Tahoe Rim Trail – Day 2

Daily Miles: 11

Total Miles: 24

We were all in bed by 8:30pm last night and it didn’t take us long to fall asleep.  The night was cool and calm which helped us sleep better than the night before.  Our group is using a combination of 3 hammocks (Beardoh, SweetPea and Frank) and one tent (Sonja and Annika are sharing a tent).

We decided last night that we would get an early start today and then take a longer break later in the day to avoid some of the heat of the afternoon.  We set alarms for 6am and started the pack up process.  It took us a lot longer than we expected to get on the trail, but it gave us some extra time to stretch before we started walking.

While we were nursing some aches and pains from yesterday (sore feet, ankles, knees, hips), everyone was in great spirits as we headed out for the day.

We had more great views of Marlette Lake as well as Lake Tahoe.  We walked through open meadows with pops of color from the wildflowers.

We were excited to identify a stand of White Bark Pine trees and we even saw three Clark’s Nutcrackers.  This is a notable partnership, as this species of tree is completely dependent on this one specific bird to spread its seeds.

Our wildlife sights continued with a marmot who was sunning itself on a rock.  Frank and Annika got to see a few baby marmots too, but they were gone by the time the rest of us got a peek.

We stopped for an early lunch and were joined by another TRT thru-hiker.  She was surprised to see a group as large as ours and she said she had only see 3 other thru-hikers.  We were surprised since she has been on the trail over a week.  We easily saw 10 other TRT hikers last night at the campground.

We knew that we would be walking most of the day without any water sources.  We figured our only option for water would be around Spooner Lake.  This lake is especially gross and we really didn’t want to have to get water from there.  Sometimes there is a water cache nearby, but we knew that couldn’t be counted on. At lunch we looked through comments on the Guthook navigation app and saw a comment from several weeks ago about a small seep just north of Spooner Lake.

We kept our eye out for it and it turned out to be a great water source.  It required a scoop to get the water, but we always have one with us, so that was no problem.  It took us about two minutes to be able to fill a one liter bottle.  This was our last water source for the next 16 miles (more than a day for us), so we decided to fill up all of our water capacity.  Since there was five of us, and we all had about six liters of capacity, it took us a while to fill all of our bottles.

The water collection time gave everyone some time to rest (Brian and Frank even hung up their hammocks), We decided to extend the break a few hours…cooking dinner and drinking up a bunch of water.  That way we could refill our bottles and leave with as much water as possible.

With our packs filled to the hills with water, we headed back on the trail close to 6pm to walk our final few miles.  The sun had come down a lot and the trail was a lot more shaded by that time.  Even though we had a bit of a climb at the end with full packs, it was still much more pleasant with the cooler temps.

Our final few miles also included a crossing of Highway 50 which felt really busy…we were probably hitting it at rush hour.  We wondered if it would take awhile to find an opening when we could safely cross the four lanes of traffic, but luckily we only had to wait a few minutes.

We made it up to a saddle around 7pm and found a really nice tent spot.  The hammock spots we found are just out of view from the tent.  We are all in our sleeping bags by 9pm and it feels like it will be another pleasantly cool night.

The mosquitoes have been quite annoying at camp.  Luckily they haven’t been bothering us during the day, but when we get to camp, they are waiting for us.  We can hear them buzzing just outside the bugnets on our hammocks.

We are going to try for an earlier start tomorrow.  With our limited water and the heat, we want to be able to take advantage of the cool morning walking.