@ 38.8925, –120.1136
Back on the PCT again at last. It’s been over two years since I stepped off the trail at Echo Summit. Man did it feel good to step back on. This strip of trail, 18 inches wide and 2600 miles long, represents possibility.
And possibility is a commodity that is in short supply when you are in your 60s. I know I’ll never be a great scientist or a famous writer. Life has foreclosed on those possibilities.
But I could turn left and walk to Mexico, or turn right and walk to Canada. Neither are grand ambitions in the great scheme of life and the universe, but they are what I have, and so I turn right.
Met Jandal, a kiwi, at the hostel last night and we went out to get our free PCT personal pizza at Basecamp Pizza. Plus a couple of pints, as I did not want him to feel too disoriented in the US. He’s hiking the PCT but realizes that he is too far back to make it to Canada before his visa expires. The smart play would be for him to skip up to northern Oregon or even Washington and miss the smoky section of the trail.
The smoke yesterday was pretty bad – you couldn’t see across Lake Tahoe- but the wind has shifted and it is just a bit hazy this morning.
I was up at 6 this morning to get coffee and hopped on the 7:45 bus to the edge of town, then began hitching. It took about 15 minutes to get a ride from Sam, a nice young lady who had already picked up another PCTer and ferried us both up to the summit on US50.
I started walking and immediately picked the wrong fork and got a few hundred yards off trail before realizing my mistake. Glad to have gotten that out of the way.
The trail led past Echo Lake (I declined to use its water taxi) and climbed up into the very popular Desolation Wilderness, a land of abundant blue lakes in clean shining granite bowls.
Lunched at Lake Aloha , fished for a bit at Lake Susie (dead at midday) and called it a day at Lake Gilmore. My legs are not quite in the shape I would wish, and 13 miles were enough today.
There are maybe two dozen people here, making me glad I brought my Ursack, as I am sure that bears patrol on a regular basis.
Hung out with a German woman doing the Tahoe Rim Trail and a group of several couples who just now began backpacking in their late 50s. They are glamping it, at least by my minimalist lights and are using the lake as a base camp for the many fine day hikes that abound here. Good for them.
Played ukulele to an appreciative audience, caught a few small rainbows in the lake , enjoyed a dinner of ham and cheese mac with carrots and peas and now I’m turning in. A nice day. A day of possibility. 
