Day 72 - Thursday, July 8

Sleeping in the Peter Grubb Hut (mile 1160.8). Walked 19.9 miles today.

We woke up at 6 this morning after a too-short sleep and after some stretching, we managed to get out of our tents and on the trail by 7:30 am. Frank declared this morning that getting out of your tent should be an Olympic sport. On a thru hike, there can be some rough mornings and it's not always the most graceful feat.

We progressed slowly through the first part of the morning, going down a hill and then up a large climb to Tinker Knob.

On the way up, I got cell service and pulled up the menu for the restaurant at Donner Pass. We had talked about maybe stopping here, but I saw that It was a little pricey. However, Frank saw that they had milkshakes and I was sold on the idea of stopping for that and a salad. We got to the knob and had a great view of the trail along a ridge.

We could see the fire in the distance and noticed that it had grown larger.

After a steep uphill and a small patch of snow that we had to navigate around, we began the descent down into Donner Pass. As usual, time slows down as we approach a town and it seems to take forever to get there. Finally, the trail dumped us out on a road and we walked the 0.3 miles to the Donner Ski Ranch restaurant, running into Lost and Found and her hiking companions leaving the restaurant.

We went in and ordered salads and lemonade (insert canabalism joke here). We ate and I was still hungry so we went back and ordered milkshakes and I also got some fries which weren't quite done, but I was hungry and ate them anyway. Here, we ran into Mozey and Two Tone and chatted briefly. We finished charging our devices and then left to get back on trail. We walked through a rocky section that meandered in seemingly random directions until we reached interstate 80 and walked through the tunnels under it.

After a half mile, we reached the side trail to the I-80 rest area which has flush toilets and potable water: two luxuries not to be missed. On the way in, we passed J-PRO who was walking out. We weren't sure how he was ahead of us as he must have done huge miles, but then he told us he was pink blazing again, so that explained that mystery. We used the facilities, then came up empty on the geocache that was supposedly at the rest area before beginning a long but relatively gentle climb up to Castle Pass.

We rested briefly at the top before going another mile to the Peter Grubb Hut which was fairly nice.

It had a privy that was basically on the second floor and I didn't understand why until I saw pictures of snow up to the second floor. Apparently this happens on a regular basis here.

We went inside and found one other hiker, Poppy. She's originally from Ukraine, but has lived in the US for almost 15 years now. Anyway, she seemed happy to have company. We explored the hut and then went outside to cook and eat dinner. After dinner, we went up to the second floor sleeping quarters where we all set up our beds and turned in. We're surprised more people aren't here because this is a pretty cool place to spend the night. Things are starting to hurt a little more, especially after the long day yesterday.

Also, there was apparently a 6.0 earthquake not too far from us this afternoon but we didn't feel anything.  A slight concern because there are warning signs on the hut saying that it's susceptible to collapse in earthquakes...