PCT 61 – Ski Resorts

Daily Miles: 19
Total Miles: 1149

Not a very restful night of sleep due to the strong wind.  It continuously battered our tarps which caused a lot of noise from the flapping.  Neither of us had our earplugs in, so we just had to put up with the noise.

It was still quite cold and windy this morning when we started, so we all left camp wearing all of our clothes…wind shirt, wind pants, down jacket, gloves and hat.  The first few miles, we were walking on an exposed side of a mountain.  The wind was blowing so hard that it was a bit difficult to walk at times.  We couldn’t remember the last time that we actually walked so long in all of our clothes. Usually a jacket only stays on for 15 minutes in the morning, but today we kept everything on for at least an hour and a half.

The walking all day today was really beautiful.  We were back into large open views, which was nice after walking a lot of yesterday without much for views.  We walked through fields of yellow, purple and pink wild flowers.  We walked by Squaw Valley ski resort and even ate our lunch just a short distance from the chair lift.

We had several big ups and downs today, but the trail has been so well graded that they all seemed pretty easy. There are long gradual switchbacks which help to make the ups and downs feel very minimal.

Tonight we are camped a bit down from the trail.  It is not a marked campsite on the map, but we were ready to call it a day.  The area where we are sleeping looks like it was a site of a tree apocalypse. Almost every inch of ground has some downed tree or pile of dead branches.  MountainMan found what is probably the only small, clear, and semi-flat spot for his tent. We are just hammocking over the deadfall.  It is getting chilly as the sun goes down, but it seems that the wind has died down which we are thankful for.

Tomorrow we just have a few miles into Soda Springs where we will pick up a resupply package. We will probably also get a hot meal before heading back out on the trail.