Day 70 Got up at 3 am and ate the rest of yesterday’s pie in the dark in my my tent before I got going. It was actually slightly better than yesterday and was nicely cold. Shortly later I was hiking, which was a special experience. I have done a lot of early day hiking, but I think it has been a ling time since I have been this early out of the bat. Everything…
Day 69 …well at least not easily, as we shall see a bit later. But I have wanted to use that Lord of the Rings quote here ever since the first pass in The Sierras. Got up a bit earlier than the previous days, and walked the first part of the day in the early morning light. I knew not what to expect in terms of scenery, as I hadn’t really studied the maps for…
Day 68 It was a slightly late start as it got slightly late yesterday, but not terribly so as I awoke from the sunlight before my alarm went off around 5:30. The first part of the day was somewhat boring as it was walking in a pine forest without much in terms of views. Eventually, however, the trail climbed up to and followed a ridge crest for quite some time with nice views. On the…
Day 67 I was off to a somewhat late start today as I still had a couple of things on my in town to do list that I hadn’t done yet. After breakfast at the hotel and getting most of the things done, I had to figure out how to get back to the trail. I wasn’t particularly well positioned to hitch as people would be going in all kind of directions from there and…
Day 66 I don’t know if I have ever properly explained what a “bounce box” is. If I have, then I’ll be repeating myself a bit here. Basically it is just a box with stuff that you keep sending to yourself along the way either as general delivery (where the package is waiting for you at the post office) or to some place offering to hold your package (possibly for a fee). I think it…
Day 65 Today I had two goals: Enjoy the last day in the Sierras and visit an all you can eat buffet in South Lake Tahoe. I told myself to not just rush it and miss the nature to get to town, so I got up a bit early and also noticed a two mile discrepancy between my guide book and my phone app, so that added further time. Despite this, I think the Sierras…
Day 64 Like yesterday it only got up after it was bright enough to not need a headlamp. After breakfast I had my daily dose of deer startling me. First I thought that I saw an animal run behind a fallen tree. I didn’t think much of it. Sometime later two deer suddenly jumped into the camp site and ran across it. After a couple of miles I reached an asphalt road where I had…
Day 63 As I got late to bed late yesterday, I allowed my to sleep a bit longer and only got up and going when I didn’t need a headlamp. Nevertheless, I was still quite sleepy and not in the best mood, though much better than yesterday. As the very first thing of the day, the trail brought us up and across a ridge, starting out with a surprisingly steep ascent. It gave great views…
Day 62 I thought today was going to be boring. I was wrong. Got up particularly early today to compensate for being behind schedule. While having dinner and packing down camp by the light of my headlamp, I suddenly looked up and gasped as I two eyes were starring directly at me from twenty feet away. A split second later, however, I realized it was one out of four deer that had sneaked up on…
Day 61 I quickly and easily got the last step of the way up to Benson Pass. It was just over 10K feet, snow free and didn’t offer anything that special in terms of views in my opinion. After that it was down another valley, up it, down another valley up it, and so on and so forth. When the trail wasn’t busy doing that it went up and down the side of a valley…