Day 68, 21.35 miles

Wow, I slept in SO hard today! Not sure if it was the fast and late miles or all that food at the trail magic, maybe a little bit of both! Either way, I woke up at 5:00am, closed my eyes for one second, and the next thing I knew it was 6:45am. 

I had some cell service and decided to sit in bed and browse the web! See, last time I ended my hike in Mammoth mid-Sierra, so keeping my warm 15° sleeping bag for the whole early desert and Sierra made sense. This year, I’ve essentially left the Sierra, and it’s already getting hot! We don’t go above 9,000ft again until after Oregon, and I sleep very hot!

Online I searched for a specific sleeping bag that Julian had suggested to me, and I found one for a great deal on Amazon in my length. I asked my sister if she could use her Amazon Prime account to send it to Sierra City, and she did! Woo-hoo, thanks Sarah! This means that in Tahoe I’ll be losing my long pants, mid-layer, sleep socks and gloves, and then 5 days later I will be swapping bags and going from 2lb 5 oz to 15 oz! I’m gonna be so much lighter I can’t wait!

Anyway, after all that, I finally left camp just after 8am! I knew I had some catching up to do with my “crew”, but I decided to not push it and go a nice pace that I was comfortable with. I hiked solo almost all day and it was great!

Under a pound! I’m so stoked!

Cool junction posts

Only a handful of miles out, I started passing by day hikers as there was a small road coming up. I ran into a group of three ladies, and they stopped me to give me a whole sandwich bag of fresh, HUGE blackberries! They also gave me some crackers, and I hung out for a second and took a short “pack-on” breather with them! They were so nice and lifted my morning!

Thanks guys!

The rest of the day was just gorgeous, there were SO many widflowers! Even more than yesterday! For a long while there was no one else on trail until we got within ~5 miles of Carson Pass, where there is a large trailhead and visitors center and many dayhikers. Sorry in advance for the stupid red lines in over half of the pictures. There’s nothing I can do about them :(

So 

Freaking

BEAUTIFUL!!

I took my 45 minute lunch break here!

I could’nt get enough of these beautiful fields of flowers (if you couldn’t tell)

Ok David, we get it.. there were lots of flowers...

When I got to the visitor center and parking lot at Carson Pass, the place was PACKED! I was able to throw away all my trash I had made so far on this stretch, which felt great! I went over to the visitor center and there were about 6 other hikers there including Panda, Happy, and Keglegs! Inside, they filled up my water bottle, and gave me a mandarin and a Pepsi!

I hung out there for around an hour. Panda made a change of plans and is going to meet his parents there at that trailhead instead of pushing the last 14 to highway 50. His shoes are too small and have been killing his feet. He offered all of us rides into Tahoe if we needed them. Keglegs and two other hikers took him up on it, and Happy and I continued to push on for a few more miles.

Absolutely amazing afternoon

About 5 miles later, we rolled up to a gorgeous lake with lenticular camping nearby. The last 1.5 mile was a steep uphill climb, and it felt great to take a dip in the lake! After the swim, we set up our sleeping pads and I showed him my 10 minute stretching/yoga routine that I do before setting up my tent. We feel stoked, cool, exhausted, and now limber! About to hit the hay before 9 and actually wake up early for a change!

Thanks for reading!!