June 29, 2016

It was a chilly morning but at least that meant the mosquitos were held at bay for a bit longer. We packed quickly and began climbing up from the creek, happy for the exertion to warm up.

We arrived at the Peter Grubb hut around 9:00am. We had passed around 20 north bounders already - had we hit the beginning of the herd? We stopped to check out the structure and have an early snack. It was a two story building with an entrance on both the first and second floor for the winter when the snow gets too high. There was a small kitchen area, a guitar, and a binder of music there. It would have been a pretty cool place to spend a night. Next time...

As we approached Donner Pass we began to see day hikers. We hadn't seen any in southern California and it had been too snowy in northern California. The Donner Ski Lodge down the road offered hikers a free beer so we stopped in for lunch. The beer was Bud Light and the service was very slow but it was a nice break during a hot day.

An interesting note about the Donner Party is that it's quite likely no cannibalism actually took place. There's an episode of the podcast The Memory Palace about it.

An hour and a half later we were back on trail and headed up out of the pass. It was a long climb that lead to an amazing ridge line. There were a few patches of steep snow but otherwise it was smooth sailing. We met more nobos including a guy named Pounder. This was his third time hiking the trail and he maintained a section of trail near Belden. We stopped to talk to him for a while and it was a little late when we arrived at the campsite.