Day 57: Lone Pine - ⛺@ mile 760

Day: 03.06.2018 Miles hiked today: 13.5 Miles (incl. 3.8 off pct trail miles to get back to the trail) Total mileage: Mile 760.0 We are going back to the PCT today. My feet and blisters are definitely better than yesterday and I am glad I did stay for another day. However, I am not really looking forward to the trail which brings us back to the PCT. We walked it down 2 days ago and I remember it being pretty steep. Plus today is a town leaving day again and I carry food for 5-6 days. It doesn't even fit in my bear canister 🙈. My backpack is quite heavy... The first challenge of the day however is to get a hitch back up to the campground from where we have to hike the 3.8 miles up to Cottonwood pass where the PCT joins. Lone Pine is at about 1'200-1'500 hm (sorry I did check it but forgot!) And the campground just about at 3'000 hm. Cottonwood pass is about 3'400-3'500 hm. The cool thing about Lone Pine is that on one hand side they have the Sierras with Mt. Whitney as the highest mountain in the US and on the other side they have the mountains of the desert and the death valley behind with the lowest point of the US! Pretty cool! While Joanne is just preparing a cartoon for a hitch a car stopps and ofders a ride back up. We are incredibly lucky. I know of others waiting for a couple of hours to get a ride back. Of course we do! We hop in the car and off we go. The ride back up takes about 40 minutes and brings us back to the mountains. The path back to the PCT was actually very enjoyable and not as long or hard as I had thought it to be. Less than 1 mile on the PCT we reach chickent spring lake, the first lake in the Sierras. It's beautiful up there and we have lunch and nap. Our aim is to hike between 10 and 15 miles today so we have an easy hike tomorrow to the as I call it Mt. Whitney base camp. The views are incredible and the hike is very enjoyable. I'm so glad to be back here. We hike close to a river were we decide to pitch our tents as after the river crossing it's uphill for a few miles and all of us are tired. Next to the river is a meadow and a deer is spending his late afternoon there, not really bothered about us. That's so idyllic and absolutely wonderful here. Gadget, who we haven't seen for a couple of days (before lake isabella) is joining us. We cook dinner and call it an early night, while the sun is still out.