Day 74: Return of the …

Date: Sat 6/30

PCT Start Mile: 1056.0

PCT End Mile: 1081.9

PCT Mileage for Day: 25.9

Total PCT Mileage: 1081.9

The Highlights: beautiful hiking, Carson Pass goodies, and an early reunion

Camping on an exposed mountaintop opened us up to the possibility of a windy tentsite, but thankfully we didn’t get too much wind until the wee hours of the morning, and even then it wasn’t too bad. We “slept in”, opting to hike out at 6:30am rather than 6:00am. So lazy.

The wind was chilly in the shade of the mountain as we packed up, but we warmed up quickly once we hit the sun. The day was another roller coaster of climbs and descents – nothing too long, but continuous up and down.

We hiked along rocky exposed ledges, through fields of wildflowers, and high above brilliant blue lakes, eventually taking our lunch break along Lost Lake.

After lunch, we had seven miles -including a fair bit of climbing – to Carson Pass. The trail included sections of rocky scree and snow, as well as wildflower meadows and forest. During our last mile approaching Carson Pass, we began to see a lot of day hikers. We were getting close to civilization.

The Carson Pass ranger station was very hiker friendly, and offered us sodas, peaches, cookies, and chips when we arrived.

Several other hikers sat outside in the shade munching on their snacks and petting Ellie, one of the ranger’s dogs. Ellie licked our salty legs and even provided a few kisses.

We sat at the ranger station chatting with the other hikers – some of which we’d been leap-frogging with the past couple days, including Grayscale and Mayo, from Sweden.

Mayo is originally from northern California, but has been living in Sweden with Grayscale the past five years. She started the trail just one day before us and we only saw her for the first time at Kennedy Meadows north.

Grayscale just joined her for about a three week section. We also finally got the names of a couple other hikers we’d seen several times, but not yet talked to – including Ecstatic (a sarcastic joke because he’s not very excitable) and Upstream.

Like Shawn, Upstream would also be celebrating her Fourth of July birthday in South Lake Tahoe. We signed the trail register and stayed for just under an hour before continuing on.

Through we had already hiked 20.6 miles, the hiking had been relatively easy and there weren’t many camping options after Carson Pass, so we planned to do another ~5.5ish miles to Showers Lake.

There were many day hikers along this section, most of which was easy hiking through meadows. As late afternoon turned into evening, mosquito activity began to pick up in the meadow, something we were not excited about, and we hiked quickly to get to the lake.

There were many camping sites along the lake and we continued toward the end of the lake to find an open site… right next to… Squishy!!! Return of the Squishy 😆Haha!

I had actually been doing the math on the way toward the lake and, since we’d done more miles than we really needed, and we knew about how many Squishy was aiming for, I thought she might actually be camping in this area as well. So, reunited already!!

She had arrived earlier and already eaten dinner, but sat and chatted with us while we ate. In addition to PCT hikers, there are several weekend hikers camped in this area and we talked to a few of them as well. Before going to bed, we walked a small trail behind our camping area to a rocky overlook, Lake Tahoe in the distance. We’ll be there tomorrow!