.

Just 2.8 miles from the planned campsite I noticed a site and we quickly decided to make it our home for the night. As we were setting up camp, Free Lunch was hiking by and decided to join us. This site is so cool being right on the side of the mountain.

Free Lunch cowboy camping

And then, the sunset was amazing and Candyman walked by just in time for this shot:

Candyman passing by at sunset

Tomorrow we plan on hiking another 20 miles. This will be our fifth 20 mile day in a row. It looks like 20 miles is becoming a habit, but my feet still ache at the end of the day. The good of hiking 20 miles is that I seem to sleep a lot deeper, which I think I will get to now. Until tomorrow...

Our amazing home for the night