The plan was to do 90 miles starting at South Lake Tahoe and ending at Tahoe City.
Backpackers: John Gundry and Carl Fisher
September 7, 2017 Miles 0 Flew into Reno, NV, stored our non-hiking gear at the hotel we will stay at the end of the trip, and caught a shuttle to South Lake Tahoe where we had a motel reserved.
September 8, 2017 Miles 9 We caught a local bus at 8:30am to get to the trailhead where we started hiking at 9:15am. The trail was uphill through a ski area. The forecast for the afternoon was thunderstorms so when it started raining we hunkered down under a tree for 30 minutes to allow the storm to pass. We got to camp at 2:30pm along with Steve, Colin, and 2 others. Unfortunately, before was could get our tents set up it started to rain — heavy — and then hail, pea to marble size for 1-2 hours. I started shivering and couldn’t stop so I was forced to set up my tent during a slackening in the rain. Decent job of not getting everything inside the tent wet. I crawled in and never fully warmed up until 6:00pm when the rain ended and I got out of the tent to have supper. It was close to freezing overnight but I was warm in my bag.
September 9, 2017 Miles 16 We woke to above freezing temperatures but just barely. The day started with an immediate uphill, again. As we gained altitude, hail from the previous day was still frozen on the trail. We met lots (probably around 100) Ultra Runners going opposite us. We got the Big Meadow trailhead and decided to head to the campground. We arrived around 4:00pm and there were no sites available – weekend. What to do? We decided to stand around, look pitiful and see if someone would take pity. Fortunately, it only took about 20 minutes before Steve asked us what we were doing. We gave him our sob story about long day, no play to camp, etc. and he agreed that we could camp on his site with him and his girlfriend, Jessica. They were living on the site, had a shower (which we didn’t use) and a full kitchen set up.
September 10, 2017 Miles 0 We woke to a bright sunny day when disaster struck! John bent over to pick up his oatmeal from the ground and he was met with a sharp, stabbing pain in his back. So painful that it took him several minutes before he could straighten up. We waited about 30 minutes to see if the pain would pass. It didn’t. What to do? Well we went over to Steve and Jessica and asked if they could give us a ride to somewhere we could get cell reception to figure out how to get home. They said sure and further asked, “Where would you really like to go?” We told them, they took us and we were able to re-arrange all of our plans and to return to Green Bay so John could see a doctor.
Post Script: Changing all of our plans cost us nothing. Even the airlines refunded us the change fee with a doctors note. John saw the doctor and he just had tight muscles, no permanent damage and he has successfully returned to backpacking.