The 9 of us (including my dad) got all packed up, and then we had a small breakfast of Nutrigrain bars and Pop Tarts. Then we started hiking. We got down to Walker River, but just like the river the previous day, the trail continued on the other side.
This time we were smarter, and decided to build a rock bridge across. Dallin and Brother Spencer ran across the river, while the rest of us stayed put. We started placing big rocks close together into the river, while Dallin and Brother Spencer did the same thing on the opposite side. We started forming a system where Rick would get the rocks (which he did a great job on because he got all the huge rocks) and he'd pass them to me. Then I would pass the rocks to Jeremy. Then he would pass the rocks to Jaren, who'd pass the rocks onto Alec, who'd pass them on to Dallin who would place them in the river. Finally, we had our bridge made, and we used hiking poles to steady ourselves while crossing the bridge.
Actually, I take that back. We had to go across the river, and hike across a barren landscape to get to the trail.
Remember what I said about the Pacific Crest Trail? Well, turns out most our hiking on the 3rd day was on the Pacific Crest Trail! This hike was the hardest because we were going from about 7,000 or 8,000 feet in elevation to 10,600 feet in elevation!
We rest stopped at a creek where we ate some Clif bars and got some more water with the water purifier. After I rested a while, I hiked on ahead of everybody. I hiked until I stopped to wait for the other guys. When Rick caught up with me, I heard him point and yell, "BROTHER JACKSON!!"
I saw Brother Jackson walk out of the clearing, and my dad and I were happy as ever. You see, we were supposed to have peanut butter and jelly on tortillas, but Brother Jackson had the tortillas, and he wasn't with us for most of the hike. Also, my dad was carrying 4 pounds of peanut butter and jelly and I was carrying 2 pounds of strawberry jam, so we could finally lighten the load a bit! We talked to him, and I told him about my mosquito bite. Then we all kept on hiking.
Brother Jackson found us by driving to the campsite we were hiking to. He hiked from there up to the top, then down to us.
The higher an higher we hiked, the less plants we saw. We finally got to the point where there were only small patches of trees.
Randall wanted to eat lunch at the top, but my dad said that there wouldn't be much trees and shade left. So we ate lunch at a patch of trees.
My dad was smart, because right after lunch, I had to go to the bathroom, really bad!
Then, we kept on hiking. As there became lesser trees, we saw more and more snow.
Somehow, Dallin and Randall got ahead of us (again). We got to a shortcut up to the top. The shortcut was really steep. We thought we saw them going up the shortcut, but it was actually two other hikers.
We kept on zigzagging up the trail until here was no trees at all. All there was were rocks and gravel.
Do you wonder where all the trees went? I asked the same thing until I saw the valley down below!
Finally, my dad and I caught up with Dallin and Randall! While everyone else were far behind, Dallin, Randall and I cooked up a scheme. Dallin and I went over to a nearby snowpatch and made some snowballs.
We hid our snowballs behind Randall.
When everybody caught up with us, I said, "Isn't it hot up here?"
Then Dallin said, "I'm just glad this SNOW hasn't melted yet!"
Then we all yelled, "ATTACK!!!" and then we pelted everybody with snowballs!
And what's cool is that we were only 8 miles from Sonora Pass!
From there, we could either hike another 3 miles or so up to the top, or just take a steep shortcut to the top. We thought long and hard about this. Then we just said, "Oh, what the heck, let's take the shortcut!"
Which I'm glad we did because it only took us two minutes! Before we knew it, we were at the top! And all there is at the top is a sign saying: NO MOTORIZED VEHICLES BEYOND THIS POINT!
We started hiking down the other side of the mountain. That's when we saw our destination: Leavitt Lake.
We hiked all the way down to the lake. And first things first, we fell into a heap.
It was really windy at the lake! But still, it was awesome! It looked like Scotland!
There was these cool mountains nearby too!
Then, we had freeze dried Rice and Chicken for dinner. We added some water to it, and wow, it was pretty good!
The day was a victorious day because Leavitt Lake was our last camp, which means all our major hiking on this trip was done!
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