Bye bye Sierra

It’s official: we’re out of the Sierra Nevada. At mile marker 1018, after twenty-five days and just over three hundred miles, I crossed Highway 108—an asphalt boundary marking the end of California’s mountainous realm.

I mentioned yesterday that the environment began to change after Dorothy Pass; today, even more so, it felt like we were back in the desert. The rocks were of a completely different kind, trees were almost nonexistent, and the trail often traversed scree with a few patches of lingering snow—altitude being the only reminder of the high peaks we’ve crossed over the past three weeks.

Tomorrow begins a transitional section before Northern California. I need to start seriously considering which miles to skip and how many. I’ve seen so much of California by now, and I want to allocate my time wisely. July begins tomorrow, and with it, my penultimate month of leave. I don’t want to end up rushing through Oregon and Washington, missing out on what they might have to offer.

Tomorrow’s challenge won’t be the hike itself, but a potentially tricky detour: hitchhiking to Bridgeport, where we have some packages to pick up at the post office. Hopefully, we’ll manage it by early afternoon, allowing us to cover at least a dozen miles toward our next (and long awaited) destination: South Lake Tahoe, where I’ll finally take a couple of well-earned days off¹.