PCT Section Hike 2022 – Day 22 – Wandering the Earth

Goal for the day: Richardson Lake

I awoke, re-hydrated my breakfast, and then went down to the lake to enjoy the sunrise as I ate. Beautiful start to the day.

I was particularly awestruck at the mirror patterns created by the trees and rocks on the opposite shoreline. They looked like arrows slicing through the water.

Alas, the colors only lasted a fraction of the morning and I had to start packing my gear. My target for the day was Richardson Lake. It was just north of the Desolation Wilderness that I had to exit that day. It was a long 10.5 mile hike, but doable based on the terrain and my progress from the last two days.

I enjoyed a nice easy hike past Fontanillis Lake and then stopped at Middle Velma Lake to get water.

The maps and PCT info indicated that this late in the year that there was not likely to be any water sources to get water for the next 9 miles before reaching Richardson Lake. A couple southbound PCT hikers confirmed this. So, I filled up on 3.5 liters of water in order to make it to the lake. There were a couple of steep climbs along the way, but overall, the route shouldn’t be that strenuous.

One problem that cropped up was that my left foot was starting to feel some sharp pains when I walked on it. It had been fine for the first 2 miles of hiking, but started to hurt after that. I recalled tweaking it on the way down from Dicks Pass the day before and worried that had injured it more than I thought.

I took a few minutes to wrap the foot in some sports tape to help support and stabilize it. Then, I headed north on the PCT once again.

After a little while, the pain returned to my left foot. I flexed my foot to try to find the source of pain. The pain was clearly in the middle of the ball of my foot where I had felt the pain the previous day. I didn’t see any discoloration, bruising, or swelling. The pain wasn’t in the toes and moving the toes didn’t cause the pain.

I continued, doing my best not to put too much weight on my left foot and trying to just use my left heal to walk. Preventing the front of my foot from flexing seemed to work the best.

At that point, my abort options would be:

Return to Middle Velma Lake and take the Bayview Trail to abort down to Emerald Bay.
Continue North and use the Genevieve Trail to abort down to Meeks Bay.
Continue North and stop at Richardson Lake as originally planned.
Stop and camp. It was still morning and I only had the water from when I refilled, so this was only an option if the pain became unbearable. At that point, it was only semi-unbearable.

Since most of these options would be about the same distance at that point and require another night in the wilderness, I decided to continue north on the PCT towards Richardson Lake. I’d still have the option of aborting down to Meeks Bay once I reached Genevieve Trail.

But I still had the foot pain to deal with. I didn’t think the problem warranted my calling for help with my Inreach and even if I aborted I believed I could at least make it out of the wilderness on my own power.

After several attempts to minimize the pain and taking long breaks to rest the foot, I came up with a “trail-crafted walking foot cast (patent pending)” that would keep me moving and prevent me from having to call for a rescue.

Since I had determined that flexing the end of my left foot caused the pain, I tried to find something solid that I can put under my foot to prevent it from flexing. I looked for a flat piece of wood, thought about duct-taping a rock to my heel to keep the front of my foot off the ground, and also went through what I had in my backpack for anything I could use.

In the end, the only thing I could find was the insole of my boot that had a hard plastic back end where the heel went into. Just reversing it and putting the heel side of the insole towards the front of my boot helped a little, but not enough.

So, I taped the reversed insole to my foot so it wouldn’t slide around. Then I put my hiking sock over that, and then slid my foot into my left water/camp shoe. That would work pretty well to keep the front of the foot from flexing. But it didn’t offer much protection from rocks, roots, and other obstacles on the trail due to the thin sole and upper fabric making up the shoe.

So, I stepped into my boot by pushing down the tongue with the camp shoe’s heel. Then I tied the lace over the top of the camp shoe to keep it in place. I added some duct tape as well on the front to keep the camp shoe in place. I didn’t wrap the duct tape tightly around the shoe and boot, but gave it a little slack. This kept my foot from flexing with the sole of the boot, which was the whole point: I needed to isolate the movement of the boot’s sole from the front of my foot.

And thus, my “trail-crafted walking foot cast (patent pending)” was born:

As I started north, that seemed to work okay. I still had to take longer breaks than normal to give my feet a break, but I was able to minimize the pain.

When I reached Genevieve Trail, the ‘foot cast’ was working well enough that I decided to continue to Richardson Lake and camp there.

But Mother Nature had more in store for me.

Some dark clouds had been slowly rolling in and filling the skies to the west. It wasn’t long before I saw some rain coming down from those dark clouds.

Fortunately, the clouds were mostly moving northward and not eastward towards the trail and I avoided getting wet. The dark clouds started clearing up when I got close to Richardson Lake.

Due to my foot, it was past 6pm when I first saw Richardson Lake. My ‘foot cast’ had served me well enough to make it to my destination, but had taken me a very long time.

The lake was near the famous Rubicon 4×4 Jeep Trail and there were some Jeep trails that reached the lake, so there were some big campsites with tire tracks circling them. There weren’t any off-roaders camping there that night.

There was only one group of backpackers near the PCT trail junction, so I tried to find a spot further down the lake’s shore. I ended up at a big campsite with a fire ring that could only be described as being big enough for a large bonfire. Of course, I had no time, energy, or desire to start a large fire and the campsite was much bigger than I needed, but it worked for me and I had no desire to do more searching. So, I set up my tent, put most of my gear inside it in case it rained, and then jumped in the lake!

It was a very welcome swim and very much urgently needed to cool down my weary body and also to apply some cool water to my injured left foot. I was so much looking forward to that swim, that I didn’t bother to remove my t-shirt.

My original plan was to get water from the lake to shampoo my hair, clean myself, and wash my trail clothes. It had been 3 days and there was definitely a funk growing on my trail clothes. But the late arrival had made that a problem (there wouldn’t be enough sunlight left to help dry the clothes, for one thing), so I had to skip that. So, a quick swim in my t-shirt was the best I could do to get some of the trail dust off.

Only when I was getting out of the lake, did I notice little lobsters scurrying to get out of my way.

If I had any butter, I may have tried to catch some. 🙂

They were crayfish, of course. And too small to make it worth my time to catch for dinner.

It was already pretty late anyway, so I enjoyed some ramen for dinner as I enjoyed the light from the sunset.

Desperately needing to rest my body and especially my left foot, I went to bed wondering what I’ll be able to do the next day: Continue north on the PCT or abort down to Lake Tahoe?

I did see a string of lights traveling across the sky before falling asleep. Some of Elon Musk’s space garbage, I assumed.

When first launched, his Starlink satellites are grouped together and make a trail of lights like that until they separate and get higher so are less noticeable.