Author: Marcus

It was hard to leave Trout Lake. Huckleberry muffins and two cups of coffee helped fuel me up to reach escape velocity, though.

Running some errands in the morning, I chatted with a younger PCT hiker who told me about another brother and sister hiking the trail together, about 2 days ahead of us.

“They’re named Smokey and Brother,” he said.
“Not Smokey and the Bandit?” I asked.
“No, I haven’t met them,” he said, “there’s another Smokey this year?”

Clearly, I’m old.

Soon enough, a trail angel had driven us to the trailhead. Where, as it happened, Coppertone awaited. We sat and chatted about the upcoming trail, Coppertone’s project to summit the highest thing in each county the PCT passes through, and huckleberries.

Apparently, some hikers had noticed the sign by the Trout Lake restaurant that said the restaurant would buy huckleberries. They had a gallon of them, and wanted to defray the cost of their town visit — huckleberries can be up to $75/gal.

Unfortunately, it seems you need a license to sell huckleberries in Trout Lake, and the restaurant wouldn’t buy them. They wouldn’t even barter for food.

So, a warning for PCT hikers: You can’t sell huckleberries without a license.

We didn’t get on the trail until after 10:30 this morning, but we soon entered the Mt. Adams Wilderness, a part of the trail with many mountain views.

There were other trailside attractions, too.

It got cold late in the day. Summer is clearly over. We set up camp with three other hikers, and went to sleep.

It occurred to me, we only have about 400 miles left. At a 25 mile pace, that’s only about 16 days. That’s not a lot of days.

Our campsite was surprisingly warm in the morning. Warm, and humid — my quilt had gotten condensation.

We packed up and headed down the trail. Curiously, at the place I’d seen the lights, we saw no sign of Bill — or of a usable campsite of any kind. The ground was covered in branches and bushes, with no clearings for tenting.

The trail was easy today, and we only had about 15 miles to the road where we’d hitch into town. Alongside that easy trail, there were many huckleberry bushes, and I finally felt certain enough that they really were edible to eat some of them.

Aside from huckleberry foraging, it was pretty much walk, walk, walk, hoping to get near Trout Lake by lunch.

The town of Trout Lake is known for its affinity for PCT hikers, and when we were getting close to the road, we called the general store to arrange for somebody to drive is into town. Apparently there are many Trout Lake residents who are happy to drive out to the trailhead in the middle of a Monday to help hikers get to town. It would be 13 miles of road walking, otherwise.

They connected us to Gary. Gary picked us up with this.

It was a comfy ride into town.

Trout Lake is a pleasant little town. There’s a restaurant, store, post office, and bookkeeper, and that’s about it for downtown.

We thought of staying at the local druidic abbey, but it was 4 miles out of town and a little expensive, so we stayed at a bed and breakfast close to downtown.

All we really needed to do in town was buy a bit more than 2 days of trail food, and the general store was fine for that. It was a casual place, where the locals knew all the stock.

We got our trail food, and some Oregon and Washington beer, and had dinner at the town’s restaurant. One of the other customers identified us as PCT hikers, and before we knew it, we had a ride back to the trailhead from our bed and breakfast at 9:30 the next morning.

We had our dinner, headed back to the bed and breakfast, had our beer, discussed DJ Jazzy Jeff, and went to sleep.

Today was much the same as yesterday, with long stretches of tree-lined trail.

But, there were a few new sights. Although the view was usually blocked by trees, we did catch the occasional glimpse of a major mountain. In fact, there was a spot where we could see all of Mounts Adams, St. Helens, and Hood from nearly the same vantage point.

Generally, the trail is taking us towards Mt. Adams right now, snaking its way past water sources.

Soon before camp, we ran into Bill again. He’d gotten stung by something, and his right arm had swollen quite a bit. He said he’d look for a camp spot soon after us.

We set up camp a little early, since we’d  happened to find a nice spot near the end of the day, and had done more mileage than expected — a 28-mile day.

While brushing my teeth, I walked down the trail a bit, towards the border of the Indian Heaven Wilderness. We had camped about 200 feet short of the official border. Just on the east side of the trail, I saw bright lights and shadows flickering around in the woods. Maybe it was Bill setting up camp, but I bet he doesn’t waste batteries on that kind of light show. I crept back to camp, not wanting to attract the attention of the forest denizens.

As we set up camp, it felt like everything was wet, from the humidity. I hope this isn’t the beginning of Washington showing us the weather it’s famous for.