July 19th
Whisky Creek(1140)-Donner Pass/Hwy 40/Truckee(1155.5)
Today’s Mileage: 15.5mi
I decided not to set my alarm this morning since I’m slowing down so that Snowblind(who has my camera) can catch up to me. I still woke up at 5am. I did a few things and fell back asleep. I was on the trail by 7am. By that time, someone was ahead of me cause I had prints to follow in the snow. Yay! Just what I needed! My phone/GPS was down to 10% battery and I had 15mi until I got to the road to Truckee. I was hoping to make it and use the GPS as little as possible…
I made it a few hours and there was a ton of snow. Dang! The phone ran out of juice and I went as far as I could until I reached an area I knew it wouldn’t be safe to navigate without GPS. I knew others were behind me, so I sat and waited on a dry piece of trail until someone came. Within 15mins, Balls and Sunshine walked up with another hiker Noah. That was lucky cause I could have waited hours! We all hiked to Hwy 40 together and I’m so glad I waited. We had lunch near the top of Donner Pass and the view was great!
It was almost all snow all the way there and not easy to navigate. It was more of that steep slick snow with lots of falling. My arm and shoulder are still sore from all the falls yesterday and I added plenty more today! Have I mentioned how I can’t wait to be done with the snow?
We made it to the road by 4pm. Chandra’s friend, Pilar, lives in Truckee and she picked me up and hosted me for the night. It has been awesome to relax somewhere quiet without a ton of other hikers. I also got to weigh myself and I am 14lbs under my regular weight. Not good. Now I have a good excuse to eat even more! While I was here today, I also got to recharge my iPhone, mind, and body. I didn’t realize how much I needed it til I sat on the couch and I feel like I never want to get up! Thanks Pilar!
Speaking of hikers, there was a trail angel that did trail magic this past weekend that we were ahead of by a day and missed. He listed some stats and it looks like there are 40 hikers just within the three days behind me. Many are only a half day behind and probably passing me today. Just this morning when I slept in an hour, I had five hikers pass me. It’s funny how we can all be so close to each other and not know it. We are all ready to push in the miles. Someone did the numbers and said that if we want to finish by Sept 15th(to avoid Washington snow/rain) then we’d have to average 25.8mi days with no zero days! We’re all feeling the pressure to move faster. I’ll definitely up the mileage and make less stops after Sierra City.
Sorry there aren’t more pics from today, but the phone was out of batteries. I’m back on the trail tomorrow morning.
