The five guys on the First Whitney hike talked about getting together each year to do more similar hikes. I usually selected September for these kinds of trips. Kids were back in school, crowds were smaller after Labor Day and the weather was beginning to cool a little, without much risk of winter like conditions.
We did not really do anything like that in 2000, but in 2001, Lloyd was going to be the planner and what he came up with was a hike and camp on the Pacific Crest Trail, near Lake Tahoe.
https://goo.gl/maps/6Xc2WfxwGYDAetNd7
This is not exactly what we planned and it is not exactly what we did, but it is close and is the best I can come up with on Google Maps. We would be starting on the PCT just of Highway 50 at Lake Aloha Trailhead. Then we would stay on it and find a trail down to Lake Tahoe. It was going to be a 4 day hike.
One of the problems was figuring a way to get back to our rental car at the trailhead after the end of the trip. After considering several options, we learned that Lloyd solved the problem for us, but it had its downside.
He had been adding lime or something to his lawn, wearing shorts and boots, when he began to notice a gritty feeling on his ankles in side the boots and socks. When he took them off, he saw that he had really bad chemical burns on both ankles. The stuff he was spreading had gotten down in his socks. I'm not good at remembering degrees of burns and stuff like that, but when I saw them, they looked really bad and painful.
He decided he could not do the hike, but planned to jumpseat to Reno hang out with us and drop us off at the beginning point and pick us up at the end. In the mean time, he would visit some railroad museums and stuff like that. What a guy.
The hiking group would only include Bobby Z, Snake and myself. Chuck was unable to join us for some reason. Bob, Lloyd and I arrived in Reno the night before we planned to start hiking and stayed at our UPS layover hotel, the Hilton, which had a casino on the first floor. It was September 10th, 2001. Lloyd and I shared a room and Bob would share his room with Snake, when he arrived later in the night.
We were up early for Reno time, but it was before 0800 on the East Coast. Lloyd had used the bathroom and I was in there shaving or something when I heard him call from near the tv. I stuck my head out the door and he said, "The World Trade Center is under attack". I said something brilliant like, "What?" He repeated himself and said that 2 planes had been flown into the WTC in New York.
He had turned on the news and was watching the live video of the burning North Tower, when suddenly, another plane flew into the South Tower. At that point, everyone realized that this had not been an accident. It was an intentional attack. Who? Why? To my, why did not matter. What kind of asshole group would do something like this. Whoever it was, I didn't care what was their motivation. I wanted long, slow revenge.
We quickly got ready to go to a restaurant downstairs and talked to Bob and Snake. We were standing together in the lobby, watching the smoke rising from the buildings on a tv down there. We ate breakfast and I don't remember much about the conversation. We considered what we should do.
We learned that all air traffic was shut down, so flying home was not an option. Renting a car and driving was considered, but ruled out. We decided we might as well go with Plan A and do our hike. Lloyd was going to stay at a hotel at South Lake Tahoe.
As we drove to the trailhead for Reno, we listened to the radio and were learning more about the attack. I don't remember if we saw the towers collapse live or just replays. I do remember seeing bodies falling from the towers before they collapsed and remember the deep, burning anger that was building inside me. At that point, I would have gleefully peeled the skin off anyone who had anything to do with this horrific attack on our country. We all called home, said all the reassuring things we could say and told of our plans to press on with the hike. Chances were good that things would be somewhat restored by the time we were finished, but we would see what we had to deal with and reassess at that time. I don't remember if the perpetrators had been identified before we stepped off into the woods.
Lloyd took us to a parking lot, we unloaded our backpacks, said goodbye and headed north on the PCT. It was a beautiful hike, past lakes and climbing gradually. Snake had brought a tripod, because he fancies himself a photographer. It looked like extra weight to me, but he is much younger and was a much faster hike anyway. As usual, I was lagging behind the other guys.
Eventually, we got to Lake Aloha, which I believe is a manmade lake, created to store water to irrigate the very thirsty state of California. This is in the Desolation Wilderness, which strangely enough, looks like a desolate wilderness, very strange looking. We dropped down a little to the east and found a nice primitive campsite near a small lake and called it a day.
The next day would be a climb over Dick's Pass, then a descent to the Velma Lakes, where we would find a place to camp. As usual, I was behind the guys all day. As I climbed to Dick Pass, I could see what looked like a thunderstorm building and I was really pressing to get over the pass and away from the storm. Bob and Snake were waiting for me at the pass and I steamed past them, saying I was being chased by a thunderstorm. I think they thought that was funny, because the storm cloud had dissipated by then.
Down we went and they could even pass me on the way down. We found a cool, place to camp, surrounded by big rocks, that kind of reminded me of Trail Camp on Mount Whitney, only the air was not as thin, there weren't any other people and there wasn't lots of poop laying around on the ground, contaminating the pond where we got drinking water.
Bob and Snake must have been talking about how much I was lagging and decided to cut the hike a day short and drop down via the shortest trail to Emerald Bay, instead of doing another climb to another pass. I was OK with that. I think we were all anxious to learn what we could about the attacks.
We cell phone called Lloyd and he picked us up. We checked into a hotel, ate dinner at a casino buffet in the Nevada side of South Lake Tahoe and got up to speed on the news. By this time, we were learning more than we wanted to know about Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida. The air system had been restored and we could travel back to our home.
As we camped on the trail, it was eerie not to see any planes flying over. We knew that we were on the routes that planes fly into and out of the San Francisco Bay area. We did see a helicopter or 2 and heard a turbo prop plane one night. I'm guessing they were government related, but who knows?
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