August 6
I woke up this morning a home, made my final packing preparation’s, and looked at today’s Hiking plan. I picked up around the house a little bit (not nearly enough) and then headed to church... Oh how I miss church community worship. Afterwords the incredible Mr. and Mrs. Shedd drove me to Echo Lake to drop me off to resume my trek.
Echo Lake is beautiful. As I go higher on the trail I look back at both upper and lower Echo Lakes.
I had forgotten how rocky this portion of the Trail is. Not fun on already sore feet!
After an hour, I reached the edge of the Desolation Wilderness. I passed Tamarack lake off to my left.
Looking back, higher up the trail, I have another good view of Tamarack Lake.
Lake Aloha is the next big lake I pass. long with many small rock "islands" it’s beautiful. The level is very high and part of the Trail was covered by water. I ended up turning the wrong direction and spent about 45 minutes doing a cross country bushwhack, bolder hop, snow traverse to get back to the Trail. I actually had to pull out my micro spikes and ice axe to get across one particularly steep snow field.
So I have developed a problem in my backpack. I have a part of the internal frame that feels like it may be a little bent and it’s digging into the side of my hip. When I took it off to check it out and adjust my shoulder straps I found that one of the shoulder strap anchors is torn. Tomorrow, if I have cell signal, I need to try to call of Osprey and see if they will send me a loaner pack and do some repairs, I hope so. Please pray.
After getting back on trail I circled around Helen lake. Along the way I passed many streams and small waterfalls which are gorgeous.
I then had a short mile uphill climb to Gilmore Lake, which is my campsite for tonight.
For those of you who are super observant, you may notice this tent is different than what I have had in previous pictures. I had zipper failures on some of my tent components and I’ve sent it in for repair. This is a loaner until mine is repaired and sent back. Six Moons Designs is the company and stand behind their product well.
Today’s PCT miles hiked 11.0 with a 1/2 day start a little after noon.
Total PCT Miles hiked to date 1862.7
PCT mile marker 1104.4
(Returned to complete 542.8 miles flipped over)
