“My time spent in the Sierra Nevada reflects back in a happy blur. Some mornings in new places you wake up lost and don’t know where you are. This morning we realized quickly what we’d done. We woke up at Donner Pass, California, to dry country, clean pines and solid granite. We woke up with uncontainable excitement to be here, at the foot of the Tahoe Rim trail. We packed up fast and hiked into the Sierras.”

A few days of perfect hiking passed and we were loving life more than ever. We realized we were stronger now than we had ever been, conditioned to the rigors of trail life. Hiking had become easy for us, and all we had to do was reap the glory.