Day 62 – 6/22/16
Just north of Sonora Pass 1017.79 to
1038.30
Total miles: 20.51 miles
Last night I thought one of the guy lines had come loose again. I go out and check but it was fine. I must have imagined it. Since I was up I decide to pee. As I’m peeing coyotes start to howl. Oh crap. I’m going to get mauled by coyotes. I quickly finish and dive back into the impenetrable fortress that is my tissue paper tent. The howling stops. I go back to sleep.
We wake up at the usual 5am and are off. So much nicer without that bear can. The morning starts off with a long climb. Right away we hit some snow covering the trail. There is a huge chunk of it and you have to go straight up. 5 Star and Mad Dog make their way up the ladder like foot steps. I start to climb and my feet keep slipping out. These shoes just suck on snow and ice. I decide to just go the long way around on the dirt. Shortly after we hit more snow on the trail. We are winding our way around a mountain and the snow is as usual steep and blocking the trail. Not wanting a repeat of yesterday I sit down and put on my microspikes since the snow is more like ice since it is morning. I easily make my way across.
We continue along the mountain crossing snow occasionally. We pop out onto the north side of the mountain and check for service. I have nothing. 5 Star as usual has service. Really annoying.
The north side of mountains and passes always have a ton of snow. This one had a ton too. We immediately had to traverse across a large section of snow. 5 Star and Mad Dog took it slow since it was icy and the foot prints were not deep into the snow. With my microspikes I had no problem.
After the traverse we made our way down into the snow covered canyon. Even with the microspikes it is exhausting going down over snow. I can’t wait to be done with the snow.
We finally leveled out a bit and we spent the rest of the morning walking through a forest. Over patches of snow and crossing a couple creeks. We were able to put in a good pace and at one hour we got over 3 mph. We stopped for a long lunch around 11:45. It’s nice just laying in the shade. At 1 we took off again with multiple hill climbs.
It was hot and tiring going up the hills. A few places there were snow patches and we had to do some route finding. This slowed us down. I really can’t wait to be able to put in a good pace and not have to deal with creek crossings and navigating over snow.
We are stopped next to a creek for the night. It’s a tight squeeze for our tents but we were too tired to go another mile to check out a different spot that said there is room for 2 tents. Mad Dog’s sister may do some trail magic at highway 4 in 10 miles. I really hope so. Only 55 miles to Lake Tahoe. We were planning on getting there early Sunday morning but decided what the heck let’s get there Saturday afternoon. Can’t wait.
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