I slept as long as I could. So I was awake at 7am…

 

I was out of my tent around 7h30 and a fellow hiker said to me that the Reads Meadow road would be open again.

 

The exit I wanted to take was right where I was and it would have been a 3,5 mile hike to the shuttle. Reads Meadow however is in 3,5 miles and there is another shuttle. And I could get breakfast there. It wasnt a hard choice 🙂

 

Slightly more than an hour later I arrived there and was welcomed by a university student who had a questionnaire about the pct for her tesis. I took part and got some carrots, blueberries and strawberries as a thank you.

 

But the real breakfast was waiting inside the restaurant! The typical pancakes, bacion and scrambled eggs. I ate it so often but it is still great 🙂 I did put so much sirup on my pancakes that I had stomachache afterwards…

 

I took the shuttle into town and walked the last mile to the Davidson guest house. Something like a hostel, but at 30$ quite expensive for bunkbeds in a shared dorm.

 

After showering and washing my clothes in a bucket because there was no washing machine I walked out back to the city. 3 miles…

 

I went to the postal office where new straps for my sleeping quilt waited for my. After that I had a huge burger with a liter of coke and a milk shake. Then I went shopping right after lunch, beer, fresh ananas, tacos, salsa and chewing gum.

 

After a long way back home, I sat on the couch, drank my beers and enjoyed tacos with salsa for the rest lf the day.

 

It feels nice to be sitting and having the chance to do nothing but my legs are still tickling to continue hiking…

The next morning Ben shall arrive around 9, and he did. Great to see a friend back after such a long time without any known persoun around yourself.

After a warm welcome we went out to have breakfast, then 2 hours of resupply shopping…way to many snacks!!!… after trying to fit everything into put canisters and bagpacks I had to go to the hardware store to replace the tips of my trecking poles.

 

After everything was done we gave his car back to hertz and took the shuttle again to the trailhead.

 

Around 14pm we arrived there and had lunch before heading put around 15pm we hiked out. Ben went ahead so he could set the speed. After an easy 8 miles in 3,5hours we set camp just before the climb of the next day. We had a slightly hard time to find a good spot without too many mosquitos.

 

A fast set up tent, a quick dinner and we went in to play some cards and drank a Porto wine which we carried 🙂

We were quick sleepy and fell asleep around 9pm.

 

Ben was awake earlier than me, the jetlag seemed to be the problem. But I wasnt ready to wake up at 5am, I slept another hour before we started to get ourselves ready to hike out.

The first 3miles were only uphill but the landscape was getting better and better. We had second breakfast with a wonderfull view 🙂

 

 

Lunch was far away and so we hiked out shortly after finishing.

 

We were hiking slowly but steady over the first small pass and had soon reached the point where we wanted to have lunch. After a quick try to catch a trout which we gave up quite fast we found a nice lunch-spot.

 

 

But Ben didn’t felt good but the breaks didn’t seem to help we continued hiking. After puking and changing hats, I haceve some sort hat which gives more shade than Bens Baseballhat it seemed to be better, but after reaching the summit it got worse again.

3 miles after the summit we pitched the tent and becaue Ben was still not better, he went straight to bed at 6am and left me alone to fight the mosquitos and eat my dinner.

 

I did hide the bear canister and got into my sleeping quilt and slept early too.

 

We did a good 18 miles today and have earned to raid the gastation we’ll pass in 9 miles 🙂

 

 

 

 

6am, I woke up and Ben had already packed up everything and was outside of the tent. So I hurried and was ready 20 minutes later. But I realized that I had forgotten my glases at the hostel 2 nights ago…

 

I have only 10 more contact-lenses for the next 23 days so I have to wear my Sunglases all day.

We left an got right away in a flat section where we’ll for the next 15 miles. Ben was feeling better again so we hiked without a lot of breaks until we had to get the first water. We decided to not have breakfast in the wilderness ans just go to the gas-station to eat there.

More and more day-hikers passed us so we knew that civilasation was close 🙂 before we got to the gas-station we got another permit for Ben because he needed one for the Yosemite-nationalpark.

 

 

We arrived just 10 minutes early for the grill to open and to have lunch. So we waited, ordered and I went to get some more drinks.

 

As soon as I entered the shop I didn’t felt good anymore. I grabbed 2 beers and 2 cokes and went to the waiting line for the register.

 

As I was waiting there I started to feel worse and worse. My ears shut down, my sight got bad and I was not able to stand straight anymore. Only one more costumer before it’s my turn, I said to myself, before I’ll get some fresh air…

 

The next I remember is the cans rolling on the ground and me trying to get up and grab them… I blacked out for a few seconds…

 

People helped me get my stuff, I paid and went outside to sit on a bench. After 2 minutes I went inside again to eat my burger and drink some coke. It started to get better again.

 

Next time I’ll have breakfast and don’t try to push it until lunch…

After 2hours of eating, getting cold beers and some ice-cream we started to hike out again.

The park was full of dayhikers.

After 4 miles while crossing a bridge we were finally able to see bear!

 

It was just crossing the river, I hurried to get my big lense out to get a closeup picture and after 2 minutes he was gone again into the forest and was out of sight.

Even though it was still a child and because it’s early season he was not well nurrished it was still impressive to see such a majestic creature in its natural habitat.

After 4 more miles we set up out camp, coocked outside the tent, flew the drone, hid the canisters and got inside to watch some netflix before going to bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even though we wanted to start early, we left camp at 7am. The first 3 miles were flat and we kept a good pace.

 

 

Second breakfast was before the first climb of the day to make sure we had enough power for the mountain.

There were quite a few bigger rivercrossings but we managed all of them more or less without a problem.

 

 

Even though we know each other for such a long time and we have so many diffrent things to talk about, half of the time its trail related 🙂

First hill, first downhill and right after getting into the meadow the second climb for the day, Benson Pass. Should be an easier pass, not to much elevation gain and its not too high.

Halfway into the climb we ate lunch next to a river which was surprisingly mosquitofree. The meal was followed by a 30 minute break before heading uphill again.

The pass was as unspectacluar as the view.

But we had a few more miles to do before we would reach the campground.

I wouldn’t be a lot faster if I would hike alone, the only plave where I would be faster is in the straight line. Uphill Ben has a good pace and downhill my bagpack is to heavy to be fast.

After a real mosquito-heaven for the last half a mile the rivercrossings didn’t made it easier to get to the campground. But eventually we saw a fire in the woods and a few hilers sitting around it.

 

We joined them, pitched the tent, cooked and had the classical hiker conversation.

 

What kind of favorite food, any new creations? Different options other than toilet paper or wet wipes to take a shit? Where we started from, how many food and where we want to go out again.

 

After almost 3 hours around the fire we went to bed and fell asleep right away after 22miles we hiked today.

 

Right after falling asleep Ben woke me up because he was moving and had to get out to pee again. 30 seconds later he came back whispering that there would be a baer next to our canisters.

 

I asked just “for real?”

 

I stuck my head out, whistled loud an shouted “hey baer” to scare him away.

 

He moved, but the whole camp (11people ) woke up and half of them got out of the tent to check their canisters.

Ben wasn’t even back into the tent when I started to sleep again 🙂

 

 

 

 

The alarm went of at 5h30 and I asked Ben if he really wanted to start this early…

40 minutes later we were back on trail! The first of our camp.

 

 

The first pass was reached before 8am bit the mosquitos were awake too. Luckily we had some Deet with us to make them stay away, but it doesn’t helps all the time.

 

After the first big rivercrossing we hiked uphill for 15 minutes before we stopped to have second breakfast.

 

 

Threre were two small passes to accomplish before we had lunch next to a river where we wasshed ourselves and our clothes too.

 

After a long lunchbreak we went for a short downhill part before we would attack a 12 mile climb over Doherty pass.

 

 

As the sun started to set, the mosquitos started to eat us alive again! Deet didn’t help anymore so we hiked as fast as we could for the last 6 miles uphill and even decided to go back down again to avoid the high elevation and the mosquitos at the summit.

 

I have countless bites on my legs, arms, shoulders and one on my forehead. I wouldn’t say I still won the battle, but I killed hundreds of them during the fight!

 

We reached our designated campsite at 19h30 after 25 miles and rushed to pitch the tent to get finally rid of the mosquitos.

 

We cooked inside to have at least some peace during dinner. Later we just trew our canisters out to be safe at night and fellasleep quite fast after this exhausting day.

 

 

 

We were ready to hike out at 6h20 but when I wanted to put on my bagpack 2 of the straps from the shoulderpad ripped and I had to put them together with knots so they would hold up for today.

 

The one to adjust the angle of the bagpack to your back wasnt easy to fix so I just hiked until breakfast without it.

 

Big mistake!

 

My neck did hurt so bad after those 3 hours but I luckily managed to fix it while eating. After breakfast the real climbing part of the day started and we would have to manage a 700m of altitude gain to summit at 3300m.

 

That we were exposed to the sun the whole afternoon and that we had a 10 mile watercarry didn’t made it easier…

 

But for the first time in a week the views on top were breathtaking again and all the pain was forgotten 🙂

 

 

We had a late lunch because we wanted to have it at a spot where we were supposed to have cellphone service. After 5 days of not contacting anyone we had to let people know that we were still alive.

 

 

The service was quite bad though and there was no way to update this…

The way down to the road was difficult and full of snow, so it took us 3 hours for 7km but we finally made it to Sonora Pass and got a hitch to town after only 5 minutes and 3 cars that passed us.

 

 

Kennedy Meadows North is a very remote area with no service and no wifi. We got ourselves a room, took a shower, washed oir clothes, got a few beers and drank them on the porch with other hikers.

 

As we finished the beers we went to the restaurant and had a chili cheese burger with fries and a baked potato as a side. For one time the prices were not exagerated and we paid 22$ each for the burger with a liter of wine.

 

Because of the wine we fell asleep soon for a refreshing night in a bed 🙂

 

 

 

We woke up around 8am and started very slowly into the day. We bought resupply and packed everything into our packs, now they are heavy again…

 

We had breakfast at 10am, pancakes, scrambled eggs and sausages. With 11$ the cheapest one so far.

 

We were a bit unlucky with the resupply because the ran out of a lot of the hikerfood and the truck would come in only in the afternoon. So we had about 50% of the calories in snacks.

 

We got a hitch in the back of a Pickuptruck back up to the Sonora Pass and started our hike just before 12am. Even though we felt fresh, the trail sucks you back in fast and it only takes a few minutes before you start sweating in your fresh clothes and you feel dirty again 😉

 

 

We stopped for a short snackbreak after the only real hill for the day about 2 hours into the hike. We spoke with a few hikers during the afternoon, they were more communicative then the ones we’ve met so far on trail.

 

No more mosquitos for the next 70 miles was the best news we got from a southbound hiker.

 

We set up our camp after a great 17 mile afternoon and had even time to get firewood to start a campfire to enjoy the nature outside of the tent in a mosquito free area 🙂

 

 

Because we slept long we stayed up later then usual and went into the tent at 9pm.

 

Only three 20 mile days to south lake tahoe where we might go out for our next resupply.

 

 

 

 

I woke up at 5h30 but because Ben was still sleeping I didn’t want to wake him up too and so I played with my phone until he woke up 90 minutes later.

 

We started around 8am. We saw more hikers than the other days, we passed a few and got passed back when we had one of our few eating breaks.

 

We saw these hillarious footprints in the water and the traces where someone slipped and slided into the small lake 🙂

 

 

There was only one minor hill we had to pass for today so we were in no hurry and had done 13 miles by lunchtime. We took only half an hour for the lunchbreak because we would cross a street in 2 miled and we were hoping for some trailmagic!

 

 

As we got closer we saw a few vans and a tent and so we knew that would get some 🙂

 

The first one was from chipmunk who offered us some cold coke and another family was preparing to stay there for 4 days and cook burgers and pizza.

 

 

So we waited 2 hours and had a few more cokes with around 15 other hikers before the grill was set up and they started to serve our second lunch 🙂

 

We had burgers, pizza, nachos, strawberries and different salads.

 

 

At 6pm we set of for another 6 miles before we pitched our tent and watched Sense8 after this 22mile day.

 

 

 

 

 

I woke up as the girl who slept at the same tentsite started to pack her tent up and because Ben was still asleep I wrote on the blog until he woke up.

 

We started just after 6am and stopped after only one hour of hiking because we had a bit of cellphone-service in the middle of nowhere. Just enough to get Whatsapp and Facebook messenges but nothing else.

 

We stood there trying to get some sunbeams to heat up and texted home for about an hour beforewe left again.

 

We found this amazing spot to have breakfast on and it tasted even better here than elsewhere.

 

 

We had to cross another road and were hoping for some trailmagic but it wasn’t ment to be. A few yards of the road we had lunch and took water because there’s gonna be an 8 mile dry stretch before the next creek.

 

The climb was the highest of the day and even if it wasn’t that bad it was still exhausting because we were exposed to the sun which didn’t made things easier.

 

The views were georgeous, a lot of lakes invited us to swim in them, but hey were to far away. So we continued hiking with another highway crossing in mind where we would have toilets.

 

 

But this was still far away and we had a 900 feet drop followed by a 900 feet climb on the other side before we would get there.

 

Both of us were happy when we reached the top with only 1 mile left to the toilets. For me they came to late, I had to do my buisness behind a bush as usual. But Ben made it on time and I started to realise that we forgot to take water at the last source and that the toilets didn’t had running water.

 

We had just enough to cook and save so.e for the night. Luckily the next source on trail would only be 1.1 miles ahead and so we pitched our tent next to the road where the mosquitos showed up again. Thats why we went straight into our tent.

 

 

 

 

I didn’t slept well because I have bad pain in my left shoulder where I made a wrong movement two days ago. I took half of a Ibuprofen and of we went just before 8am.

 

We were lucky that we started in the wrong direction, so we found trailmagic hidden behind a rock. After a 50 yards we realized our mistake and went back over the parking lot we came from in the right direction.

 

The first few miles were uphill so we had not a lot of time to warm up…

 

Its saturday and we are between two roads, so we saw a lot of dayhikers on the trail. The trail changes landscapes and grounds fast, but the speed of today has never been there for the last two months. It was ridiculous how many differences we saw today.

 

After an early second breakfast, we had an early lunch too because we wanted to arrive in Echo Lake Resort early to have dinner there and leave again after resupplying.

 

The 15 miles were easy with no major mountains to pass so we arrived just after 2pm. 4$ for an icecream, but I realized it too late, I already bought 3… they were still good 🙂

 

 

The 3,5 day resupply was cheaper at only 52$ with a lot of snacks and 2 more beers.

 

Luckily Ben saw that the shop offered postal services and so we sent our bear canisters ahead to the town where we wanted to get of trail to save 2pounds each 🙂

 

We met Bo while drinking our beers and packing our bagpacks. She wanted to camp at the same spot next to Aloha lake then we wanted.

 

We hiked out ahead of her but because the store owner offered us two more beers because we were apparently nicer then most of the hikers we were a bit tipsy an our pace was moderate.

 

 

Until Bo caught up with us, we hiked together for a mile before she passed us. Two guys who have been competitive runners getting passed by a girl. No need to explain that Ben followed her, hiking faster than he ever did on trail 🙂

 

 

After 6 miles of steep uphill we reached the lake just before the sunset. So we went for a swim in the not so ice-cold lake. The small bath felt great 🙂

 

We decided to cowboycamp and slept on the rocks near the lake with a view of the stars.

 

 

 

 

 

I usually wake up a few times during the night, but this night I had terrible back-pain and I don’t think I slept for more than half an hour at once. It was fullmoon and it was super bright during the whole night.

 

Bo left first while we were packing up and the rest of the camp was still sleeping when we left at 6h45.

 

The rising sun over the lake was beautiful to watch, but we soon left the lake to climb the dicks pass. The only pass for the day.

 

It took us 2 hours before we reached the top where we had service for a few moments. Service is the big problem here, even if you have a bar or two it’s not enough to upload pictures. It’s barely enough to send a few texts home…

 

After taking some pictures with the dicks-pass pole we continued to get down the hill again. There was still a lot of snow on the north side so we couldn’t go fast.

 

The sun was heating everything up and so we soon ran out of water because we didn’t check for water sources. After a 2 mile dry stretch we crossed a river and filled up our platypuses and added the last of the gatorade to it.

 

 

Motivation was kind of a problem today… our pace was ok but there are just those days where you would rather be somewhere else. We both felt the same so we cheered ourselves up with stories and tried to get the motivation back.

 

We missed our designated lunch-spot and had to hike a few miles further until we found a shady spot near water with a sunny spot nearby to dry the washed clothes and charge our powerbanks who are running low on energy.

 

We had a hard time to start hiking again but as we did the next 7 miles to Richardson lake felt not too bad and so we decided to do another 6 to get the 26.2 miles done which means a Marathon. The first one for Ben.

 

The last 3 miles were uphill and the energy from lunch was used long ago so it was kind of hard to reach the campsite 26.3 miles after our starting point.

 

The toilet and the campingtables made the effort worth it and while cooking we pitched the tent, ate, drank some wine I carried to celebrat and sat there for a few more moments before going to sleep for an easier day tomorrow 🙂