Packed up around 6:00am and was on the trail a few minutes later. The person in the other tent turned out to be Puma. I had last seen him in the car back in Big Bear City when I had first arrived in town and and gotten a ride to the hostel. He was headed into South Lake that morning while I was continuing onto Echo Lake Resort.

Listened to a bunch of old Dylan during the five miles to Echo Lake Resort. This part of the trail I hadn't really seen before since I had walked it at night in 1996.

Right as I got to the Highway 50 crossing I saw Puma getting into a small truck for a ride to SLT.

The trail climbed a bit through some summer homes on its way to the resort. In the parking lot I saw two PCT hikers pop up. It was Mario and Erin from Seattle, I had not seen them since the 4th day of my hike around Mile 60! The last time I had seen them I had taken a clock photo of them at the Rodriguez Water Tank and they left about an hour before me. I had not seen them for almost 1100 miles. Funny how that works. They were going to hitch into the first town to get a big breakfast since the resort didn't really serve food-food.

There were a few hikers at the resort. I was able to get my package early. I didn't have to give away too much food. The girl working the counter there said she and a friend were thinking about doing the PCT next year after college.

I updated to the new PCT Map app for the iPhone. There are five of them...three for California, one for Oregon, and one for Washington. The next (and last) California one started at the resort. Sadly I realized that in fact after I had climbed out of Sonora Pass to the top of the ridge...that was the last time the trail would ever be obove 10,000 feet. I thought it got that high further up too but in fact it doesn't. I also realized I only had to go 60 miles to get to Truckee and not 65. 65 miles is the distance to Interstate 80, which is the harder way to hitch to Truckee.

I only ended up at the resort in about two hours which was pretty good. I hiked a few miles and then stopped and made breakfast since I had a lot of food to eat up.

There were a lot of day hikers around. The trail started to climb a bit away from the lakes and I passed two heavy-set guys in their mid 60's. They were having a hard time making it up the hill. I said hello and passed them. Further up the trail were two younger attractive Asian women waiting for them, looking very bored. Step it up guys! A While later I passed Mile 1100 and took the usual photos.

The trail passed really close to Lake Aloha so I dropped my pack and jumped in...it was quite refreshing. Continuing on I passed an overnight backpacker who smelled pretty bad. I know I smell completely horrible, and I know other PCT hikers smell bad, but I cannot smell them. This guy I could however.

Met a couple new PCT hikers whom I hadn't met before, Scabby and Teabag. I ended up seeing them a bit farther up the trail and stopped to talk with them for a while.

It was a long climb up to the top of Dick's Pass. It was pretty flat on top so there wasn't a lot to see. The trail dropped again. I passed a trail junction and started dropping into the valley. I could see Lake Tahoe now and realized one of my 1996 photos was taken just back up the trail, so I said hell with it and walked back up to the junction again and took the photo.

The trail continued down and after about 1/2 mile it turned into a really terrible trail that was hard to follow. Water everywhere, stacked lines of rocks to mark the path. The PCT had spots like this earlier but now things were a lot worse. I got to a trail junction and didn't recognize the names. I turned on the GPS map app and saw I was on the wrong trail. Dammit! I had to hike all the way back through the swamp and up the hill. So to make matters worse I went down the wrong trail twice. The first time was only about 1/8th of a mile when I went back up to retake the 1996 photo, the second time was at least a mile. This whole mistake cost me an hour of daylight and is going to make tomorrow even harder.

All was not lost though, as I was going up the final part of the wrong trail I saw a hiker named Julian (whom I had met at Echo Lake) heading down. "Wrong trail" I said. He pulled his map out and saw that he was in fact on the wrong trail. When we got to the junction I saw my mistake. The signpost was against the setting sun so it was hard to even see, plus some jerk had popped the metal PCT emblem out of the post as a souvenir.

I went about another two miles until I could not take the mosquitoes anymore. Even with the DEET they come at you full throttle at sunset.

I am currently 44 miles away from the Highway to Truckee. I will need to hike at least 30 miles tomorrow in order for me to get to the post office before it closes at 2pm on Saturday. Ugh.