We may have to rethink this going slow and taking it easy on the TRT. I woke up (on my own without aid of an alarm) at 6:30 to make biscuits and gravy with coffee. Trail biscuits and gravy are every bit as easy as making them at home…boil 2 cups of water, pour in bag, take a nap. I didn’t even wake Bunny up until a quarter to eight. We were still on the trail before 9.
My schedule only called for 8 miles today, but we had covered that by 12:30. We decided to extend it another 2 miles but that might put us on the wrong side of the law. I say “might” because we’re not sure what restrictions are in place. We tried checking the Tahoe Basin NFS orders page and found nothing. The original closures were supposed to end yesterday. We ran into a few people hiking in the opposite direction of us who were obviously backpacking. They told us they weren’t certain either. Just lay low and don’t cause trouble. The rangers aren’t actively hunting down campers. Plus, the NFS has stated they are modifying what’s allowed and isn’t on a daily basis now.
We saw about 3 dozen people out in the 4-8 mile range of our hike today. Once we crossed Rt 89, we saw no one. The majority of people seem to be heading south to Big Meadows and Round Lake, both of which we passed and were stunning.
Even with the extra 2 miles we hiked beyond our original plan, we were still in camp before 2. We looked around to find the perfect spot: level and hidden. We thought we had found it and were just about to set up our tent when a half dozen mountain bikers rode up the trail opposite us. They didn’t see us because they were peddling uphill and had to keep eyes on the trail, but we saw them. We decided to find a better spot.
I climbed up another 100’ of elevation on the opposite side of the valley. We’re not certain if we need to be this cautious, but the original order called for the possibility of 6 months in jail and/or $5,000 fines for violating the closure order. The 6 months free room and board doesn’t sound bad to me with winter coming up. It’s the fine that scares me. That’s 2 1/2 months trail budget. If we both get nailed, that’s an entire hiking season. Too risky.
I took advantage to go through our food and get organized. We had gotten some protein bars and calogen bars from Backpacker to test. I won’t mention the bars by name because, quite honestly, they are the worst things we’ve ever had. I wrote the first ones off to bad luck. The second ones we ate were best described as “not terrible.” It was coconut lime protein bars. We could at least bite into them. The third time, we tried peanut butter. Neither one of us could take it. I thought I’d try an experiment. I put the partially eaten bar out near where we had been watching chipmunks (mini-bears) running around. When we got up in the morning, the peanut butter bar was still there, but 4 chipmunks had hung themselves.
I’ve isolated the rest of the “bars from hell” and tonight I’m going to line them up on the ground around our tent. To further test my hypothesis that ‘these bars are only good as a repellant and are not really edible’ I will prepare supper in the tent. When we are done, we will not clean up anything but instead leave the food bags open and the garbage strewn around inside the tent. We might even rub beef stroganoff behind our ears and all over our feet.
If my theory is wrong, this will be our last blog entry as we have finally had a bear encounter and gotten eaten. But, I suspect, we will not only wake up safe and sound, but a bear will have caught and killed a deer and leave it outside our tent. Contrary to what people think, bears are very compassionate creatures. If they come across starving humans, they will feed and protect them. I suspect the reason people don’t hear more of these stories of bear compassion is that the bears expect sex in return. There is no “3 date” rule with bears.
EFG