The walk out was agony... The mosquitoes continued their vicious attack on every piece of our flesh they could find, and there seemed to be a lot more climbing on the way out than I'd remembered descending on the way in. The nets we wore over our heads and torsos, while very helpful as far as the mosquitoes were concerned, were quite irritating because they trapped a lot of heat so you sweated a ton. Not only that, but it makes it tough to drink your water when there's a net in front of your face. I made the mistake of spitting one time without unzipping the hood of the net (because I forgot). Bad thing to do...
After a few miles, we returned to the PCT and continued heading North. The trail was pretty flat, following the base of the Upper Truckee River Valley. After what seemed like an eternity of walking along flat ground, the mosquitoes finally began to die down toward the North end of the valley, about 1/2 mile from Showers Lake. We finally were able to unzip the hoods of the nets and take the hood off, leaving only our arms/torso covered. I felt much better with the coolness that this brought. Not too long after, the trail began to climb very steeply up the West side of the valley. Fortunately, this climb wasn't too long, and we soon arrived at Showers Lake, 4.5 miles from our previous night's camp, and our lunch point. I was pretty excited that we'd finally reached the lake, and seemingly gotten out of the really bad mosquito territory.
As Justin's neck clearly demonstrated, we'd not escaped the mosquito territory unscathed...
We cooked our yummy lunches...
...as we took in the scenery.
After a nice long rest, and cleaning ourselves up a bit in the water, we continued off along the trail, knowing that we were getting close to Echo Summit...
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