Day 90

Trail miles: 22.4

Total: 1153.8

I knew it was going to be a long day on my own when everyone had their sights set on free beer at Donner Ski Ranch. The first 6 miles were not so bad, but we had a couple steep hills to get up and over. By the time I was at the top of the first hill, my feet hurt so bad they had a pulse. It was a different pain than yesterday. It was both of the bottoms of my feet and they were just so sore from walking on them for so long. At the bottom of the hill, I stopped to ice them in the creek. It helped for a couple miles, but started hurting again. I stopped for lunch a mile from the top of the hill to eat my cheese and pepperoni wrap and to rest my feet a little more. The sad thing is I wanted to get off my feet to rest them, but my butthole hurt so bad from chaffing that I wasn’t comfortable sitting either. So I ended up in a weird sideways lay trying to finish my Propel. I should mention that I stopped in a beautiful patch of wildflowers. These fields seem to be popping up more often. On the downhill, I finally gave in and took some Motrin for the pain. I’m not sure if it helped because I still have to stop like every 1-2 miles the rest of the way. I was worried about the snow on the decent, and not having microspikes worried me even more, but there were only about 3 patches and very easy to walk across. There’s a lot of ultra runners training on trail that just run across it, so that makes me more comfortable. Anyway, I made it to the highway and then to camp about 0.4 miles past. We all set up camp before we left for Donner Ski Ranch! They gave us stamps with the date on them on our permits which I thought was such a cool souvenir. I better not lose this permit. The bartender gave me free stickers and a magnet! It honestly just felt so nice to sit down. I was hiking non stop today and maybe had 45 min of rest without my pack on for the whole 20 miles. The night ended with saying goodbye to Tal and Seabear who have to pick the best sections on the trail before their visa is up in 8 weeks. And of course Washington is highest on the list. We hope to see them at trail days. They were so kind and funny, and we will miss them!!