Day 88: mile 1521.9 – mile 1549.6

Elevation gain: 3,165 ft

Elevation loss: 2,922 ft

With the super high temps and lack luster trail over the last week or so, we feel like we have been pretty miserable a lot of the time. But today we were loving everything the PCT had to offer. Loved the camp site last night with the amazing sunrise this morning and no mosquitoes. Loved the gradual terrain with great ridge walking and sweeping views. Loved all the wildflowers, puffy clouds and cool breeze since we stayed over 6,000 ft the entire day. Loved the abundance of water sources, the lack of Poison Oak, and not dripping with sweat all day. Loved not having to do any bush whacking, my surprise cherry pop tart, and, of course, my hiking partner!

We set the alarm for 5:30 because it’s just too dark at 5, and we find it takes longer to get packed up anyway. We were immediately greeted with a beautiful sunrise over Mt Shasta…WOW!!

We hardly did any walking in the “green tunnel” today…mostly ridge walking with amazing views all around us. We could even see Mt Shasta the entire day as well. I’m going to miss her when she’s gone!

We stopped for breakfast around 9-ish at a Spring that was RIGHT ON TRAIL…go figure! When I unwrapped my pop tart which I assumed was strawberry (I’m so tired of strawberry), I was so thrilled to see it was cherry!! I have no idea how this happened, but it was in our resupply box and that made my morning. Maybe the others are cherry too…one can hope! 😁

Can you see my butterfly friend that wanted to go with me on my shoulder strap?

We had many views of lakes as well, all of them gorgeous. Finally, at lunch, we got to walk by Lower Deadfall Lake so we stopped to enjoy it while we ate.

It’s so amazing how we keep seeing new wildflowers. I feel like we should’ve exhausted all the options by now, but I’m so glad we haven’t!

Balloon Milkvetch
Rock Fringe Willow Herb
Toothed Owl Clover

After lunch we saw quite a few day hikers because there was a parking lot with pit toilets nearby. We talked with many of the hikers and one gal even gave us a huge handful of tortilla chips…crunchy things are so nice out here! Everything is chewy and soft so this was such a treat. We saw Thomas at the pit toilets as well. We have been leap frogging with him since last night and we found out today that he will be a Triple Crowner once he completes the PCT (having already done the AT and CDT)…wow, what an amazing accomplishment!! He did say that he thought the PCT was harder than the CDT which is super surprising to us. We thought the CDT would’ve been the hardest for sure. Once we started hiking again, the clouds really started to roll in and there was quite a bit of thunder. THEN, it started to hail! How in the world it was able to hail in this heat is beyond me. It wasn’t enough to put our pack covers on, but a few hit my head and it hurt…they were definitely a good size! We chatted about how long it had been since we have had cloud cover while hiking and it’s been quite some time! It definitely made hiking so much easier and we decided we felt good enough to move onto a different tent site with a better water source. The first one we had our eyes on only had two fairly stagnant ponds we would’ve had to collect from 🤢

So we didn’t get to camp until 6:45 because of the extra miles, but now we are camped on a ridge, which I love. It’s so funny how in March and April we never would’ve camped on a ridge because of the wind, but now that the weather is so much more mild it’s just lovely!

And with a ridge, we usually get great sunsets as well. Tonight was no exception! Today there was just so much to love about the trail and makes us so excited to see what else there is to love in the days to come! Thanks for joining us on this crazy trek. Double Down