Tahoe day trip: Sugar Bowl to Squaw on the Pacific Crest Trail

I'm back after an incredibly relaxing and gorgeous weekend in Truckee with Cam, my parents, and our friends Cat and Tucker. We had a great time hiking, sailing (Cat and Tucker met on Princeton's sailing team and showed us their skill on Donner Lake), kayaking, barbecuing, drinking beer, and lounging. All in all, it was pretty much a perfectly American way to ring in Independence Day.

One of the highlights was hiking a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail, which has been on my bucket list ever since hearing about Cheryl Strayed's novel, Wild. We hiked 15 miles from Sugar Bowl Ski Resort to Squaw Village, and we completely lucked out with 70-and-sunny weather and wildflowers in bloom across most of the trail.

The hike is a long one, but the terrain was not overly difficult. It took us about 6.5 hours with a 20 minute stop for lunch. Click through for more pictures and details...
We met at 8:30am at the Pacific Coast Trail head at Donner Summit, right next to Sugar Bowl Ski Resort. Our timing was perfect as the first part of trail is definitely the most difficult, so it was nice to complete prior to the heat of the afternoon sun.

The first hour or so is a steady incline, but we made it particularly difficult on ourselves by not paying attention to trail markers, and we ended up hiking at a near vertical through bushes and rocks as an attempt to reach the top of the mountain.

Once we all reached the top of the mountain successfully, the remainder of the hike was (literally) downhill from there. The next four hours or so were rolling, and the last hour was a decline into Squaw Village.

We enjoyed stunning views of Donner Lake, Lake Tahoe, and the Sierras throughout the hike and stopped for a brief lunch in a field of wildflowers. Amy claimed that this was "one of the three days" of the year that the wildflowers would be in bloom. I think that might be an exaggeration but we all felt happy to enjoy them, nonetheless.

I love hikes that have a reward at the end and it was perfect to end our day with a few pitchers of beer in Squaw Village. The only difficult part in planning was leaving one car at Sugar Bowl, and having someone drop a car at Squaw, as to my knowledge there isn't a public transportation system to help you back to the start. My only other advice is to pack LOTS of water, and some trail snacks for any hikers you may come across that are hiking the full trail - Mexico to Canada! I don't think that will be on my bucket list anytime soon, but it was awesome to experience part of the PCT with a beautiful day and great company.