Pacific Crest Trail: Oregon

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30th July: Day 101 – Mile 1,746

In my notes I celebrate 100 days on trail. As a trained accountant, I guess it’s embarrassing that I lost count of the days almost 2 months ago and the 100th day was actually yesterday.
 
An old local guy stops me at a river to tell me about the upcoming water sources and complain about young hikers with their ridiculous expensive new-fangled technology. He’s confident I’m not one of them, so I nod along and quietly obscure my GPS watch from his sight.
 
I misplace Ent at Hyatt Lake. He must have double backed in a stream to cover his footprints like in Butch Cassidy (well, it was a tarmac road, but same effect).

31st July – 2nd August: Day 102 – 104 – Mile 1,839

Day 102 – mile 1,774
Day 103 – mile 1,804
Day 104 – mile 1,839
 
Bump into Swiss mountain climbing power couple “Mountain” “Lion” again – last saw them in Bishop a thousand miles ago. Like Ent, Teatime, Patricia and Monika, they are telepathically connected to the Swiss hive mind (or is it a WhatsApp group, can’t remember) so they already know about the Bear Creek incident and ask me about that.
 
We reach Crater Lake National Park. We’ve posted food packages to the campground reception here. They can’t find mine, so Ent carries on while I wait for another employee to arrive who is famed for his ability to correctly apply alphabetical ordering, a skill the current guy does not have.
 
Maple is here – she went back to find her group after we saw her in Etna, and then they all quit and are now on a road trip to Glacier and Yellowstone NP. But we’ll see her once more before the end.
 
Mountain lion activity has closed some campsites along the route so we’ll have to walk another 13 miles to camp (making it a 32 mile day in total).
 
Eventually I pick up Ent’s trail, but actually just turns out to be a guy with the same shoes.  We discuss race.  
 
I don’t think his views would do well on Twitter. 

Crater Lake. An information board explains the exciting history of its name. Once called ‘Deep Blue Lake’, then ‘Blue Lake’, the fractionally more ambitious ‘Crater Lake’ was finally settled on. This is an important lesson in where ambition can get you, as some people have pointed out it’s a caldera not a crater.

3rd August: Day 105 – Mile 1,866

A man has hiked in with a sack of energy bars to give out to thru-hikers.
 
Incredibly generous, but the only gift I’m less likely to accept right now is a spoon of peanut butter.

Hilleberg Enans get a multiplier bonus when played as a pair

4th & 5th August: Day 106 & 107 – Mile 1,927

Day 106 – mile 1,906
 
33 mile day, pushing to get to Shelter Cove before the place that would give me a burger closes. However, achieving that takes a much bigger toll in peanut butter than I imagined – I get there in time but I’m too full to ever eat again. So it was for nothing. Except a beer. Which is something. But, a Coor’s Light. So..
 
Anyway, I pick up an email from 13, but can only download the title ‘Greetings from Canada’. He’s made it in 92 days, which is in time to get to his family reunion. This seemed impossible when we were in the Sierra. It required him to average 39 miles per day for the last 35 days.
 
Day 107 – mile 1,927
 
The burger place is closed so I couldn’t get breakfast either. This is a staggering disappointment. I can’t eat any more peanut butter and energy bars. I go to the shop. It sells mostly peanut butter and energy bars. I refuse to buy anything I am already carrying the weight of in my pack. I buy a pint of Ben and Jerry’s for breakfast – definitely can’t carry that on trail.
 
This is all made up for at the end of the day. Word spreads from the southbounders of trail magic ahead (every hiker that passes tells me to hurry, they’re leaving at 5pm). When I get there there are two different sets of people out on the trail, both with full on grills, cooking burgers for the thru-hikers, with fruit, soda, beer etc.
 
I’m sure this is what I dreamt of when I decided to go on a remote wilderness walk – the frantic race from one potential burger to the next

6th August: Day 108 – Mile 1,959

32 miles, a trail of blood in my wake. I’m crushing the mosquitos, but, unfortunately, that blood is definitely mine.
 
They are biting through my clothes, biting my face, flying into my eyes, my ears.
 
It’s too hot to wear the netting and windproof clothing that would protect me. I decide to stop and take a stand. If I just stay in one place, killing mosquitoes, surely at some point the world must run out of them?

It’s a burn.

7th & 8th August: Day 109 & 110 – Mile 2,001

Day 109 – mile 1,989
Day 110 – mile 2,001
 
This is the last day for me and Ent together – our plans diverge here.
 
Ent is going down to the Big Lake Youth Camp, and I’m heading further along, to the town of Sisters.
 
Will I ever hear the distant hum of ABBA again?
  
It’s a sad day. Only an act of god could realign our plans now… 
 
Luckily, with rare efficiency, tomorrow will bring an act of god – the Big Lake Youth Camp will be evacuated due to fire risk from severe thunderstorms. Ent literally will have no place to go, and will come and find me in town. 
The journey continues..
 
(well, actually it stops for 3 days to drink beer and wait for the thunderstorms to pass, but anyway)

9th & 10th August: Day 111 & 112 – Mile 2,001

Becalmed in Sisters, Oregon
 
Forest fire risk is like avalanche risk, and unlike dangerous mountain passes or river crossings, in that you feel like it’s not (at least partly) up to your skill and strength – if it happens there’ll be nothing you can do.
 
All the same, I’ve walked through areas that were high risk in those ways before. But the risk of fire from the approaching storm is on the news, and everyone has come down from the Big Lake Youth Camp because of it – so this gives the impression of a more serious than normal high risk.
 
This is all just justification for going into PCT lockdown for an extra day. Like COVID lockdown this involves sealing yourself up inside, eating and drinking a lot more than usual, and only leaving the house to go to the shops to buy masses of junk food.
 
The only difference is that on the PCT this is like a wonderful holiday from a normal day.

PCT sponsored beer – it’s my duty to drink it

Also like COVID lockdown, I haven’t had my hair cut in 4 months. I would really like to have my hair cut. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure leaving this room will require the use of my feet, which is a heavy price.

I’m using this photo to weigh up the risks and benefits.

These are the things I’ve been craving for weeks.

Where I stayed. The guy who gave me a lift down from the highway crossing thought I should carry on with him to Bend, as a more fun place. He didn’t see what I could see here – a motel next door to a supermarket next door to a Subway, next door to a Macdonalds. He admitted that Bend would involve more moving around using my feet.

Also, it felt like a slightly dangerous hitch, as he had some strong views which I had to disagree with, but he was also in the military on his way to a military funeral…

(I took this photo to make the joke to Ent that even Sisters is counting its own farts – something that Ent is doing on trail for the furtherment of science)

11th to 18th August: Day 113 to 120 – Mile 2,146

Race to Washington!
 
I need to go 147 miles to the Washington border in the next 5 days (in order to achieve important things like getting to town for a haircut and back to trail in time for drinking at the PCT festival at Cascade Locks)
 
Go!
 
Day 113 – mile 2,020
20 miles – not full day walking as had to get back from Sisters to the trail.
 
Day 114 – mile 2,050
30 miles. The big days of southbounders going past now – they’ve started in Canada in early July, either thru-hiking or people who started north then flipped to avoid the Sierra snow. I see many old faces today from the desert – Animal, kermit, and 4 or 5 others
 
I feel like we own the place now.
 
Day 115 – mile 2,079
29 miles – the trail is lined with huckleberries
 
Day 116 – mile 2,107
28 miles – past Timberline Lodge and around Mt Hood.
 
Day 117 – mile 2,137
30 miles – I meet chips (part of a pair of Danish guys, together called chips and dip), he’s about to complete the Oregon challenge – walking the whole thing in 14 days. That is impressive – 32.5 trail miles per day, and there’s always some extra non-trail miles to add on top.
 
Day 118 – mile 2,147
Success. Reach the border in time for breakfast. I buy Chips a beer to celebrate his amazing victory and also do his laundry for him. (He can’t do either himself because a) he’s 18 and b) he basically can’t move any more)
 
[discussing the Oregon Challenge]
Me: did you enjoy it at all?
Chips: no.
 
Day 119 – mile 2,146
Back to Cascade locks for the PCT Days festival.
 
Hikers have hitched in from up and down the trail – so many people are here. Eleven, Lefty and Coach from Bear Creek. Mountain and Lion, of Switzerland. Renaissance (aka Grizzz) and the Track Team. Conundrum from Belgium. Maple – who quit with her group to go on a road trip (I think she’s decided here to try to go back to where she left and finish it). Jay and Silent Bob – man and dog that I met at mile 500ish and am amazed to find made it through the Sierra. Couple of guys that I camped with on day 1.  Some guys who were a bit misogynist. The kinda racist guy from a week back.
 
It’s great to see them all. Well. Mostly. Perhaps in ascending order of bigotry.
 
Next up: Washington!

Ent celebrates carrying a beer up this hill, by having a beer.

Room with a view.

Columbia River on the Oregon / Washington border.

The Bridge of the Gods, over to Washington. This is where Reese Witherspoon stopped walking in her film ‘Walk the Line’ (Johnny Cash made it all the way to Canada)

Conundrum on Thunder Island.  

As in, that guy, on this island.  Not an Agatha Christie novel.

I got drunk here. I know this because when someone tried to remember the name of Thunder Island and said ‘Thunder…. Thunder… Thunder…’ (to which I thought the obvious response was ‘thundercats, ho!’) I was led into the tortured and dizzying world of trying to explain the premise of Thundercats to a disbelieving and increasingly hostile audience. Try it – it is very difficult.