Goal for the day: Abort my hike 🙁
I woke up, had breakfast, saw some of the light from the sunrise, and thought about what I had to do that day.
My foot felt good at that point, but it had the prior morning too and had started to hurt painfully after 2 miles of hiking. My target for this day would have been either a campsite near Twin Peaks or at least at a spring a couple miles past Barker Pass.
But with my foot, I had to consider aborting. It would be 7 miles to directly abort down to Meeks Bay along General Creek.
I could also hike down the Rubicon 4×4 Jeep trail, but having done that a long time ago in my old Jeep Wrangler I knew that it wasn’t exactly made for hikers. It was barely passable for lifted 4×4 vehicles in some parts.
It was 6.5 miles to the next possible abort location at Barker Pass. I decided to push for Barker Pass for a number of reasons:
- My left foot didn’t hurt at that point. There was always the chance that it’d heal enough not to cause me too much pain for the rest of the hike.
- I did have a desire to make it to the Rubicon Trail to see it after all these years.
- Barker Pass should have cell coverage and had a paved road to the pass. This should allow me to get a Uber/Lyft/Taxi to come pick me up and get me back to civilization or my Jeep. Failing that, hopefully I could catch a ride with someone descending the paved road.
- And finally, in the future I could also restart the northbound hike easier since I could drive up with my Jeep or be dropped off at that trailhead fairly easily.
So, while I knew it might not be the best choice, I choose the best choice for continuing a future section hike of the PCT.
My backpack was fairly light by that point with three less days of food to carry, so I made it to the Rubicon Trail quickly enough. I was a little amazed to see this part was a pretty simple gravel road that a regular car could drive across. But unless they did some major reconstruction of the trail, there were still some very rough and challenging parts on the rest of the trail. Since the whole attraction of the Rubicon trail was how hard it was to traverse, I doubt there was that much that may have changed on the 4×4 trail.
Right around 2 miles hiked that morning, the pain started to return. That pretty much sealed my choice: I’d have to abort once I reached Barker Pass.
I re-built my walking foot cast and continued up the trail. There wasn’t a huge climb for this part, so it wasn’t a rough hike normally. With the injured foot, it was harder and slow going.
There was still too much pain as I hiked, so I made a change to the cast and removed my camp shoe from the cast. I just had my liner socks, the reversed insole, and my thick hiking sock on the foot. It was a little unprotected from rocks and other obstacles the trail, but removing the restrictive camp shoe helped give my foot more room to breathe.
It took a lot more time than a 6.5 mile hike should have taken, but I did reach Barker Pass by mid-afternoon. Despite my intention to abort the hike, I did take a few pictures of me at the trail junctions that would mark the end of my PCT hike for this trip.
I took the chance to use the pit toilet at this trailhead, dumped some of my garbage in the provided trash bag inside the toilet, and rested my sore body.
I still could have continued north on the PCT for a couple of miles and camped for another night, but the pain in my foot showed no sign of going away. So, I finally made the sad decision to abort my hike at Barker Pass. 🙁
My attempts to get a Uber, Lyft, or taxi to come pick me up failed miserably. I had hoped that the Truckee and north Tahoe area would have enough drivers that one of them could make the drive up to the pass and get me back to civilization. But I did not have any luck.
A couple people at the trailhead were unfortunately headed further east on the 4×4 roads that went the other way. So, I started hiking down the paved Barker Pass Road hoping to catch a ride from someone going down my way. It was a Tuesday, so unfortunately wasn’t that much traffic on the road.
It wasn’t until 3 miles down the road until I saw a vehicle on the road, unfortunately heading UP the road and not down. 🙁
As I passed the 4 mile mark on my downward hike along the road, the truck that had passed me going up passed me again going down this time. I stuck my thumb out as soon as I heard the engine and fortunately they stopped.
I asked if they could take me down the rest of the way to the lake and drop me at a mini-market, gas station, or motel so I could work on my next steps that afternoon. Thankfully, they agreed, but I had to ride in the rear bed of the truck. I asked them to watch the corners and braking. 🙂
They got me down as far as Tahoma along the shore of Lake Tahoe to a rental cottage that had a ‘vacancy’ sign up. That was a pretty safe spot to be let out and gave me some options for the night.
I had a cell signal, so could try to call an Uber, Lyft, or taxi from there. I also could try to hitch a ride further south down the shore to where it may be easier to get a ride.
I could also spend the night at the cottages. I checked and Uber said there was a ride 20 minutes or so away, but it was getting pretty late in the day. The manager of the cottages gave me a great rate (for the Lake Tahoe area), so I decided getting a shower and good nights sleep was a good idea at that point. After the shower, I walked down to a small market and got some Diet Cokes and a pizza for dinner.
That hit the spot.
Goal… unfortunately.
11 miles (6.5 miles on PCT plus a little over 4 miles descending Barker Pass Road)
8.5 hours on the trail
33 total miles hiked on this section of the PCT
32 miles to go until Donner Pass
The next morning, I took a long bath since the tub was pretty big and was very nice way to start the morning.
Then I packed up and checked Uber/Lyft for a ride. I was fortunate to get a Uber driver to accept my ride fairly quickly and 15 minutes later I was headed to my Jeep at Echo Lakes. It was an unfortunate end to my trek, but at least I made it out of the wilderness safely.
Not the end I wanted, but I was glad I made it as far as I did.
So, adding the 33 miles of section K I had just hiked, makes 301 total miles of the 2650 miles of the PCT hiked for me. 156 of those miles were this year.
That makes 11.4% of the PCT hiked for me. Not bad.
Then two days after I aborted my hike at Barker Pass the Mosquito Fire erupted just west of Lake Tahoe. Just like that, the blue skies over Lake Tahoe vanished into the smoke pouring out of that huge fire. So, if I hadn’t hurt my foot I may not have been able to complete the entire section anyway.
After getting home, I saw a doctor and had my foot X-rayed. Fortunately, no bones appeared to be broken and they didn’t see any signs of long term damage.
It would take time to heal, but shouldn’t prevent me from doing more long hikes in the future.
But not this year.
I’ll do my best to restart my weekend day hikes and bike rides, but not right away to give my foot time to heal.
Onward and upward!
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