Day 56

Somehow, some way, we made it 31 miles. This mileage was necessary to reach Abbey in South Lake Tahoe before the weekend. We hiked for almost 14 hours straight, leaving at 5:30 and not getting to camp until 7:15 pm. We never stopped for longer than 20 minutes, and that was for our lunch “break”.

The weather these days is either cold, windy, or mosquitos. Today’s weather was mosquitos. We crushed three massive passes in the first 12 miles, thinking we’d gotten the hardest part of the day over with, only to be faced with 15 miles of marsh, swamp, and swarms. The mosquitos were so bad that we could not stop to filter water, running in places to escape clouds of bugs. We found that a good 4 mph pace kept the bites at bay.

Around mile 27 we hit 1000 miles! Despite the mosquitos, we got some celebratory photos and chipped away at the last 4 miles of the day.

We are so happy to have reached the milestones we have. In just a few hundred miles we will be 50% done which is crazy!