Day 73: Epic Trail Magic & Bye Bye Squishy
Date: Fri 6/29
PCT Start Mile: 1036.3
PCT End Mile: 1056.0
PCT Mileage for Day: 19.7
Total PCT Mileage: 1056.0
The Highlights: a trail magic paradise and see you later to Squishy
What a great day! Our morning was another roller coaster of climbing, and we did something we haven’t done in a long time: we took a mid-morning break, spending about half an hour at the saddle above Noble Lake before continuing on with our hike, down into the valley.
Views from the saddle before Noble Lake.
Descending from the saddle, the trail led us over a surprising number of snow patches for the warm temperatures. Crazy how long some of the snow persists.
Squishy after a pretty hilarious slip in the snow. One of those epic slips where both your feet slide out from under you and you land right on your butt. Even she was laughing, so we were laughing with her.
We wound our way around the mountainsides, Mowgli (or “Moug”) eventually barreling by us with a hearty “good morning”!
I think it was the first time I’d ever heard him speak, the quiet one of his group. He was hiking shirtless, as usual, really embracing the Jungle Book character. He swings his arms and legs and really just bounds down the trail.
As we hiked on, we eventually encountered some day hikers who were heading to Noble Lake. They asked us where we’d hiked from and we got to chatting about the PCT. They mentioned that there was a “food station” set up down by the highway. Trail magic?!? Now we were excited. We quickened our pace.
A bit further down the trail, we ran into a fellow thru-hiker heading southbound. “Excited for the trail magic?” he asked. Absolutely! “It was pretty awesome,” he said. And with that, we picked up the pace even more, just under a mile to go to the road. His assessment was spot on. Epic might have been a better word.
Crossing Highway 4, the group providing trail magic clapped us in. Several hikers already sat around in camp chairs in the shade, happily devouring food. “Set your packs down,” Alan – the main guy setting up the trail magic – instructed, “then we’ll have a few questions for you.”
Doing as we were told, he followed us to the shade and asked us if we had any dietary requests – vegetarians? Meat eaters? We responded that we eat everything. “Okay,” he said, “would you like a bacon cheeseburger or a pizza?” What!?! This is awesome. We all opted for bacon cheeseburgers. “For cheese, would you like Havarti, Swiss, or Pepperjack?” Wow. Cheese selection. What is this paradise?
While they cooked up our gourmet burgers, they pointed us to the rest of the goodies – pasta salads, potato salad, fruit salads, chips, brownies, pastries, oranges, bananas, sodas. What a spread!!!
The burgers were complete with bacon, kale, and a selection of all the toppings and condiments. Jeez, to think I was originally going to eat cold ramen for lunch.
No sooner than we had polished off all of this amazingness and they started brining around little pinwheel turkey wraps. And no sooner had they delivered this and they said, “who wants cheesecake?”, and brought that around. This was heaven. It was like they never wanted our mouths to be empty. Pretty soon they were delivering candies to everyone.
Tummies beyond full, we sat and relaxed, talking to the trail angels and the rest of the hikers, several of whom we knew and some we didn’t. We ended up staying for about two hours between all the time eating and digesting.
Group photo of hikers at the trail magic while we were there.
And, we signed the trail log and the inflatable sheep, adding our names to the others who had come through yesterday and today.
Finally around 2pm, we peeled ourselves away from the paradise, giving hearty thank yous and hugs to the trail angels, and continued our hike up the trail, much slower this time with our full bellies.
This afternoon we crossed into the Mokelumne Wilderness, the landscape changing to dramatic craggy volcanic rock. The trail continued to climb through forest and along exposed ridges with stunning views of the surrounding landscape.
Not too long before we ended our day, we crossed paths with a couple we had met in the airport in Bangkok last year when we were doing our around the world travels. They were doing the same and we had chatted for awhile, mentioning that we were planning on doing the PCT the following year.
I’m not sure if they’d had this plan then as well or come up with it later, but they also decided to hike the PCT this year. They had found us on Facebook before the hike and we’d been following each other’s journeys. They started much earlier than we had – in late March – and arriving in the Sierras a bit too early, ended up “flipping” north to Ashland, Oregon and hiking south to return to the Sierras when the snow was more manageable.
And so, as we made our way north and they made their way south, we finally crossed paths. It was fun to catch up and hear about their hike through northern California. After chatting for awhile, we continued on.
How Shawn relaxes when we get into camp early.
Tonight we are camped along a flat barren mountaintop, surrounded by amazing views on all sides.
At the tent site, we bid farewell to Squishy, who planned to put in more miles for the day and the upcoming days. From the Bay Area, her family would be spending the 4th of July holiday at their lake house outside of Truckee, so she was planning to skip South Lake Tahoe, hiking northward to arrive in Truckee by the 4th to spend a few days with her family. We plan to go through South Lake Tahoe, so we said our goodbyes.
More like see-you-laters though, as we will likely run into each other further up the trail. We also joked that we would probably end up taking our lunch breaks in the same area and see her again tomorrow.
One last selfie – until we meet again!
We had linked up with Squishy back in the desert, at Casa de Luna, hiking almost 600 miles together, passing by both the 500 and the 1000 mile markers together and sharing a ton of shenanigans.
It’s been a good time, and I’m sure we’ll see her again further north. I’m sure we’ll also cross paths with LOL again, who had been behind us, then ahead of us, and then behind us again – after taking a side trip to Yosemite Valley.
One thing about the trail is you often never quite know if and when you’ll see someone again, or how far ahead or behind you they might be, but eventually you tend to find each other after hours, days, weeks, or even months – and the reunion is always a great surprise. Trail family reunions are the best.
