Tahoe to Yosemite National Park on the PCT

Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne

No matter what you call it—the trots, Hershey squirts, Delhi belly, Montezuma’s revenge, the Aztec two-step, whatever—diarrhea is no laughing matter when you have it.

And, alas, I was suffering so much from a case during my recent hike of a 150-mile section of the Pacific Crest Trail in California that I was contemplating turning around and bailing, even though I was already 30 miles from the nearest road.

Fortunately, another hiker saved the day by giving me several Immodium AD pills. One proved to be enough to resolve my problem. It made completing this challenging southbound section of the PCT between South Lake Tahoe and Yosemite National Park an achievable bucket-list goal. Thank you, thank you, thank you, ma’am. Sometimes even small kindnesses can have a major impact on somebody’s life. I’ll be sure to bring this over-the-counter medicine along on all of my future backpacking adventures.

I guess the real lesson learned was to be more careful about hygiene and what I eat during resupply stops on hiking adventures. I met two other hikers who suffered similar stomach issues after resupplying at the same establishment I visited halfway along this trail.

Another difficult aspect of this hike, which ascends to almost 11,000 feet though Sonora Pass, was that it required more than 26,000 feet of climbing over its 147.5 miles. It seems like the trail offers little flat terrain for recovery. It mostly goes up and down, sometimes quite steeply, relentlessly.

Adding to the challenge during my August trek was that on several days it was very hot in the afternoons and some of the trail’s water sources were dry. My longest water carry was 10 miles through Sonora Pass. One hiker I met from Germany was bailing on the pass after attempting to carry seven liters of water through the dry zone. He said he sweats a lot and felt he needed the extra water. (That’s 15.4 pounds of water, almost as much as my entire pack without food and water.) I made it through the hot, shadeless dry zone on 3 liters.

On the northern stretch of this trek, there are a couple of long, intimidating traverses to negotiate. One is notoriously unnerving, a narrow, downward-slanting loose path along a steep, exposed mountainside, where a slip could result in a fall of several hundred feet. As a longtime rock climber, I’m usually not squeamish about exposure. But I wouldn’t have been comfortable negotiating this section without my trekking poles, and I certainly wasn’t tempted to stop for a photo session until after I was safely on the other side.

Steep slippery traverse through ice

One of the more interesting spectacles during my hike was watching 15 horse-mounted cowboys with the same number of dogs driving hundreds of head of cattle into their winter range.

Alas, I had to sleep with the cattle that night, and their bells rang continually as they munched the meadow grass and pooped prodigiously in the streams where I collected my drinking water.

Lorenz fixing Kara's stove at Tuolumne

I saw many deer and four bears during my trek, a large male near Wilma Lake, and a female with two adorable cubs in tow near my campsite a couple of days to the south.

Lorenz's meds

I enjoyed meeting several other seniors on this challenging trail, including Phyllis, 70, and Sally, 73, from South Lake Tahoe, and Gordon, 62, a retired school teacher from Kentucky.

Phyllis, left, and Sally

The most inspiring hiker I met was Lorenz, a 62-year-old retired engineer from Switzerland. Lorenz, who is suffering from Parkinson’s disease, is attempting to hike the PCT from South Lake Tahoe to Mexico. He showed me the huge collection of meds he needs to take to make the trek possible. He ships his box of meds ahead so he doesn’t have to carry more than a two-week supply in his backpack at any one time.

Gordon

Best of luck, my friend.

We all need to use it or lose it and get it done while we still can.

Great breakfast spot