Day 53 - Sunday, July 15

I told Jerry that we could take a taxi to the Echo Lake trailhead but found out it cost $3 per mile and it's about 40 miles - $120, no way! So Jerry decided to drive me to Echo Lake, return up Hwy 89 about 15 miles and run in from Talloc trailhead. He would run 6.4 files and intersect with me after about 10 miles along the PCT. I finally got on the trail at 9:30 AM.
It all went well except he had overlooked that his route took him on a 3000' climb from lake level over 9735' MT Talloc peak. After 2 miles of running, he saw this granite peak and decided there must be a better way. The alternative was a route down to Fallen Leaf Lake where the big Tahoe fire had been but it added 2.5 miles and came in about a mile before our meeting point. He was concerned that we might miss meeting so he took off on the climb. Running down the west side toward Gilmore Lake, he landed on a loose rock, rolled his right ankle and went down. He was sitting along the PCT about a half mile before our meeting point when I arrived with his shoe and sock off. He didn't want to desert me so I convinced him to go on for a while and see how his ankle fared.

In the morning I ran into Rena Schuman and her husband out for a 4 day backpack on the TRT.

Later, we met my friend, Flora. She is doing the same triple I did last year but in reverse so she was heading back to Echo Lake and then would be starting the Tahoe-to-Yosemite section. She decided to do it now since she is starting grad school at UC Berkeley in the Fall.
We hiked up Dick's Pass (9380'). A t the top, we stopped for some lunch and to let Jerry put a snow pack on his swollen ankle.

This is a beautiful section of trail with seven small lakes visible in addition to Lake Tahoe.

We hiked 18 miles from our meeting point and stopped for the night at Richardson Lake. There were about half dozen tents set up along the lake. As we set up camp, a thru-hiker, Abacus showed up and we invited him to share our area. He was from Minnesota and got laid off from his job so decided do the PCT. He has the two-person Tarptent. Jerry went down to the lake to soak his ankle and had a garter snake swim across his foot in the lake trying to make dinner of the many small frogs swimming around the shoreline. I bought Aqua Mira in Tahoe City to treat water and we definitely needed it for the lake water. We swapped stories while we ate dinner. I shared my brown rice tortillas with Jerry for his hummus. He complained that they tasted like paper. In the near-darkness he didn't notice that the tortilla I had given him had a paper separator attached which he was eating with the tortilla. Abacus and I had a good laugh at him when he realized it. After taking off the paper, he said it tasted pretty good! ;-)

Jerry and I talked for awhile in our sleeping bags laying under the stars. I look extra cute with my mosquito hood and it works pretty well to keep off the bugs since I'm not using my tent. He said he was changing my trail name - DD now stood for "Ditch Diva" since I have ditched so many guys along the trail. LOL!

I did 28 miles today and am at mile 1124.