17 Miles
Sleep treated me well last night. The first few miles were smooth and uphill. On the descent, we ran into Slingblade. He’s hiking sobo from Crater Lake to Mammoth, where he lives. During our morning break, we had cell service and I got a text from Shade. They’re going to be in Tahoe until Saturday, which works out well since we’ll be in town tomorrow (Friday). We haven’t seen them since Mammoth, always a day behind, so it will be nice to finally (briefly) catch them. At lunch we stopped at Frog Lake. We took a dip and rinsed out some clothes in hopes we wouldn’t smell quite as bad for hitching a ride into Tahoe tomorrow. Ate lunch while our clothes dried. Earlier, Slingblade had told us to be sure to stop at the Echo Lake Trailhead and visit the information booth. He said they were giving out snacks and sodas to PCT hikers. We both got excited about the prospect of soda on this hot day. We walked the half-mile or so to the trailhead and found out that we were too late for sodas, booooo. They did have fresh fruit though! Woo! Thank you, volunteers at the trailhead! With another 2 miles to the next water source, we moved quickly to it. We should not have banked on those sodas. I don’t know why I’m using ‘soda’ instead of ‘pop’ like I typically do. On our way through a meadow, we started leapfrogging a group of TRTers. We would continue doing that until we reached camp. They had a dog with them who was clearly into the hiking. Reminded me of the infectious enthusiasm of my friend Matt’s dog, Otto. He’s always amped up when we go hiking. The campsite had a killer view. The Guthook comment that intrigued us to check it out said that it was a “baller ass campsite”. They were spot on.
PCT Hike 