After a great night catching up with Irene and getting to know her boyfriend, Paul, and their posse of dogs, they were kind enough to drive us up to the Echo Summit trailhead. Had a beautiful drive up the mountains and we were happy to more time with our friends. Sunny even sat in the back with his head between us….pretty sweet.
We started on the trail around 12:30 and were instantly mesmerized by the grandeur of the woods in this area. Beardoh has hiked in the area before and loved it, so for him it was like coming home. It was nice for him to pass by some familiar spots from the PCT…the campsite that they stayed at before heading to echo lake….a late lunch spot they shared with Free bird and the girl from Conway….and just parts of the trail that he could recall from two years ago. For Sweetpea, this is her first hiking in the Tahoe area and she was amazed by the huge trees, the colorful wild flowers and the smooth tread of the trail.
We breathed a huge sigh of relief to be back out in the woods and away from all the stress and business of our lives for the past month or more. We knew we were in for a great trip when we saw a bear on the trail towards the beginning of our hike. We are always fascinated by wildlife we see on the trail…seeing a non-human on the trail just reminds us of the shared community in the woods…hikers and all the animal inhabitants. We ended up seeing quite a few PCT hikers in the 10 miles of concurrent trail. Once the TRT split off from the PCT, the trail became much quieter. We ran into a TRT hiker who lives in the area who would be finishing up the loop tomorrow.
We ended up making it 12.5 miles and got into camp at Round Lake around 6:30. The mosquitoes at the campsite were unbearable. We were relived when we finally got into our hammocks and pulled up our bug nets. It was a good first day, although Sweetpea was really feeling the results of not having trained for this hike. We kept a pretty slow pace during the day as she felt like she had pretty low energy. Hopefully she will start to feel stronger soon.
Daily Miles: 12.5
Total Miles: 12.5
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