Bend to the Bridge of the Gods

Getting back to the trail from Bend was an adventure, and happened in three parts.  Dave from the hostel drove me far enough outside of town that I could hope to hitch,

Dave!

and then I stood on the highway for a long time before Todd picked me up and drove me to Sisters.  He left me on the highway just past town, so that I could hope to get a ride from there back to the trail. 

Todd!

I stood there until it started to get dark, and I'd just decided to walk back into Sisters when Mike stopped.  He already had one hiker in his jeep, a British girl named Cream Tea who I knew and liked, and he hopped out and rearranged backpacks in the back of the jeep so that I could sit on top of them.  The three of us were chatting excitedly as he drove us out to the trail, when suddenly a reddish brown streak flew in front of the car.  Mike said that it was a bobcat, and I was thrilled to see it at least from a car. 

Mike!

Cream Tea and I walked to the first campsite off the road and set up our tents.  She had hitched into Sisters to get medicine for giardia and had just started taking it, and woke up in the morning with intense muscle pains and wasn't sure what to do.  I asked if there was anything I could do but she told me to go ahead, so I set off across the post-apocalyptic landscape. 

I hiked past the next highway and reached the 2,000 mile mark, which someone had rearranged to spell "love." 

What I think was the 2,000 mile mark, rearranged.

Another 2,000 mile mark had been constructed out of sticks, but someone else had added to it so that it now read "2000.3."  The different sources of information on trail mileages - the Guthook's app that I use, the Halfmile app that many people use, and the official PCT markers - all differ, and I guess this was someone's way of joking about it. 

And this one was shortly after it - someone had put a 2,000 mile sign, and someone else had added the ".3"

I stopped at the Big Lake Youth Camp, which is known to be hiker friendly.  The camp was closed but the teenaged boys breaking down the camp were friendly.  They said that the cafeteria was closed but that if I had a package there I could still pick it up, and showed me the drinking water spigot and where the showers were. 

Big Lake Youth Camp

I stayed just long enough to cook a hot meal in the lee of a building, and then headed out into more of the post-apocalypse.  The feeling of everything was different now than it had been all summer, and I kept thinking of Game of Thrones and the oft-repeated warning, "winter is coming." 

A rainstorm moved through, and my feet started to blister in an entirely new way from the rubbing of the wet socks and shoes on my heels.  I had one thing motivating me, which was to get to Olallie Lake.  The Olallie Lake resort didn't have a restaurant or a bar and the cabins they rented which I couldn't afford didn't even have indoor plumbing, but my friend Tom was going to pick me up there and we were going to go to the PCTA's Trail Days party in Cascade Locks.  He had already rented a hotel room for the two days, and I just imagined the warmth of it as I hiked wet through the cold and the fog. 

I'd planned to leave only 20 miles to get into Olallie on the Friday he was picking me up, but by Thursday night the blister on my right heel hurt so bad that I could only walk with my foot twisted in a way that made the muscles on the inside of that leg pinch in a way that became unbearable by early evening.  I stopped to fix dinner 25 miles out of Olallie and Cream Tea hiked by, having pushed on despite the muscle pain the morning I had left her and heading for a campsite a few miles past me.  I said I'd try to make it that far to camp, but after dinner I was too tired and my body hurt too badly, and I pitched my tent where I was. 

The rain came down hard in the night, and I woke up around 3:00 AM to a completely flooded tent.  Even my down sleeping bag was soaking wet below the knees, and the rain continued to drive down hard.  I put on my headlamp, pulled my legs up to the top half of my air mattress, which was still mainly dry, and thought about getting to Tom.  Everything would be OK if I could just get to him. 

"OK, what's preventing that?" 

"It's really hard to walk because of this blister."

"So, you need to lance it."

"But I tried, and I couldn't get into it." 

"Try again."

I took out my tiny sewing kit, took the needle out of it, and sterilized it with my lighter.  I pushed it into the huge blister, but it came out dry.  I pushed it in again, and it came out dry again.  I thought back to what Tom Copeland, my second father and first skipper, said to me once when I was 20 and we were seining in Southeast Alaska:

"The definition of insanity, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."

I used one thumb to push the blister as far to one side of my heel as I could.  It was at least an inch wide, so the pus concentrated on that one side made it stand out from my foot maybe a quarter of an inch.  I pushed the needle in there, and an arc of bloody pus shot across my sleeping pad.  I don't know why, but it was the biggest sense of accomplishment that I've felt on the entire trail.  Sitting there in the dark, soaking wet inside my flooded tent, bloody pus on my sleeping surface, I felt as if I had one a major battle in the war.  The physical relief was immediate, and I cleaned and bandaged the blisters on both feet and put my wet socks and shoes back on.  I packed up my soaking gear, trying to wring the water out of my down bag but giving up and resigning myself to carrying all of the added weight. 

"Just 25 miles, and Tom will take me away from this for two whole days." 

It was still dark when I came to my first stream ford, swollen from the rains.  I walked directly across it, figuring that I couldn't get any wetter and that I'd just get chilled if I stopped long enough to take my shoes and socks off.  It was starting to get light when I passed Cream Tea's tent, and it was as light as it would get that day when I came to a larger stream ford.  It was literally roaring, and there was no obvious place to cross in sight.  I stuck my trekking poles in, and it was deeper than I felt comfortable crossing.  I thought about Cream Tea as well, she was shorter than me, and thinner, and it would be even more dangerous for her to cross.  I thought about waiting for her, but she hadn't been up yet when I'd passed her tent, and I realized that if I waited a few hours for her to show up then by the time she got there I'd be hypothermic and she would have to deal with that, so I just forded it.  I didn't take my shoes or any clothes off, just stashed my phone in my backpack, lengthened my trekking poles, and inched my way across.  The poles were for balance but they also gave me forewarning where the creek got deeper, so that I didn't fall into any deep pools.  The water got as deep as my lower thighs and you can see how hard it was flowing in the picture below, and I just kept thinking "don't fall, don't fall..."

My first scary solo creek ford

I hiked for miles and then came to a ridge.  The trail started out north along the ridge, but then dropped off it to one side.  Or at least it seemed to, I wasn't sure.  I'd been using the Guthook's app for months but his recent updates to the programs had introduced problems at least into the Oregon version.  It was also harder to use the iPhone's soaking wet touchscreen, and any time I stopped to try I got chilled before I started again.  I would later learn how to use the new version of the app and how to use the touchscreen in the wet cold, but I hadn't learned it yet.  Worse, where the trail left the ridge, there were large patches of snow, and I had just started down the hill when I realized that I couldn't tell where it went.  I also realized that if I went the wrong way, I might not have enough body heat to be lost for a day.  I got scared here, the most scared that I have been on the PCT, even as I write this later, halfway through Washington. 

Where the hell does the trail go?

I saw a few rock cairns in the distance, and decided to trust them.  I'd been following cairns built by other hikers for most of the trail and they'd been helpful in a lot of circumstances, and I told myself that they'd work here. 

I followed the rock cairns in the distance.

They worked, and before too long I could see the trail again.  Thank you again to anyone who has taken the time to build a rock cairn, anywhere that the trail is difficult to find. 

By now, the trail was visible.

I reached the Olallie Lake Resort and found the store, which was empty.  I wolfed down a chocolate hostess pie, and made myself some hot cocoa.  A girl named Sam ran the store, and she walked in, catching me off guard, and I yelled.

"I've already eaten a hostess pie!"  She laughed.

"I'll start you a tab." 

I spent the next few hours eating packaged food off of the store's shelves and drying my soaking wet things at the stove.  Cream Tea stopped in, and simply warmed herself for an hour before heading out again.  I tried to convince her to come to the Trail Days party, but she was bent on finishing Oregon. 

Cream Tea!

Sam was driving to the Trail Days party too so we drove out to the power lines to get cell service, and I called Tom and told him I would meet him in Cascade Locks.  We drove north, picked up a couple more hikers at Timberline Lodge, and she delivered me to his hotel room that evening.

The next two days were the opposite of the previous few.  It was warm in the hotel room, it was warm and sunny outside, and I didn't have to take care of myself.  I didn't have to worry about anything.  Tom just took care of everything, and I wrapped myself up in it and hoped that it wouldn't end.   

Tom!

The Trail Days party was alright - there were less thru-hikers there than I'd thought there would be, and I didn't know as many of them as I thought I would.  There were a bunch of vendors, and a few lectures but not a full schedule of them like at the kickoff party.  The largest event was a raffle of donated gear, at which we didn't win anything, but there was nothing that I was really dying for so I didn't really care.  What I really wanted was to get some gear serviced, but booths at festivals are just for selling more stuff, not for taking care of stuff that's already been sold. 

The crowd at the raffle

Hikers hanging at trail days (Sam at the far end of the table)

I can't remember this guy's name, but he was great energy.

On Sunday Tom took me to resupply and then drove me back to Olallie, and we hugged and said goodbye. 

Posing with Tom before we said goodbye

I spent another hour our so visiting with Sam, who had beaten us back to Olallie, and then hit the trail again in the evening. 

Sam!

My favorite sign so far

Since the rains started there are so many cool looking mushrooms...

The next afternoon I passed Little Crater Lake, and then made dinner with Thunder and Lightning, a.k.a. John and Terry.  They were completing the PCT in section hikes of maybe a month each, and gave me some good advice on keeping my tent dry.  Because of them I started hiking with both my tent and my tarp, which I hadn't done before.  They were also former Bristol Bay fishermen who had started the company NorQuest, a salmon buyer who had sold out to Trident some years earlier, so we had a shared history. 

Looking down into Little Crater Lake

After dinner I hiked into the night, and in the morning I made it to Timberline Lodge 15 minutes before the lunch buffet opened. 

The view of Mount Hood coming into Timberline Lodge

I took a breather after 5 or 6 plates, and my friendly waitress brought me my bill. 

"Oh no, dear, I'm just getting started." 

I kept eating until the buffet closed 2.5 hours later, and then kept eating until the staff stopped us maybe a half an hour after that.  I spent the rest of the day in the lobby of the Timberline Lodge, and then another thru-hiker named Andy kindly let me sleep on the top bunk in the hotel room he had rented.  The cheaper rooms with bunk beds were in the basement, which was where some of the movie The Shining had been filmed. 

The view of Mount Hood leaving Timberline Lodge

Looking down on Timberline Lodge

Hiking the PCT means passing through tons of out-of-season ski resorts, but they never cease to weird me out. 

Another solo crossing of a swollen stream

Seriously, I have to cross on that?

Seriously?

What on earth does this to the tree?  Is it a mammal?

The weather held through Cascade Locks.  About 15 miles before town there was an alternate trail called the Eagle Creek Trail that passed by a few beautiful waterfalls, so I took it and passed by Tunnel Falls. 

A lot of the Eagle Creek trail was like this.

Tunnel falls

Tunnel Falls

It's called Tunnel Falls because of this tunnel,...

...which you walk under, underneath the falls.

Looking down from a bridge on the Eagle Creek trail

In the late afternoon I reached the Bridge of the Gods.  I bought a can of some kind of alcoholic drink at the gas station, and then walked to the bridge.  The woman in the toll booth looked at me and smiled.

"PCT?"

"Yes Ma'am."

"Stay on the left side, facing traffic."  There was no pedestrian walkway or even a shoulder of any kind. 

The Bridge of the Gods

Looking west on the Columbia

Looking back at the park where we'd been for Trail Days

I walked out to the middle of the bridge, where signs mark the border between Oregon and Washingon, and I stepped into Washington.  I'd planned to have my celebratory drink there, but the cars were having to drive around me, and the traffic was heavy enough that there was often a car coming in the opposite direction so that they just had to stop and wait.  I returned to the tollbooth.

"I wanted to have this drink on the border, but I felt like I was being a jerk out there in the traffic.  I'm going to drink it in the park instead." 

"Good decision!"  laughed the woman in the tollbooth. 

I just walked across Oregon.

I sat in the park, drinking my little can of malt liquor and chatting with a friendly photographer named Jon about hiking and about traveling and about life.  I had just walked across another state, but winter was coming. 

FYI to everyone following me, I'm way behind on the blogging but am still hiking, I'm posting this from Snoqualmie Pass, about two weeks from the Canadian border.  Thank you so much to everyone who has donated recently, and if anyone else has money to contribute, it will help with hotel rooms to get dry and warm at the next two passes, and money to get back to the U.S. after I finish the hike.  Thanks again and love you all!