This year I got set back up to complete Washington Section H and go from Troutlake, Rd 23 (where we started 2 years ago and went SoBo to Bridge of the Gods) and go NoBo to White Pass. This would take us up and over the Goat Rocks Wilderness Knife Edge. 64 miles to complete. The original plan set us on trail Saturday morning and off the following Friday. I knew that the knife edge section would be slow going for myself and Mama Bear, who was joining us for this section, now that she had relocated to the PNW. But apparently I was not meant to hike that section this year. Jupiter had a wedding to attend and his son was still on his summer time visit, so he was unable to make it. I didn’t want to do this section without him, it wouldn’t seem right. And on top of that Mama Bear’s mom in law, planned a last minute visit, arriving in Portland on the Friday we were to get off trail way up in White Pass. Plane tickets were already booked. So I popped into research mode, what can we do in 6 days? Timberline Trail? Wonderland? A section in Oregon? I still needed the beginning section of Oregon Section G, Barlow Pass to Timberline Lodge. I wanted at the least a 60 mile trek. So I thought we could pop in at Breighton Lake and head north to Timberline. But everything I read about the road going to Breighton was super sketch. So I landed on Olallie Lake to Ramona Falls. I wanted to hit up Ramona Falls in the morning light and get some better photographs. In order for that to happen, we needed two short days. A jump start 4 miles on Friday afternoon and a slow easy wake up and roll day at the end, with a quick half mile to Ramona and then down to the Ramona Falls trail head. The plan was solidified!
Our flight landed in Portland at 9:30 AM. With plenty of time for Mama Bear to pick us up, take us to her place, pack backpacks, hit up Burgerville (a must tradition for me, as this was my hometown “go to” I miss it so much burger place, we all have one, you know what I am talking about!), then drive the 2 and a half hours to Olallie Lake and be dropped off the on the PCT to start our next section.
The drive into Olallie Lake was interesting to say the least. The further away from the city we got, the rougher the road became. We can’t thank Mama Bear’s husband (now Papa Bear or Superman, we’ll talk more about Superman on day #2) for the long drive to the trail head! Our pavement road turned into winding dusty path to nowhere fast, but his Subaru Impreza only bottomed out once. We finally arrived at our destination. We piled out of the car, and bee lined to the nearest outhouse, to enjoy the last sit down we would have in several days. Then it was time for the obligatory pre-hike photos and pictures from the dock of Mt. Jefferson by the lake, he was wearing his cloud hat of course! But it was still a stunning view none the less. It was 3:30 PM by the time we took our send off by the PCT sign trail photos and said our goodbyes to Papa Bear/Superman.
It was going to me a short afternoon trek, with it being a jump start day and only 4 miles to the first camp on Jude Lake. In my research, I knew that those 4 miles were going to be fairly flat with little elevation changes. Magic Man and Mama Bear put me in the lead, since I am the absolute slowest hiker in the world. No matter how hard I try to increase my pace, it seems as though I never can, I have learned to face the fact that I will forever be slow. Then add in photos and taking in the view, and the journey is the destination thought process, making me even slower. Enjoy the moment, breathe it all in. There had been several sightings and reports of sightings of cougars in the area that we were going to be traveling. Cougars are my all time biggest fear on the trail. Mama Bear didn’t help by sending me several cougar sighting videos, the one from Daisy Hikes hit home pretty good! Especially since she was on the PCT. We wanted to stay pretty grouped together.
(sorry for language, but I would have had the exact same reaction!)
Out of my comfort zone, in the lead, the anticipation of sights yet to be seen, we began our trek, kicking up trail dust. The trail was fairly flat, wide and easily smooth. I immediately got into a good rhythm. The trail was flying under my feet, there wasn’t a ton to look at besides, huckleberries, beautiful green trees, birds, wildflowers and trail. I can see why this section is often done in two days. We also had the impending doom of a forecast thunder storm that threatened to produce several pockets of high winds, lightening and rain. We were wanting to get to camp and set up tents before that force of nature took on it fury.
I am not sure if it was the thoughts of cougars, the flat easy dirt sidewalk, or the incoming storm that made the miles fly by, but we reached our camp destination, Jude Lake, in literally an hour! 4 miles, one hour! This is the fastest I have ever hiked in my life. When we hit the bridge of Jude Lake, I sent Magic Man and Mama Bear up the trail to the south of the lake, while I continued the .8 mile to the “designated camp spot” listed on the HalfMile app I had down loaded before it sadly went away. It would be a tight fit for three, perfect for one or two, no lake view and a little trek to get water, plus it was also right on the trail. I was hoping, the others had better luck. I had read a few blogs that said, the south side camping area is better. It was! Mama Bear met me back on the PCT and we headed up the trail to camp. It was in fact a great camp.
We spread out and got set up. We started at a leisurely pace, and then we heard it, off in the distance…. rolling quiet… boooooooooom. Thunder in the distance, reminding us of the called for storm. We hastened our pace. Mama Bear headed down to the lake to start the refilling process and I immediately began setting up my tent. I wanted to be able to quickly toss items in in case the sky opened up and dumped water on our little happy lake crew. Magic Man sat in his chair contemplating life with his grape scented cigar smoke wafting through the air and hanging onto branches in camp. He watched the melee between myself and Mama Bear. I was struggling in the hustle of getting my tent up and Mama Bear’s panicked voice from down on the waters edge, finally drug me away from my tent rising.
Down at the lake, the struggle was becoming real. Mama Bear couldn’t get water to pump through her Katadyn. She had only used it one time since replacing the filter. It would take a couple of pumps and then freeze. We took it apart, flushed it and repeated. Freeze. Mama Bear began to think that she had grabbed the wrong filter and put in her dirty filter. Her and I were sharing the water filter, and I had not brought mine along. We were sharing the carrying responsibilities as well. We fumbled and tried and fumbled and tried everything to get it to work. Magic Man had a Sawyer Squeeze, which required a “dirty bottle” and a clean bottle. Mamma Bear and I were not set up for that. Plus the Sawyer is great for one. But for three? The process is so time consuming. Scoop and squeeze, scoop and squeeze. BUT if you have no other filter, I guess this is the process that we will have to manage with. Magic Man suggested saving all our clean water to drink as Mama Bear used his Sawyer Squeeze to fill up her 2 liter platypus, while I waited my turn. I had already combined my clean water into one smart water bottle, this dirty water bottle would leave me with only one liter of clean water. I knew there was a couple of ten mile, no water sections and tomorrow night might be a dry camp, if we were spent at 10.5 miles. Mama Bear agreed to share water with me if needed. As I waited my turn Magic Man suggested using dirty water to cook, since it was to be boiled anyway. I was cooking a noodle meal, that required the noodles to be in the water cooking while boiling. I asked if that would be a bad idea, since I would be putting my food into dirty water, then boiling it. There was also the dilemma that my food takes longer to cook since I don’t do the mountain house crap meals, and for this trip I had nabbed some do it yourself kits from Packit Gormet’s grocery, Grocery Link which required some re-hydration prior to cooking. Also boiling water first would run me out of fuel in a quick hurry. I only requested a small bottle of fuel. I took Magic Man’s advice though. He’s been on way more trips then me and has been in this situation before. (I think this would come to haunt me later.)
After dinner completion, some SoBo thru hikers came into camp and started to set up, just the rain started to pitter pat. It was just a slight splattering at first, but the booming thunder in closer proximity made everyone nervous. A couple other hikers came in and looked at the lake, thinking about hoping in a taking a swim, but had second thoughts, it wasn’t really a lake per say, but a really really large pond. I let them know that Olallie was much larger for a swim and bath and that it was four short flat miles further. They opted to move on. The thunder must have started to scare others on the trail and soon our small camp was filling up. The three of us ducked into our tents around 6:00 PM just as the sky began to open and drop some more serious rain down on us. I laid there for a long time listening to the rain, I wished I had brought my book, but from past experiences, I have been too tired to do any reading. The rain had just forced us into tents early. Just as the sky was turning to twilight, a SoBo came into camp, fairly quietly, he asked if someone was in one of the tents, he was quiet enough that I didn’t hear the name of the person or the tent. It was the person he knew and they had a quiet conversation about how their day went, if he was setting up his new tarp and how that was working out. The latest to join our little camp on Jude Lake, said the weather had taken him off the trail, that he had been shooting for Olallie, so he “only made it 37 miles today” My mouth opened so wide! He then talked about flat trails and I took a sigh of relief. I had been concerned about tomorrows 13.8 mile day. I knew we had one section of up going to Pinhead Buttes and a ridge line to travel across before starting the downhill drop into Warm Springs River.
I started to drift off to sleep, when a flash woke me fully, then a boom. More pittering rain, flash and boom. Another flash, I started the count and got to two, BOOM. I lay there listening ad counting and being awake and nervous. I finally had to tell myself, there is not a damn thing you can do. If the the lightening sparks the forest, you can’t out run it, even if you jumped in the lake, the heat would boil you, just go to sleep. Flash… one, two BOOM. Pitter pat pitter pat pitter… flash… one, two BOOM. Pitter….pat… sleep finally took over and day #1 was done.
Journeys of Snake Jumper 