Today was rough. Today was day 4. Enough said. Day 4 is always the hardest on us when starting out. Your body isn’t used to carrying a pack. You’re not used to hiking 8+ hours a day. Your body is tired of the repetition. Your tired of being tired and sore. You stink like urine (one perk of hiking that people don’t talk about much is the lack of hygiene…I’m willing to go the poop distance here). Day 4 just sucks.
The first 3.6 miles of trail was completely dead air. There wasn’t even the slightest hint of wind or air movement. The humidity was high. (This is a relative comparison. Back home in MO, IL, and KY, it’s not unusual for the humidity to be 90+ %.) The humidity had to be 40%. Unusually high for here. We felt it. But the worst part was the mother f#$&ing mosquitoes buzzing in our faces. They weren’t thick, but always there. It was too hot to put on headnets for just one or two. I was starting to go (some might say “long gone”) crazy.
I had no energy. Bear and Sassy caught up with us about 5 miles in, but they kept going. We passed them again a bit later when they had found a spot with a breeze. We were close enough to Richardson Lake that we kept going. I was short on patience, energy, and water. They caught up with us at the lake, but didn’t stay long because they had just had a snack. As soon as they left, Strider caught up with us.
This was a new strategy for Strider. He’d wait anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes after we left someplace (depending on how far it was to our next rendezvous) and then he’d catch up, or pass us, as we were about there. Today was our entry into Desolation Wilderness. I honestly don’t know why it’s called this because this area is filled with alpine lakes. It was our favorite area on the Tahoe Rim Trail last year.
Strider PM (we added the PM for Perpetual Motion…Strider is always doing something, he’s a total ball of energy) was carrying swim trunks because he plans on swimming in some of these lakes. Our goal for today is Middle Velma Lake. We didn’t stop there last year, but went on to Dicks Lake. We remembered walking by the lake, but didn’t remember the camping spot.
Just as we were getting close, Guthook logged me out. Bunny’s phone was already dead, so we weren’t quite sure where we were headed. We knew we had to get water about 1/2 mile before camp. The outlet from Middle Velma wasn’t flowing well, so we headed up to the lake to get water. We filled all of our drinking bottles then filled our squeeze bags with another 4 liters. It seemed pretty stupid to camp next to a lake and carry 7 liters of water, but that’s what we remembered we had to do.
When we finally found the camp, we understood why. The camp was about 100’ above the lake on a rock shelf. Bear and Sassy had their tent all set up, but Strider wasn’t around. We asked if they had seen him because we were certain he was ahead of us. They told us he had shown up at camp, but when he saw how far from the water it was, he got antsy. He wanted to swim, so he had decided to bushwhack down to the water’s edge and camp there. He said he’d catch up with us in the morning.
There was a decent breeze up where we were, so I was fine staying there. The site was just big enough for the two tents, so it all worked out for the best. We had dinner with just the 4 of us. We’ll have to get used to this because Strider will be continuing on when we head into South Lake Tahoe for a day of rest in a couple of days. Since the 4 of us have already hiked over 1300 miles together, this felt like old times.
Except for being overweight, overheated, out of shape, old, dehydrated, annoyed by the bugs, and not used to the altitude, we might be having fun. Sassy reminded me this was day 4 and that things will probably get better. We promised them that if we were supposed to meet them in the future and we hadn’t stayed, or gotten, in shape, we wouldn’t show up.
EFG