Leaving Stevenson, I was determined to not have to walk back to the Bridge of the Gods. Sure, I had walked in from there, but I had been desperate, exhausted, and soaked to the bone. I was no longer any of those things. Two days of rest had done me well. The last thing I wanted to do was walk three miles of stressful, dangerous highway, just to get back to where I needed to start. So, I found myself standing on the curb on the western edge of town with my thumb out. Waiting. Thirty minutes passed and no one pulled over. It crossed my mind that I could have been over halfway back to the trail right now if I had just walked, but I continued to wait. Finally, a pickup truck pulling a fishing boat pulled over and I spent the next five minutes explaining the basic concept of the PCT to two fishermen and their dog. It still amazes me that there are locals out there with no knowledge of the trail, and it had been a long time since I had answered the all-too-familiar questions:
“Do you carry a tent or something?”
“Do you hunt for food while you’re out there?”
“How do you get water?”
And my new personal favorite:
“You mean you’re not actually homeless? You’re just doing this because you wanted to hike?”
I did my best to answer all their questions as best as I could in the short time that it took us to get back to the bridge, but I still sensed undertones of disbelief. Oh-well, at least I’d tried. Before long, I was walking back through the parking lot, toward the 1,856-foot span of steel across the Columbia River, and into Oregon. The interesting thing about the Bridge of the Gods, at least for pedestrians, is that there is nowhere for pedestrians to walk. The roadway itself is barely wide enough for two lanes (twenty-two feet between the fences), and there is no sidewalk, no shoulder, nothing. Instead, there is a sign that instructs bicycles and pedestrians to be careful and for pedestrians to walk against traffic. The bridge is too narrow for two vehicles travelling opposite directions to safely pass someone on foot at the same time. Instead, if a larger vehicle or a cluster of vehicles was getting close, I would turn my back to the edge and lean back against the fence, hanging my pack out over the water, allowing as much space as possible for the gasoline-powered travelers to squeeze by. Occasionally, I would look straight down to examine the depths of the river, flowing 140 feet below, straight down through the grated steel deck, only to jerk my eyes back up as I began to feel dizzy. It sounds scarier than it is. Of course, I’m not particularly afraid of heights, and in this case, that’s a good thing. I’ve heard of people freezing out of fear, mid-span, and needing to be driven the rest of the way across. Around the middle of the span, I waited for traffic to pass and snapped a quick picture of the Washington/Oregon state line, after which I was ready to be back on solid ground.
Safely back on dry land, now in Oregon, I realized something tragic. For the first time in almost two thousand miles, I had forgotten to turn on my Garmin tracker. Of course, it had to happen as I crossed one of the most famous landmarks and the first of only two state lines of the entire trail. Oh well. It definitely wasn’t worth crossing back over (and then back again). Instead, I turned toward the trailhead and kept walking. At this point, I had two options: I could either continue along the PCT, or I could detour out along the Eagle Creek Alternate. I had spent my entire stay at Stevenson debating my options, but even as I stood at the trailhead in Oregon, I still hadn’t made up my mind. On the one hand, the choice should have been easy: I was trying to hike the PCT. On the other hand, however, I had heard from almost every NOBO that the alternate was definitely worth it. The two distances were comparable. The two trails would meet again in about seventeen miles. The alternate, from what I had heard, followed a gentler grade back up into the mountains and was more scenic, and from some informal polling, this alternate was more popular than the actual trail. “Why not?” I turned toward the alternate, and made my way down the Columbia River Gorge, parallel to the Interstate for a couple miles, down to the Eagle Creek Trailhead alongside Eagle Creek, filled with the splashing of trout and salmon and the slight reek of fish carcasses that had washed up along the shoreline.
The main appeal of this trail is the waterfalls. Instead of following the ridge back up the mountain, this trail meanders up through the Eagle Creek Gorge, passing slot canyons and cascades as it climbs gently up the mountain. As I made my way up the trail, I stopped briefly at Sorenson, Metlako, Punchbowl, Loowit, Skoonichuk, Grand Union, and the famous Tunnel Falls. Throughout the gorge, I was impressed with the resilience of the environment. In 2017, the entire gorge had burned to a char in the Eagle Creek Fire. Even now, burn scars on the rocks were still visible and much of the tree cover had been thinned out. The deep shades of vibrant green that once covered nearly every inch of the gorge leading down to the deep pools of clear, blue water were now reduced to yellowish-green patches. Still, in the four years since the fire, the ecosystem has, once again, begun to thrive. As I crossed through the tunnel behind the cascading waters of Tunnel Falls, shockingly artificial and yet still magnificently natural, I questioned the tendency of man to think that nature can be improved upon. I would like to believe that if I had stumbled across this valley 150 years ago, that the last thing to cross my mind would have been to haul several tons of dynamite out here to blast a footpath directly through a waterfall that has been carving its way up the canyon for millions of years. I also think that it would be overly presumptuous and arrogant to believe that I wouldn’t have done just that. I would like to believe that the natural features of this earth are best left undisturbed, but at the same time, I fully recognize that by the inherent faults of my lazy and conceited human nature, I am inclined to believe that every naturally wonderous sight has to be easily accessible from a conveniently placed parking lot.
Leaving the waterfalls and eventually the creek behind, the trail began to steepen as I headed up, toward the ridge and back toward the PCT. As I climbed, higher and higher, the burn scars of the intense fire began to fade. The sky also began to grow darker and darker. Eventually, a few sprinkles began to fall. A few minutes later, and the sprinkles began to transition to a steady rain. At one point, I passed a middle-aged woman wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and sandals. Keep in mind that I was over ten miles from the trailhead, in the middle of a cold rain, and you’ll get the picture. Surprisingly, she didn’t seem worried at all. Instead, she was making her way, slowly but steadily, down the muddy slopes towards the creek and, hopefully, out to the parking lot. I was cold and wet, and I had good gear. I guess if you live in this area, you get used to the cold and the rain. Pressing on, I eventually reached unburned forest and arrived at the shores of Wahtum Lake in the middle of a cloud. Quickly and efficiently, I set up camp and crawled into my tent. I wasn’t necessarily discouraged but I also wouldn’t say that I was enjoying myself. I was glad that I had decided to take the Eagle Creek Alternate, but I was wondering how in the heck I had managed to wait out the three days of rain in town, only to head back out to the trail and get rained on again.
By morning, the rain had stopped. The only moisture that remained hung low over the mountainside in thick sheets of misty humidity, covering the undergrowth in droplets of cold morning dew. Within five minutes of leaving camp, my feet were sopping wet and freezing. Luckily, the trail soon shifted to the southeastern side of the ridge and into the morning sun, giving me some relief from the cold and wet. Climbing up to a relatively flat and treeless plateau, I enjoyed the broadest views that I had seen since Old Snowy. To the northwest, Mount St Helens sat low on the horizon, barely a lump among the distant hills. More directly north, and at about the same distance, Mount Adams still stood proudly, its white cone shining brilliantly in the morning sun. To my surprise, a third volcanic cone still appeared clearly along the horizon, between the two closer mountains, but nearly twice the distance: Mount Rainier. The Big Mountain was still keeping watch over the horizon, even from nearly a hundred miles away. As I paused briefly on that treeless plain, my eyes eventually turned toward the west. Far away, through a crevice between two distant mountains, I saw a flat, hazy surface: the Pacific Ocean. Well over a hundred miles away, I was initially skeptical of what my eyes were seeing, but the more I stared, the more I believed that, for the first time along the trail, I was seeing beyond the distant coastline.
Turning from the distant views of the north and west, back toward the south and the ever-nearing peak of Mount Hood, I was soon entering back into the forest and following a long ridgeline for most of the day. I had heard that the section of trail between Cascade Locks and Mount Hood was covered in blowdowns, but after persevering through northern Washington, I questioned how bad it could really be. Soon, however, I found myself beginning to climb over, around, and through tangles of trees both large and small at regular intervals. By about an hour later, what had originated as one blowdown every half to quarter mile had increased to one blowdown every fifty yards, if not sooner. My forward momentum was destroyed, and forward progress was slowed to a crawl. It seemed like every time I took five unobstructed steps, I was pausing to evaluate how the heck to get through the next tangle of trees laying across the trail. Of course, most of the time, it wasn’t simply a tree lying across my path. Instead, it was at least five or ten trees, typically one or two large ones twisted together with a handful of younger trees that had gotten ripped down at no fault of their own, all heaped into a pile, sometimes ten feet high. Sometimes, with some effort, it was possible to weave my way through the middle of the pile. Other times, it was low enough to carefully climb over. Most of the time, however, I found myself looping around, off trail, to find a path of less resistance, which still typically involved quite a bit of resistance. Throughout the afternoon, I tried to look on the bright side: at least the trail wasn’t overgrown between the blowdowns. That was a bit of a misnomer though, as what remained of the path between the blowdowns barely deserved to be called a trail anyway.
Later in the afternoon, the trail finally cleared up, but not before I had counted over 130 individual blowdowns that required sustained effort to overcome. Soon, I passed the first sign I had seen all day: a piece of laminated paper stapled to a tree. It warned of less-than-optimal trail conditions to the south due to the “Labor Day Windstorm of 2020.” A little late. As I soon discovered, the trail to the south was quite clear. Now back on good trail, my mind began to wander. I was beginning to feel the pressure of time, or the lack thereof. To make it to South Lake Tahoe by Thanksgiving, I would need to average just over twenty miles per day. Lately, I had been covering more than that on the trail, but zero days kill the average. Plus, after a morning of fighting for every mile, I was starting to question if I could really maintain that pace through some of the upcoming sections. A twenty-mile day on a well-maintained trail is relatively easy, but today would be well under twenty and I was already exhausted and sore from the morning acrobatics. Oh well. All I could do was keep walking. Truthfully, I doubted that I would make it all the way before being forced to quit, but given the opportunity, I didn’t want a shortage of time to be the reason I couldn’t reach my destination. Late in the evening, I detoured out along another alternate to see Ramona Falls. I was quickly realizing that I no longer had any qualms regarding alternates. If the distance is comparable, I will gladly detour off the actual PCT to see something more interesting. It had been a long time since I had been under any illusion that I could cover every single step of the PCT, so I might as well see the sights that I wanted to see. Passing through a rain-forest-like valley to Ramona Falls, green with thick moss and golden in the last rays of sunlight, I began to meet many weekend backpackers, out from the trailheads near Mount Hood and Timberline Lodge. Eventually, however, I was able to locate a secluded campsite near a silty creek and enjoyed the unusually warm evening.
The next morning, I made my way across what would normally be a large, glacial creek. The sun had yet to rise high enough to reach into the valley, and while it may be a challenging water crossing later in the day, during peak melt, it was barely more than a small stream as I rock-hopped across in the shadows. Soon, I was headed up, straight up and over a sharp spine of Mount Hood. Maybe I just hadn’t passed close enough to other major volcanic peaks, but this mountain seemed more eroded than most, with deep canyons carved into its rocky, sandy flanks by ancient glaciers that had long since retreated to the heights. Time and time again, I climbed up, over a sharp ridge, and then back down and through the next silty valley and always overhead, the glistening peak, dusted in a light layer of dirty brown, kept watch over the trail. Something about this mountain, when compared to Mount Adams or Rainier, seemed less clean-cut, less predictable, more rugged. I’d never really noticed before, but volcanoes are apparently one of my irrational fears. Crossing through the deeply carved valleys, I envisioned a wall of lava or a violent lahar cascading down from the peak, annihilating everything in its path. Realistically, I know that volcanoes rarely erupt without ample warning, but I couldn’t help thinking that I was suddenly hearing the deep, earth-rattling movements of tectonics, a preemptive warning of a destructive eruption. A large horse suddenly walked around the corner. It was the foot-falls of that majestic creature plodding down the trail that my mind had turned into a mortal warning. I guess it’s fair to say that my mind was officially playing tricks on me throughout the morning, as I climbed further up the shoulder of the mountain, toward Timberline Lodge.
As I approached the lodge, I struck up a conversation with a girl who I had seen several times throughout the morning, first running down toward Ramona Falls, and then sometimes walking and sometimes running back toward the trailhead. A local, she had apparently planned to run a loop around the entire mountain this morning, but had turned back at the falls due to an achilles injury flaring up. That would make it “just a short day – around twenty miles.” As we talked, she shared that this would be her last run up here in the Pacific Northwest before she moved down to Bishop, California, near the Sierra. We both agreed that, despite the sheer size and scale of the Sierra, we prefer the greener, more hospitable mountains of the Cascades. Throughout the course of our conversation, it felt good just to be social. Afterwards, I tried to remember, and eventually concluded that the last time I had participated in a lengthy, in-person conversation with another human being had been at the Mike Urich Cabin, over a week prior. I’ve never claimed to be the most extroverted, social human on the planet, but that’s a long time to be alone in the woods, even for me. Sure, I had spoken with people since then, but there’s a big difference in five minutes of chatting and a fifteen-minute conversation. Soon, however, we parted ways and continued through the hordes of weekend day-hikers toward Timberline Lodge.
Now, I’ve never seen The Shining, and I share no fondness for horror movies in general, but it still seemed like a big deal to visit a destination so famously portrayed in a popular film. I must admit, however, that the Lodge itself seemed much smaller than I expected. An old, medium sized hotel at best, I had been expecting a magnificent structure at the base of such an extensive ski resort on the flanks of that mountain. Luckily, however, all the amenities of the resort were within easy walking distance. Picking up my resupply box from the day-use building, I spent about an hour organizing my gear and wandering around, before heading back to the trail. Descending from the Lodge toward the highway, the trail followed a narrow spine of rocky sand, cut off from the rest of the slope on both sides by what appeared to be actively eroding cliffs, down into the deep-cut valleys of glacial creeks. My only conclusion was that the slopes and cliffs must have been much more durable than they appeared, as the trail has followed this ridge since its development many decades ago. Just past the highway below, I made my way to the closed-for-the-season Frog Lake Campground. One of the best parts about travelling on foot is that you can take advantage of the amenities of areas typically designated for car-campers during the off-season. I had the entire campground to myself, complete with picnic tables, fire pits, and pit toilets. To my disappointment, however, the water spigot had been disabled for winter, so I was forced to walk just over a hundred yards to collect water from Frog Lake. One hundred whole yards!
What the previous days may have lacked in general easiness, as I had made my way out of the Columbia River Gorge and over the shoulder of Mount Hood, the following day made up for in toughness. Not because the terrain was difficult (it was not), but rather because there was such a lack of difficulty that the long, straight, flat miles of dirt under my feet seemed to blur together into hour upon hour of mind-numbingly boring walking. After sorting and re-sorting my contemplations throughout the day, I concluded that it was technically an easy day, but at the same time tough. And it was ultimately such a tough day because it was so easy. The one instance of interest for the day came when I decided to take a quarter mile detour to see Little Crater Lake, and while I’ve never seen the real Crater Lake, this small pond was an accurate representation of what I picture in my mind when I think of a miniature Crater Lake. The remainder of the day was spent working logistics: attempting to figure out how to cover almost half the state of Oregon before the next storm forced me off the trail and into town. Eventually, I had it figured out. I would push sixty miles further and go into Bend from the Elk Lake Trailhead instead of Santiam Pass like I had originally planned. I had enough food to get there, especially since I would pass through Ollalie Lake Resort tomorrow afternoon, plus, a longer push would allow me to take advantage of two and a half more days of good weather before the next storm was scheduled to arrive. At this point in the season, good weather was nothing to take for granted. That night, I made my camp along the edge of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, along the banks of a small creek. Many of the comments left in the Guthooks app by other hikers noted strange noises and occurrences during the night at that campsite, some even claiming that the small valley was haunted, but the only thing I heard throughout the solitary darkness of night was the persistent calls of a lone owl in the trees above.
Despite my best efforts, I am convinced that I will never possess the required skill in which to accurately portray the beauty in which such a simple walk through the forest can reveal. All day long, I simply made my way through the trees. Not particularly old or large trees, but just your standard, run of the mill second-growth forest. Throughout the day, I passed signs of historic activity, signs that this land had, at one time or another, been thoroughly stripped of every valuable resource that it held. Without recognizing the nuance of a wild area that is becoming wild once more after being stripped of every trace of wildness, I would have simply written these dim pine groves off as an unattractive wasteland, not good for anything. After all, the wildlife seemed scarce, and even the trees still seemed to struggle to take root and thrive, but the reclamation of this land was ultimately part of its beauty. I was well within the boundaries of the Warm Springs Reservation now, and began to consider the history along with the future of this land. We can (and rightfully should) question the morality of this land being seized from its indigenous inhabitants and stripped of every useful resource, but we should probably be just as suspicious of the decision to “kindly” gift it back to those from whom it was seized, now not much more than a rural wasteland. I have no doubt that the indigenous peoples, through their cultural and spiritual connections to the land on which they have thrived for generations, were glad to receive it back, but the thought of some suit-wearing, out-of-touch politician or industrial executive thinking that he is morally upright and virtuous because he signed a paper to returned a plot of land which had been stripped of all monetary value is honestly appalling. The value of this land is not equivalent to the quantity of wealth that can be extracted from it. Rather, its value is in the balance of life that it supports, severely diminished by the extraction of wealth, but indestructible in the slow-moving cogs of time. The historical inhabitants and caretakers of this land understand that. Those who have often held the fate of this land in their hands, however, are incapable of such understanding, and therein lies the problem. I haven’t and probably never will come up with a neat and tidy solution to these problematic realities, but the time I have spent living in these wilderness areas, has revealed the lack of balance and painful realities that these lands and peoples have faithfully endured. One thing that I do know, however, is that the beauty of a forest and a land that has endured so much and has begun to regain just a fraction of its historical glory is simply indescribable.
Around midday, I began to enter a vast burn area. Most of the time, burn scars leave behind remnants of healthy vegetation, but this fire had obviously burned much hotter and much more recently than many of the other areas I had passed through. I was entering the Lionshead Fire zone, over two-hundred-thousand acres of charred land that had been set off by a lightning strike last August. The trail had been closed since then, but there had been rumors all year that they were always “about a week from opening it up.” Basically, there was so much damage throughout the burn area that they were just waiting for enough of the charred skeletons of trees to blow down so that there would no longer be “a clear and imminent danger of death or injury due to falling trees.” The trees that had already fallen, on the other hand, would be mine to deal with in the form of miles of blowdowns. Still, with the rumors of a reopening, I had made the decision to go ahead and walk through anyway. If clerical red-tape was the only thing holding them back from opening up the barricades, then there was no way I was going to detour over a hundred miles out-and-around for a ten-mile section of trail (only a few miles of which were actually burned over). Reaching the rural Ollalie Lake Resort by early afternoon, I began preparing for the trail ahead. My plan was simple, camp near the resort, wake up around 3am, and hoof it up the road to Breitenbush Campground before sunrise. That would bypass the most severely burned section of trail. From the campground, I would hop back on the trail, and make my way several more miles up to the shoulder of Mount Jefferson where I would leave the burn zone behind. From there, the rest of the day would take me through the beautiful valleys and ridges surrounding Mount Jefferson, much of which is considered the most scenic miles of the entire trail. By midafternoon, I would leave the formal closure area, hopefully undetected, and camp on the next ridge, firmly back in within the technical (and often illogical) bounds of legality.
My alarm buzzed at 3am. I bumped it back to 3:30 and then quietly packed up. About twenty yards away was a forestry cabin where a group of workers were sleeping, so I tried to be as silent as possible. At the end of the day, they probably wouldn’t care that I was walking through the closure, but I didn’t want to chance it. By 4am, I was crawling over the barricade, and making my way, as quick as possible, up the trail. To my left was the dark expanse of Ollalie Lake, with Mount Jefferson towering behind it, invisible in the darkness. To my right, the land sloped up and into the heart of the most decimated burn zone. That was where the trail was. The road that I was walking on climbed gently, but my progress was slowed by more blowdowns than expected. I’m not sure what the forestry crew had been working on recently, but it wasn’t this road. It was anything but ready to reopen. I hoped that the trail wouldn’t be as bad. High above, the charred trees clacked and scraped together in the gusty darkness. My fear of being crushed to death beneath a charred skeleton began to get the better of me. I wasn’t supposed to be out there. If a tree fell on me, it could be days before anyone found me. Still, I pressed on, past ruined picnic areas and campgrounds that had burned off the face of the earth. Reaching Breitenbush Campground, I located the trailhead, under an old wooden arch that swayed dangerously in the wind, weakened dramatically by the flames but not quite destroyed.
I thought there had been a lot of blowdowns along the road, but the trail was even worse, compounded by the trail surface that had all but eroded into the ash-covered mountainside. Several times, the trail seemed to vanish into the darkness, leaving me to stumble around in dust and wind until I found something that seemed to resemble a path again. Eventually, the sky began to brighten into the first light of morning, but I still used my headlight in the trees. Yes, trees! Gradually, the charred skeletons transitioned back to lightly burned forest, and finally all signs of recent fire began to disappear. As I continued climbing up the ridge, the wind whipped viciously, but I was no longer concerned about being crushed under several tons of charcoal. Turning around, I could see the distant, gleaming lights of Timberline Lodge, high on the shoulder of Mount Hood to the north. After my dark, solitary morning, that twinkling light on the distant mountainside seemed to be my nearest and most valued companion. I knew there were people there, and that brought me some peace as I walked through a wilderness where there was likely no one. Continuing to climb, I finally reached the crest of the ridge in the golden, gleaming light of sunrise. To the east, the grand ball of warmth rose into the sky out among the flat plains of eastern Oregon. To the north, the faint lights of Timberline Lodge faded into the brilliant light of day. To the west, my eyes followed the shoulder of Mount Jefferson as it pointed back toward the spine of the Central Cascades. To the north, the towering, snowy heights of Mount Jefferson, framed by the picturesque park-like valleys stretched out like a glorious painting in the fog-strewn light of morning. The view from that vantage point was one of the most incredible of the entire trail, but I couldn’t stay long. The wind howled around me, and I struggled to maintain any sense of feeling in my face, hands and feet. Cold has rarely hurt that bad.
Descending quickly, I immediately lost the trail and found myself sliding down steep slopes of gravel and scree. I could see the trail winding across the valley below, but I had no idea how to get down there. I checked my map. It looked like I was about a hundred yards below the trail. A hundred yards might as well have been a mile on that slope, so I did my best to cross the slope horizontally, hoping to eventually intersect the trail as it descended. Still, I seemed to slide down the slope more and more with every step. Eventually, I did find the trail and made my way down and across that beautiful valley. It should have been one of my best days on the trail, as I passed through golden-green grasses and near the shores of crystal-clear lakes. At times, I was surrounded by groves of resilient, old-growth hemlock, and hopped over small, gurgling streams. The entire valley seemed to be framed by the delicate sub-alpine meadows, all under the watchful eye of the mountain proved to reveal the vast beauty of that undisturbed wilderness in all its majesty. I still struggled, however, in the wind and frigid cold. I was miserable, and I am frankly ashamed of that. Looking back, I would place the trail surrounding Mount Jefferson in the top five most beautiful sections of the entire trail, but I was glad when the views of the mountain finally faded into the trees, and I found myself leaving the closure area and entering back into the shelter of densely forested ridgelines. Making my camp that night on the flat plateau of one such ridge, I considered the day. Yes, I had technically broken any number of laws by willfully entering a closure area, but I had no regrets. I had assessed the dangers of the situation accurately, had adjusted accordingly. I had witnessed Jefferson Park like few others in recent generations have ever seen it: empty. As darkness crept in, another hiker passed, headed north. He looked like he was headed for the nearest trailhead, a little over five miles away. I had hopefully wondered if this might be my first day on the trail without seeing another human, but it was not. I had also hopefully wondered if it might warm up a little throughout the afternoon. It did not.
Throughout the night, I listened anxiously as light precipitation drifted and swirled in the light wind, drifting down into the clearing. The silence of the darkness was nearly deafening, and that could only mean one thing. Snow. Shining my light under the edge of my tent, I could see a thin layer forming in the dirt. Later, as the ridgeline of my tent began to sag under the weight, I resigned myself to waking about every half hour to beat the snow off and keep the walls from drooping down onto my sleeping bag. By sunrise, I may have been discouraged with the general state of affairs, but I was not. Actually, I was quite cheerful and motivated. I had only needed to leave my tent once during the night to tighten the guy-lines, and in my book, that’s a win. It was going to be a good day. As I walked, the air was icy and the wind rushed over the ridge as if being pushed by some industrial fan, bringing with it waves of cold, snowy dampness. I don’t think snow was falling from the sky, but there was enough in the trees to make it seem like it was. Cold waves of fog soon enveloped the trail, and I spent the first several hours of the day in a cloud. Given the temperature and the wind, it felt like I was walking in a blizzard, but I would occasionally catch a glimpse of a sunny, snow-free valley just several hundred feet below me, and realize that realistically, I was only just above the snow line. Yes, the wind was blowing and yes, it was cold. But things could have been a lot worse, and this, most definitely, was not a blizzard.
Gradually, as the hours passed, so did the clouds. Dense whiteness eventually gave way to a light haze which gradually yielded to beautifully clear skies. That’s when I spotted the smoke. Off to the southeast, through a gap in the trees. I could see it – a towering plume of dark smoke rising steadily from the flanks of Black Butte. A sense of panic began to rush in. I didn’t need this. I was almost to Santiam Pass. What if I got cut off and had to reverse course, back toward Mount Jefferson? My mind raced as I tried to evaluate the situation, watching the plume grow larger and larger in the flatlands to the east. Finally, two other hikers appeared from the south: thru-hikers who were now coming back to finish sections that they had skipped due to the oppressive heat and dangerous smoke that had descended on most of Northern California and Oregon just a couple months before. According to them, it was just a controlled burn, not far from where they had parked their car. Whew! I guess I’m jumpy around fires and smoke ever since being evacuated off the trail due to the Creek Fire last year. Big plumes of smoke always make me nervous now. Call it another one of my irrational fears, but wildfires don’t mess around, so I try to give them the respect they demand.
Approaching Three Fingered Jack later in the afternoon, I finally got a few bars of service and began planning my town stop in Bend. Tonight, I would camp just a few miles before Santiam Pass, the traditional entry point for Bend. Tomorrow, however, I would keep pushing, past Santiam Pass and then McKenzie pass, spending two extra nights on the trail before reaching Elk Lake Resort at the Cascade Lakes National Scenic Byway. That road, while much less travelled, would still lead directly to Bend if I could thumb a ride. That would allow me to make it almost halfway through Oregon before I headed into town to ride out the next wave of bad weather. Flanking the highly eroded lava-rock formations of the jagged volcanic peak, I could, for the first time, spot the Three Sisters Complex to the south, just past Mount Washington, another eroded, volcanic crag protruding from the rolling landscape. To the north, Mount Jefferson still stood tall, its upper heights blanketed in white. After setting up my tent, as I reclined on a rock that felt custom-made for my posterior, I realized that I would be laying directly under a dead pine that leaned out over the campsite. I debated moving my tent but couldn’t motivate myself. Instead, I ambled over to test its structural integrity by giving it a hearty push, and then spent the rest of the evening hoping and praying that the wind wouldn’t blow too hard overnight. Despite the prospect of being crushed to death, I eventually slept surprisingly well.
The next morning, I began to plan my culinary pursuits as I descended toward Santiam Pass. My first meal in town would be Five Guys. After that, dinner would be Pizza Hut. I would secure breakfast from the grocery store in the form of a platter of cinnamon rolls. Later, I would continue to dine on some sort of massive deli sandwich from somewhere (I was sure I’d be able to find a place), hopefully some Chinese (noodles!!!) and probably more pizza. The only thing that could have yanked me out of my digestible daydreams was being clobbered by dogs that ran free as their owners chatted obliviously, just around the next turn in the trail. I always have been and always will be a dog-lover, but I don’t particularly enjoy being mauled by them as I’m just trying to make progress down the trail. Reaching the highway, however, my attention was directed elsewhere as I attempted to make my way across the three roaring lanes of sixty-mile-an-hour-plus traffic. Those of you who remember the old “Frogger” computer games will understand what I’m talking about. As I safely reached the opposite shoulder, a large RV pounded on its horn as it passed. I’m sure they were just being friendly (“Hey, that’s the PCT! Hey, there’s a hiker!!”) but it still scared the living daylights out of me. Quickly, I headed back into the forest and didn’t look back. With traffic like that, town seemed less tempting.
Coasting my way across several miles of nearly flat terrain, I finally began my approach to Mount Washington and began to cross into a massive burn area. Over the last few days, it seemed like over half of the lower elevations had been burned in the last few years, and the best thing about the line of volcanic peaks that I was following was that each peak brought with it a brief respite from the miles of charred trail in between. Mount Washington, however, was too low to bring any such relief. Rounding the shoulder, the barren wasteland before me seemed to stretch out forever. That burned wasteland, though, was nothing compared to the rugged lava fields of the afternoon. Just imagine acres upon acres of black, jagged rock piled upon the earth so thick that nothing can grow among it. The trail builders had done their best to route the trail through the smoothest patches, but my feet still bore the brunt of the sharp stones. The sun reflected off the dark rock with more heat and brilliance than I had felt in quite some time, but I tried to remain thankful for that.
Climbing up the slope, I soon emerged at the top with views of Mount Jefferson, Three Fingered Jack, and Mount Washington behind me. Ahead of me, deep in the valley and across several more miles of lava fields, was McKenzie Pass. Beyond that was the Three Sisters. As I stomped my way across the other-worldly landscape, I broke out into a slow jog. My pack was finally light enough, and the unstable, jagged path beneath my feet seemed to lend itself well to short, quick steps. Past crevices and sharp ridges and lava tubes I sped, trying to take in the unique scenery while at the same time, trying to get back to solid ground as soon as possible. At one point, I stopped to get a picture of what looked like a prehistoric footprint embedded into the lava rock in the middle of the trail. Perhaps a dinosaur, perhaps something much more recent, or maybe just an interesting rock formation and a figment of my imagination, I still couldn’t help but feel like I was exploring some alien landscape that had never been seen before. Crossing the two-lane road at the bottom of the valley, I promptly emerged back onto dirt and solid ground. A few more miles, and I made my camp on the ridge above Saint Mattheiu Lake. Signs claimed that specific permits were required, and that thru-hikers were not allowed, but I was the only one there, so I wasn’t worried about it. Watching the golden sun sink over the ridge and into the lava fields, I realized that this had been my longest day so far – over twenty-five miles. Everything was good: all was right with the world, and nothing really hurt. I knew that I needed to enjoy that while it lasted.
You would think that by this point in my hike I would have known better than to pitch my tent on an open ridgeline near a pond, but apparently not. By morning, my tent was coated inside and out with a rough coating of ice. Peering out of my tent, I could see the patch of frost-free ground under the nearby tree, just feet from my tent. Oh well. I may not have been smart enough to know where to pitch my tent, but at least I had been un-smart long enough to make my peace with packing up a wet or frozen tent almost every morning. As the sun began to peek over the ridges, I made my way up and over and down and through volcanic channels and ridges formed from ancient flows of molten lava. The parts of the trail that were covered in dirt were also covered in a light layer of snow, but fortunately (or unfortunately), most of the trail was jagged, black rock. As I made my way among the ridges and passes along the shoulder of North Sister, I struggled to maintain a consistent pace, as it seemed to be social hour on the PCT. Soon, I found myself trapped in an endless discussion regarding local history including everything from the Dee Wright Observatory, the retreat of the North Sister glaciers and exploration and (humorous) naming of Opie Dilldock Pass – the gap in the ridge at which we had met. A few minutes later, after finally having made a strategic exit from that conversation, I found myself once again being roped into an in-depth examination of the local biomes and the various forms of wildlife that inhabited each. I was informed that it was so wonderful that I didn’t have earbuds in “like so many of the other ignorant hikers.” I replied that it was still early. I’ve got nothing against listening to birds, but my mind has been conditioned my entire life to need constant stimulation and you better believe that I have spent many an afternoon jamming out to anything that will take my mind off the endless miles. A little while later, I was trapped once again, for the third time, attempting to describe the trail to the north to a lone backpacker who claimed to be an experienced, local hiker, but somehow knew almost nothing about the area and was eager for me to explain every iota of intel that I had (and didn’t have) about the upcoming trail.
I may have thought that I was permanently condemned to the life of a wandering conversationalist, but by early afternoon, I finally found myself free, alone in the wilderness once again. An area identified as the Obsidian Limited Entry Area soon appeared, and I realized that the sub-alpine meadows that I was walking through seemed to glisten with a brilliant glow among the glossy, black rock, almost as if embedded with diamonds. I know I’m not supposed to take anything from the wilderness that I hike through, but I couldn’t help but bend down to pick up a small, brilliant sample of the smooth, glistening stone. I always try to collect some small memento from each of my hikes, and a small piece of obsidian seemed like an appropriate keepsake to represent the unique nature of the volcanic Cascades. With the Three Sisters beginning to pass by to the west and back toward the north, the rocky fields and meadows soon turned to soft grasses and gurgling creeks, interspersed with wide, barren fields of acidic soil that can support little more than the lowest, heartiest grasses.
It was along that final stretch for the day toward Sisters Mirror Lake, that I climbed up a slope and emerged onto a rolling, rocky plain, completely treeless for nearly two linear miles. I’ve always been particularly impressed by wide open spaces and general vastness of scale and this area was no different. As I made my way up the gentle slope, with such long sightlines of the trail in either direction, I felt like a pioneer, an explorer, perhaps the first person of my heritage to lay eyes on this specific plain. I knew, however, that I was not the first and certainly not the last. I can only hope that random areas like this, that most people will probably barely notice, remain protected for the coming generations. That they remain protected for people like me, who find a special connection to land of such scale. These areas are neither grand nor particularly photogenic, but to me, they represent the heart of the wilderness. Without these remarkably unremarkable places, our wilderness areas are reduced to the majestic mountain peaks and other notable features, along with land that, as a result of raging industrialism, has been previously completely and utterly abused until someone in some fluorescent office back east thought “We can’t get anything else out of it, so we might as well protect it.” Without these magnificently mundane expanses, our wildernesses are reduced to entertainment venues and wastelands, destinations that people either seek out for the thrill of the spectacle, or lands that are forgotten by the masses. Without the “middle ground” areas, those areas that have neither been abused nor exhausted, and are not particularly spectacular in their own right, our wilderness system is not and cannot be true wilderness, for these areas are truly the most genuine examples of the land that we should be seeking to preserve.
That night, I spent just short of dozen dark, frozen hours along the shores of Sisters Mirror Lake. By morning, my sleeping bag was drenched from condensation and nearly frozen. My towel was standing on its own, rigid with ice. If I hadn’t been just outside of town, it may have been a challenge to dry my gear enough for another semi-comfortable night, but town was exactly where I was headed. Climbing up the final ridge, I was shocked at the temperature difference. It had been cold down at the lake. Really cold. Bitterly cold. But it was at least ten to fifteen degrees colder up along the sunny ridgeline. Turning quickly down toward the trailhead, and hopefully toward warmer temperatures, I began to pick up the pace. By the time I finally reached the trailhead, just across from Elk Lake Resort, I was nearly running and finally beginning to warm up. Now all I had to do was to hitch a ride, about forty-five minutes, into town. I had decided to push further, past the traditional entry points for a resupply in Bend, and I had anticipated that this road would be a more difficult hitch. I hadn’t anticipated, however, that I wouldn’t see a single car for fifteen minutes. That one car, though, was all that it took, and I was headed into town for the first time in ten days and two-hundred miles. Ten days and two-hundred miles through a land that may not have been the most pristine example of magnificently sublime wilderness, but rather a wilderness that revealed the boundless beauty of the incredible resilience of this earth on which we have been placed.