PCT Day 105 – SoBo Flip – How to Hitch to Reno

Traveling zero as we complete our SoBo Flip, no hiking

Total PCT miles hiked: 1400

Due to our early start Keith (Starman) and I arrived at the Sierras when there was still a lot of snow, and decided it wasn’t safe to attempt a crossing given my skill level. We elected to flip up to northern California and hike southbound (SoBo) back to where we left off near Lone Pine – giving the snow a chance to melt out. During this flip the PCT milage will be counting down, but I’ll include a tally of our total milage hiked so that you can keep aprised of our progress in a linear fashion.

Here is how you hitch from Bishop, CA to Reno, NV in 9 easy steps.

1. Wake early in the blissfully cool guest room at Julie’s house and spend ten minutes marveling at the glory that is a real bed before putting on damp clothing that has almost, but not quite, dried over night. Finalize packing an enormous box full of all the items one no longer needs after the Sierra—ice axes, bear cannisters, extra warm layers, and micro spikes—and send them to your very very kind and patient friend Ian who is wonderfully holding all your items until you’re off the trail. At 8am walk to Enterprise Car Rental and grab a large coffee on the way. The coffee is important because when you arrive at Enterprise you’ll discover that the are no cars to be rented, there are no other rental companies between here and Reno, and the only bus going north has already departed for the day. Leave the rental car company and step into the already too hot day, feel the high sun begin to roast your skin with the promise of summer in the desert. On the walk back to Julie’s recognize that hitchhiking is your only option to get to Reno, the only option to get a rental car, the only option to get back north and back to the trail.

2. Accept your fate, get stoked for some Type 2 fun, and make the best hitchhiking sign you can.

3. Take up a spot on Bishop Main Street, grateful for the fact that you get to hitch from the shady side of the road. Move when a car parks right in front of you. Move again. Move again as more cars roll onto Main Street to start the work day. Move one last time for good measure.

4. Catch your first ride of the day with Liz, a school teacher from Mammoth Lakes who has a daughter living in Australia working with abused women, and a son working as a smoke jumper in Colorado. Ride with her to an off ramp near Crowley Lake along the 395. Stuff down the fear that you’re now standing at an empty exit ramp along a highway with cars flying by at 70 miles an hour.

5. Your next ride will be with Tim, a former film industry producer—Full House, Family Matters, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros Studios, but now he’s a property manager in Mammoth. Took an 80% pay cut to live here, but can’t beat the psychic benefits of living in the Eastern Sierra. Ride with him 15 minutes to the road into Mammoth where he’s certain you’ll get a ride shortly. Only you won’t, you’ll wait here for almost an hour while hundreds of cars steam past giving you the shrug of rejection.

6. Your salvation will come in the form of Theresa the attorney in the big white Jeep wearing the white power suit. She will come and whisk you away to Bridgeport, driving a little too fast in order of make her court time and filling you in on the finer points on how to fight a speeding ticket and the various ineptitudes of small town police departments.

7. Wait on the side of the road in Bridgeport for just long enough to drink a gas station milkshake before catching a ride with a trail angle who never gives you his name, but will take you all the way to Reno, and will even give you his email address “just in case things go sideways on your way out of town.”

8. Spend two hours in the back of the trail angels mini van listening to Ozzy Osborne, Jack White, and Papa Roach through fuzzy blown-out speakers as Keith and the TA discuss the finer points of Air Force One, the International Space Station, and the various merits of Japanese high speed trains. Try not to worry when you find a bullet casing in the cup holder.

9. Arrive in Reno, NV after nearly seven hours. Congrats.