Tahoe Rim Trail – Day 3

Daily Miles: 13

Total Miles: 37

We wanted to avoid some hiking in the afternoon heat today, so alarms were set for 5:30am.  We managed to shave 45 minutes off our pack-up time today and we were on the trail by 6:45am.

It was nice and cool this morning as we started with a climb.  There were already some day hikers heading out and we met another thru-hiker who was coming down.

We realized in the morning just how bad Sonja’s feet were.  She had some hot spots that she had put duct tape and moleskin on, but then realized she had blisters that had developed underneath.  As she pulled the tape off, the skin from the blister came off, leaving a raw spot on her heal…extremely painful.  She is also having a lot of pain in her big toes…as she dubbed it, they were “fire feet”.

Frank tried to help her bandage her feet and she made some adjustments to her insoles, but unfortunately it was a pretty painful day for her.  It didn’t help that all of our packs were full of water, but everyone, including Sonja, kept a really positive attitude.

We made it to the top of our climb, where we had more beautiful views of Tahoe.  We came to a memorial bench along the trail that looked out over the lake.  We all crowded onto the bench and enjoyed a snack.

There was a stretch of trail this morning that seemed to be a caterpillar highway.  As we watched them closer, we realized that they were digging holes into the rocky ground.  We hadn’t seen that before, and it was interesting to see.

Our afternoon was mostly downhill which was nice.  Today had a bit of cloud cover, which helped to keep the heat in check.  It was really nice to have cooler temps today since we were managing very restricted water for the day.

We stopped around 1pm for lunch and a long break.  We decided to cook our dinner at lunchtime, figuring we wouldn’t have to carry the water for dinner any farther.

After eating, we all laid down for awhile and we all ended up dozing for a bit.  It made us rather lethargic as we tried to motivate ourselves to keep hiking, but it was nice to relax for a few hours.

Our final four miles of the day seemed to go pretty slow, since we were tired.  We took a few breaks and finally Frank came up with some mind teasers to help keep us  alert and moving.  It definitely helped to pass the time.

We finally made it to camp and started to set up camp.  Our friends still have some extra food (even though we are resupplying tomorrow morning), so Frank toasted up some bagels with olive oil to help eat up their food.  It was a night treat for us, since we haven’t been eating them the past few days.