This post originally appeared on The Trek, which you can read here.

If you want to see more from my 2025 PCT thru hike, make sure to check out my Instagram (@annamckinney22) and TikTok (@magicinthemountains) for daily vlogs!

*these posts are coming straight from trail, I apologize in advance for typos!*

Day 87: July 3, 2025

Location: NorCal
Start: Five Lakes Creek and Tentsite – 1137.0
End: Donner Pass (Truckee) – 1154.5
Miles: 17.5
Ascent: 3311 | Descent: 3642
Sleep: Tent

Long day to get into town! We woke up around 5am and were on trail right at 7am. We were both tired and sore from our big day yesterday, so it felt like we were moving slow this morning. We had to go down a little more in elevation before we started climbing. The flat/downhill section was nice to get woke up and stretch out sore muscles. I even treated myself to a dose of ibuprofen, something I try to do sparingly.

After the first few miles we started climbing up towards Palisades Tahoe ski lifts. Looking at the elevation profile this morning, I didn’t think the two hills for the day looked that big. Maybe that’s just because I was so excited to get to the end of the day that I minimized all the work that had to go into getting there.

The first part of the climb was pretty scenic hiking through pine forests and open meadows with tons of lupines and wooly mules ear. We wound our way up and eventually broke through the tree line and continued climbing over rocks and past wide open vistas. Eventually we got to the top and passed the chair lifts as we began the descent.

The downhill portion ended up feeling like a roller coaster, but we were trending down. It took a while but we finally made it down to the bottom of the first hill. Pretty quickly we had to start climbing right back up to the second big hill of the day, Tinker Knob. This climb was an absolute ball buster! It was steep and I felt like we were hiking straight up to the heavens.

We stopped at the water source halfway up to eat a snack and refill our water. The second half of the climb was the steepest yet, but the views kept getting better and better the higher we went. Behind us were snow covered peaks, and out in front of us were the rolling hills of NorCal. In my mind we entered NorCal when we left Yosemite, but technically the NorCal map started when we left South Lake Tahoe.

After several switch backs, we finally reached the top of the climb. The trail didn’t go over the top of the summit, and we didn’t take the side trail up to the summit. We did pass a sign that said we were 9400’ in elevation. We had a conversation about how that’s the highest we’ve been in a while, and at one point in the Sierras we were constantly several thousand feet higher than that. It’s crazy how much things have changed in a few weeks!

Coming down from Tinker Knob was awesome because it was a super exposed ridge line walk. It was very windy so it go old quickly, but the views were amazing! We tried to hike quickly to get out of the wind, it took several miles for it to calm down enough to even be able to have a conversation.

We had another long descent to get us to our final bump of the day. Again I hadn’t looked closely at the elevation profile and thought this would be a quick and easy hill. At this point we were just powering through, we had decided to skip lunch in order to get to Donner Ski Rancher faster. We were running on fumes and granola bars and I didn’t have much gas left in the tank for a big hill.

I dug deep and managed to make it up the climb. The trail went just below another chair lift, but there was still a ton of snow covering the trail. There was a glissade shoot going down the the trail, but it was very steep and ended in a mud puddle. Truffles decided to try the glissade and took a tumble in the mud. He shouted up at me to hike around, so I continued hiking up towards the chairlift. Once I made it to the top I was able to find a side trail that connected back into the PCT.

We still had 5ish miles to go and morale was low since the hill and glissade took so much out of us. Thankfully the rest of the hike was downhill so I just went on autopilot and put in the miles. We began seeing many more day hikers the closer we got the trailhead and hiked under another chairlift before coming out in the parking lot at Donner Summit.

It was just before 3pm and we were itching to get to Donner Ski Ranch. The big appeal for this place was the fact that they give thru hikers a free 40oz beer. When we arrived they were out of 40s, so they gave us two 24oz draft Coors instead. What a deal! We ran into Mock, 007, and Pepe while we were there and chatted with them for a bit. We ordered food and were able to charge our electrics for a bit. After we’d had our fill we packed up and walked back to the road to try and hitch into town.

We didn’t have to stand with our thumbs out for long before a nice older gentleman pulled over for us. It’s so much easier to hitch with just the two of us! He told us about how he recently moved to the area from “the valley” and talked about how much he loved the active lifestyle everyone has in the mountain towns. He dropped us off right at the entrance for the Donner Memorial State Park Campground.

The campground sets aside a couple of sites for thru hikers and bikers that are first come first serve. We got there around 5pm and were worried there wouldn’t be room for us left, but the rangers assured us there was plenty of room. We got our spot for 2 nights and paid $40 total. When we walked back to the site we were surprised that the only other people there were 007 and Pepe. We pitched the tent and then started making our way downtown.

When we were at the ski ranch, the locals told us about Truckee Thursdays. Apparently every Thursday in the summer, the Main Street through town is shut down in the evening for basically a small festival. We were eager to check it out but had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

The campground was a few miles outside of town so we decided to try and hitch. Again we were picked up fast, this time by a younger guy that told us all about his adventures hoping trains and frowning up in the area. He dropped us off in the middle of the chaos that was Truckee Thursday. Coming straight from trial it felt very overwhelming, there were thousands of people milling about and so many things vying for my attention. It felt fun to be part of the crowd and I enjoyed just walking around people watching.

We ran into Joe, the TRT section hiker we met several days ago. We chatted with him before heading to Alibi Brewing for drinks. We talked to a woman there named Debbie who was in town for the 4th. Apparently Truckee is a destination for folks from all over CA for the 4th. After drinks we walked back through town to get food from one of the multiple food trucks. We ended up getting kebabs and sat and ate them on a bench while the festival slowly started winding down.

We wanted to try and find our hiker friends so we started wandering up and down the street hoping to run into them. There were several bars we thought they might be hanging out in, and finally we found them outside one of the restaurants. Sagey had made his way into town, and together with 007 and Pepe they wanted to go bar hoping. We joined them at the Tourist Club which ended up feeling like a crowded college bar.

Thankfully we got drinks quickly and were able to go outside to the bars back patio. We chatted with some locals and were on the perfect place when a huge bike parade rolled by. Apparently the first Thursday of the month is also Bike Night, which means nearly 100 people hop on the bikes to ride around town. After the excitement of the mini bike parade passed, one of the locals recommended we check out RMU bar.

We walked down the street and as soon as we got to RMU the bike night gang showed up. The bar quickly turned into a frat party and I was over it. Truffles was too, so we decided to call it a night. Truckee has a free bus service complete with its own version of Uber, so we were able to get a ride back to the campground for free and with no hassle. I was so grateful, especially for it to be 10:30pm! Our ride was short and we got dropped off at the campground gate. We had a long walk back the tent but were so happy to be able to finally go to sleep. What an eventful day!

Day 88: July 4, 2025

Location: NorCal
Start: Donner Pass (Truckee) – 1154.5
End: Truckee – 1154.5
Miles: 0.0
Sleep: Tent

What a wonderful way to spend the 4th! We slept in at the Donner Lake State Park campground and debated on whether or not we should go to the pancake breakfast. Cool Shorts had told us about it, apparently the local fire station cooks a free pancake breakfast for the community but it can get really crowded. Ultimately we decided to skip the pancakes and just go to a restaurant for breakfast. We briefly saw Sage and Pepe in the campground before walking out to catch the bus.

Most of the roads in town were shut down for the parade, so the town had a bunch of buses running to shuttle people around. We got dropped off downtown and headed to Jacks restaurant for breakfast. The building was really cool because it was an old timey diner that had been brought in from Philadelphia and restored. The food was fine, nothing special, but was filling and the coffee was good.

After breakfast we tried finding seats on Main Street for the parade. It was amazing to see so many people! The street was packed and it was hard to find standing room let alone a place to sit down. Thankfully we found some spots just in time for the parade to begin. The parade lasted nearly 2 hours and was packed with horses, cowboys, aliens, old show cars, alpacas, cheerleaders, and more!

After the parade we weren’t sure what to do with ourselves so we walked down the street a few miles to 50/50 Brewing. The place was packed and turned out to be more of a restaurant that served beer. We got a couple of appetizers and our waiter was cool with us just hanging out for a while. He was even nice enough to let me charge my battery bank and when we told him we were

PCT hikers he brought us a free slice of carrot cake! We spent a couple hours at the brewery and then caught the bus back towards downtown. We got off at the Grocery Outlet and did our resupply, thankfully they were open despite it being a holiday. We also bought some food to cook at the campground rather than going out to a restaurant to eat dinner just because we weren’t sure what all would be opened.

With our resupply done we caught the bus back to the campground and walked down to our campsite. Sage and Pepe were gone and we were surprised to find there were no other hiker, just a bike rider who put up his tent far away from us. We posted up at the picnic table and set to cooking dinner. We had bought some precooked stuffed shells that just needed to be boiled, plus pasta sauce, some garlic bread, and charcuterie. We cooked the pasta in our pots and poured the sauce overtop, it turned out to be a lovely and cheap dinner!

We laid down to take a nap after our delicious meal and rested until it was time to get moving for the fireworks. Truckee’s 4th of July fireworks take place over Donner Lake, which worked out great for us since we’re staying at the campground on the other side of the lake. We weren’t sure where to go, but followed the crowds around the lake to the lakeshore where we found a good place to sit. We waited until it grew dark and then the fireworks began. It turns out our view point wasn’t great, but we could see well enough that we didn’t think it was worth moving. There were several paddle boards and kayaks out on the water watching the show, that would have been an awesome vantage point!

The fireworks lasted nearly 20 minutes and ended with a large grande finale. Afterwards walked back through the campground towards our site. There was a large crowd of people walking through the campground, so we were surprised to see a bear rummaging through an unattended site! The bear didn’t care about the crowd or all the noise we made, it was obviously comfortable around humans and it wasn’t the first time it’d gone through a campsite. We tired to chase it off but it kept coming back. We had heard the campground was notorious for bears, and we were glad we could put all our food and smellies in the bear box at the campsite. So much excitement at the end of the day!

This didn’t really feel like a restful zero since we walked around so much, but it was nice to feel like we were part of a community for a day. We didn’t worry about anything hike related other than our resupply, and it just kind of felt like a normal day. It was a nice break from the monotony of hiking and it felt good to do something different on a zero.

Day 89: July 5, 2025

Location: NorCal
Start: Truckee – 1154.5
End: Tentsite – 1173.5
Miles: 19.0
Ascent: 3202 | Descent: 2764
Sleep: Tent

Back on trail! We woke up at our normal time of 5am. We packed up the tent, ate breakfast, and said goodbye to the little campground. I’m so surprised we didn’t see more hikers there while we were in town, we were the only ones last night aside from a bike packer. The only things we weren’t able to do at the campground were charge our electrics and do laundry.

We walked out to the campground entrance and stuck our thumbs out. Almost instantly a car pulled over to offer us a ride. This guy was driving a brand new Rivian SUV and it was nice to see inside a local car! He lives in the Bay Area but comes to this area every summer. We chatted about the trail and our hike so far in the drive up to the trail. In no time we were back at the trailhead and were hiking again by 8am.

The trail around Donner Summit was beautiful with views of the lake and large rock faces all around. We even saw some rock climbers in the larger walls. Truffles had looked ahead on the map and noticed that we’d be passing the I-80 rest area. According to the FarOut comments there were outlets there where we could charge our battery banks. We set our sites on that and the first several miles flew by. We passed lots of day hikers and were at the spur trail to the rest area around 9:30am.

We found a couple of outlets in the back porch and posted up there to let our stuff charge. I’m so thankful I bought the fast charging Anker because it charges so fast! It was on 20% and got all the way up to 90% in the hour we sat there. While we were waiting we played on our phones and ate the left over meat, cheese, and bread from our pasta dinner the night before. Sagey showed up and we talked to him for a while before packing our stuff up and heading out.

We had a little bit of climbing to do but none of it felt that strenuous (thankfully). We got up and over Castle Pass easily and made our way down to the Peter Grub Hut. We explored the hut and found jt to be locked up tight, but peeking in the windows showed that it was basically a nicer shelter. We filtered some water and were on our way.

We climbed another mellow hill and decided to eat lunch on the other side. After a nice break we only had 8 miles left till our desired campsite. There were a few more climbs but nothing crazy. Despite all our breaks, the day went by quickly and felt like an easy day. We passed 007 a few times and talked to him some in the afternoon. We got to our campsite around 5:30pm and decided to call it a day so that we could go to bed early. We’ll have 23 miles to do tomorrow to get into Sierra City, but we both felt like we’d benefit more from extra sleep tonight rather than pushing further.