Mt Rose Campground to Gray Lake

Mileage: 9.6 miles (+0.8 mile side trail), total 52.8 miles

Campsite elevation: 9,050 ft

We started the day by heading down to Incline Village to do our resupply. Before that, however, it was time to grab breakfast at the Wildflower Cafe. Nice food, although the place was freezing and they forgot Ben’s breakfast. But still expected a 20% tip of course!

Resupply done, we checked out of our motel and it was time to head up to Mt Rose trailhead.

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Marlette Campground (27.0) to Mt Rose Campground (40.9)

Mileage: 13.9 miles, total 40.9 miles

I had a good night’s sleep last night. It is the longest day of the year and in Tahoe the sun sets at 8.30pm and it is light again by 5.30am which makes sleeping difficult at times. We packed up camp and once we had filled up on water, we headed onto the trail.

There was an initial climb up from the campsite and, in contrast to the previous stretch, we passed a water source almost immediately after leaving the campsite. It was great not to have to ration our water today or do a big water carry.

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Sierra Canyon Trailhead (11) to Marlette Campground (27)

Mileage: 16 miles, total 27 miles

Camp Elevation: 8,283 feet

I slept pretty well last night apart from being camped on a slope and occasionally waking up with my face pressed against the tent well.

The day started with a short climb which eventually broke out of tree line and onto a ridge. The views along the ridgeline were absolutely amazing and made the hard work yesterday worth it.

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Kingsbury South Trailhead (0) to Sierra Canyon Trail Junction (11)

Mileage 11 miles (+1 mile side trail), total 11 miles

Campsite elevation: 8,448 feet

The day started very early at 5.30 AM with our alarm call. The drive to Lake Tahoe would take a little over three hours so, after a quick breakfast, we were on the road.

It was nice to drive through Northern California on our way to Tahoe. The traffic was fairly quiet with none of the crazy driving we’d seen in San Fransisco. We passed through Sacramento and the scenery gradually changed with more trees and we followed the south fork of the American River on our way into Tahoe.

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Today was our last day of pre-hike logistics before heading to Lake Tahoe tomorrow. Most of the organisation aspect was done yesterday so we had a relatively easy day today.

We started by catching the hotel shuttle to the local US Post Office. It was a huge building on the outside but completely tiny in the inside making me wonder what they were doing with all that extra space.

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Today was pre-hike logistics day. One of the unfortunate realities of thru-hiking is that nobody is going to organise the resupply aspect for you. So today involved organising our mail drops and first few days of supplies.

The day started off with an Uber ride to Berkeley to pick up last minute supplies from REI. Our driver on the way there was a South African called Juan (for some reason pronounced Dew-Ann). I didn’t have the heart to tell him he had been pronouncing his name wrong all these years.

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The day started very early – 3 AM to be precise to get to Perth Airport for the 5.15 AM flight to Sydney. Whilst it felt every bit as early as it was, we were soon on our way to Sydney which is a 4 hour flight from Perth.

At Sydney, we had a tight turnaround. Or so it was supposed to be but the flight ended up being delayed slightly. It’s about 12.5 hours flying time from Sydney to San Francisco so it’s not a short flight but our total travel time was good at only 18 hrs from Perth to San Fran.

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