Day 73: Huge Day

July 1, Day 73: 1051.4-1082.1

Miles Hiked: 30.7

Gratitude of the Day:  I’m thankful for bug spray, the mosquitoes out here are crazy. 

Today ended up being a huge milestone day as I hiked over 30 miles for the first time. I got up at 5:30, woke Catch and Huck up as they had requested and was packed and hiking down the trail at 6am. To be quite honest the day was a blur. Originally the plan was to just hike 25 miles, but by 9am I was already 10 miles in. So, when there was some day hikers going in the opposite direction, I had them relay a message to Huck who was behind me. “Tell the guy with the Beard and yellow wiffle ball bat, ‘Godfather says it feels like a 30 day’” About 30 minutes later I could see Huck running down the trail to catch up. Soon we both were cruising along and even running the downhills. The trail had some nice long stretches of flats and downhills. At 11:30 at Blue Lakes Trailhead there was trail magic by Lawrence and I ate some snacks and had a beer, and then Catch caught Huck and I here.

We spent about 20 minutes there and then headed up trail for about 2 miles and stopped to eat lunch. By then we had already done 15.7 miles, so the push was on to do 30.  From lunch until 4:30 it was a constant hike, I met Huck who was ahead at Frog Lake, another hiker named Tapo had just left and had his girlfriend meeting him at the highway crossing in 1.5 miles and offered Huck and I beer. So off we went, trail magic twice in a day. By 5:30, we’d finish our second beer of the day, and had 5 more miles to get to our intended campsite at Showers Lake. 

The next two hours seemed to go by fairly quickly as I walked thru a meadow full of alpine flowers and crossed several small creeks. The last mile into Showers Lake was all uphill, the PCT making me earn my first 30 mile day. Once at camp it was set the tent up, throw everything inside it, filter some water for dinner and breakfast, dinner and then crawl into my tent.  Huck, Catch and I are just 9 miles outside of South Lake Tahoe, so tomorrow should be a nice day to get errands completed and then back to trail the following day.