Nothing went right today. Not one damn thing. It started with the alarm and went downhill from there. The alarm did go off as it was supposed to, but Bunny didn’t want me to snooze it…she wanted me to just shut it off. We compromised and I hit it 5 times. That translates to, “we started 45 minutes late.”
There’s a diner just a half block away. We still made it there just a bit after 9. I had planned on a short day today, but we still need to make almost 9 trail miles before we get to our first water source. Even so, we should still have plenty of time. There was a slight wait to get in, but after 5 minutes we had a table, water, and coffee. Then 2 large parties came in and got seated in the same section that we were in. We rarely saw our waitress again. When I finally got my food, it was burnt. Rather than wait another half hour, I decided to risk the stomach cancer. I ate it. The biscuits were terrible, but the bacon was quite nice.
We made it back to our room at 10:10. I know this because the bus we were supposed to catch was leaving at 10:23. Neither of us had packed. Instead of rushing, we could take our time. Then next bus isn’t for another hour. We still had to check out before 11. That would give us time to work out bus details like where to catch it, how much does it cost, etc. I guess I exaggerated earlier. There was one thing that went right today. Because of Covid, all bus rides are free. It’s like I found $8.
While we were waiting for the bus, a police officer came up and started talking to us. He saw our packs and wondered if we were hiking the PCT. We ran down the whole schpiel with him hoping that we might be able to yogi a ride up to the pass. No luck. When we saw him drive by a few minutes later we understood. He only had a golf cart as a patrol car.
I tried talking to all the bus drivers that came by. They all seemed interested in us and were trying to help us out. With any luck, if we can strike up a conversation with our driver, AND if the bus is empty, we might convince him to just run us all the way up to Donner Pass. We were the only ones on board all the way to Donner Lake, but then the driver stopped to pick up a hitch hiker. I thought this was a good sign that she’s flexible in her approach to passengers. Since all rides are free, why not pick up hitches. But at the next stop was a regular passenger that wanted to go downtown. Our options had gotten limited.
She let us out at the West end of Donner Lake. From here, we’d have to try our luck at hitching. Bunny wanted to try walking and hitching, but I knew this was a bad idea. I have never gotten picked up if I’m walking. I wanted to sit down and trim my toenails to let every passing car know we were not in a hurry and we’re properly groomed (it’s worked every time I’ve done it). Bunny wanted to walk. We walked. And walked. And walked.
Not a single car even pretended they were going to stop. We are in the land of Subaru’s, Audi’s, Tesla’s and Mercedes…these are not likely rides. If there had been some junky old vehicles, I would have felt confident about getting a ride. In my experience, rich people are the least likely to help out a stranger. There are a few exceptions, but over 90% of the rides we’ve gotten while hitching have been in beaters.
This now throws me off on a slight tangent. The mileage I listed on today’s total is actually ‘net miles’ as Sassy was always trying to get me to give credit for. Why the change of heart on my part? We are heading towards the Tahoe Rim Trail to hike it in its entirety. None of the miles we will be hiking for the next 3 days will actually be on the TRT as we are hiking the PCT down to get to it. None of the miles we hiked today actually count. In reality, we only walked 3.9 trail miles on the PCT today, but I’ll get to that tangential story after I complete my next tangential story now that I’m done with my first tangential interruption.
Second tangent. As we were walking the road up to Donner Pass from Donner Lake, it occurred to me that it would have been much quicker (and just as valid) if we had just taken the bus down to Tahoe City. The miles are walking until we get to Tahoe City are just “filler” miles until we get to the start of the TRT. I had gotten myself so fixated on hiking the PCT with Charcoal and Struggles that it never occurred to me to take the bus instead since they aren’t hiking with us any more. I either count all filler miles and list them, or I just write “0 trail miles” every day until we actually start the trail. Potātoes Potätoes.
Third and final mileage tangent. 3 miles of road walking plus 3.9 actual PCT trail miles does not equal 8.4 miles. We had been talking to a local taking some friends out for an overnight. When we caught up with them again, they were standing in, what appeared to be a switchback, talking to some other people. We made the turn and kept going. As we were nearing the top, I couldn’t see any other mountains around. We were supposed to climb to 8700’ but if there aren’t any mountains, how do we climb? I checked my “Gut.” We had finally been making great time. Wouldn’t you know, we went. 3/4 of mile on a side trail up Mount Judah which leads down to Donner Peak. We had circled back towards the pass. If Bear were with us, this would have never happened.
We put in nearly 5 additional miles that really don’t count on top of the 9 we were planning on, that just didn’t count. If we kept going to our original target campsite, we’d have almost 14 miles in. We didn’t even start hiking the really don’t count miles until noon. By the time we had started the “just not counting” miles, it was almost 2. Bunny was faltering bad. We had already climbed a few thousand extra feet we hadn’t planned on in the 5 “really not counting miles.” Even though we were short on water, we decided to find the closest thing resembling a flat spot and camp for the night.
Having already passed up a couple of good spots, I was reluctant to pass the only level spot I had seen since we had actually gotten on trail. Bunny didn’t like it because it wasn’t far enough off trail. Against my better judgement, we pushed on. I didn’t like that we were above 8000’ and were heading into an exposed, windy ridge. After another 1/2 mile, we found a somewhat sheltered spot in some young trees. I refused to go any further.
We set up camp and cooked supper. We chose the supper that required the least amount of water. We only have a little over a liter of water for supper, breakfast, and a 5 mile hike to the next water source. On the bright side, I probably won’t have to get up to pee in the night since I’m already dehydrated. I guess one thing ended up going my way, after all.
EFG