Encore with Special Guest Snickers
If you’ve been following along through this entire 2020 trip, you know that our trail fam buddy, Snickers also made his way to the PCT to finish up some miles. We’d been in touch with him throughout and essentially while we had been hiking north, he was hiking south towards us and wouldn’t you know it, it worked out just right for us to meet in the middle! Here’s how it went down…
This morning I got up to walk the town, get some coffee, and take a bus to the grocery store. Quite a peaceful calm setting after seeing the busyness the night before.
Afterwards, I ended up out on our hotel’s upper balcony overlooking the town…
It was a nice relaxing morning. My one task was to scrounge up some snacks and stove fuel to boost up Snickers’ supply (and maybe get some stuff for myself too? 😉).
To bring this glorious reunion together, we were still missing one piece of the puzzle… Cool Hands, another trail friend to all of us from the PCT class of 2019, happened to be in the area and brought it all together. He and Snickers had gotten in touch resulting in him doing some awesome trail angeling for us! After picking Snickers up from a road crossing/rest area along the trail (right near I-80), we all met up in a Truckee for some outdoor eating in the sunshine!
It was so great catching up, telling old trail stories (mostly Cool Hands), and laughing and laughing some more. Good times, great oldies.
After lunch was to be a parting of the ways. Cheer and Calzone had made a tentative plan to get a rental car and head back to Southern California together. Originally, I was planning to join on what seemed a super fun extension to our trip. I mean, the OC is legendary, right!? But, alas, when Snickers and my path’s crossed once again, I knew that we were destined to do some hiking together!
Here we are at the I-80 rest stop/PCT trail crossing just before Snickers and I set out…
It was sad to say goodbye to Cheer and Calzone, but we knew future adventures would be had together. And for now, I was jumping back on trail for some bonus PCT action and getting to reconnect with my pal Snickers. So great seeing Cool Hands again and he was such a big help in making all this reunion’ing happen!
My plan for hiking with Snickers was to go about 15 miles or so sobo. I’d spend one night tenting on the trail and the next day hike out the same Granite Chief Trail down to Olympic Valley.
The miles went super quick hiking with each other since we were just chatting it up.
Wasn’t long before we cruised down to Donner Pass…
At the road crossing there, we did what hikers do, ate more food. There was a nice little stand selling cold drinks and things with picnic tables, so couldn’t pass it up. Afterwards, it was up and up though!
We got some amazing views. Off in the distance we started seeing clouds forming that we thought might’ve been from forest fire smoke.
The sun going down was giving us some premium lightning…
Around 7:30pm we found a spot to set up our tents in a cool area just north of Tinker Knob. Some lovely sunset action going on.
Such a beautiful last night on trail for me! It was a quick dinner since getting dark on us and after some chatting, it was into the tents.
Wandering Stevie 