Month: August 2016

When I woke up, it was just too cold to get up. The depression of the lake near me probably made this an especially cold site. I laid in bed more than an hour before I ventured out.

When I checked the thermometer on my backpack around 7 in the morning, it showed around freezing. It had probably dropped well below freezing last night. This was a big problem, because I hadn’t put my water filter in my tent last night. Sawyer filters, like mine, are made up of microscopic tubes, with water inside them. If the water freezes, it can rupture the tube, allowing larger objects through the filter.

So, for now, I’d need to treat my water with tablets, which is time-consuming. I guess summer really is over, I’m really going north, and freezing temperatures are something that can happen again.

Once again, I started late and cold — around 9:30. But, because of yesterday’s long miles, I only had to cover 20 miles today, so a late start was not a big problem.

Yet, I was slow all day. Maybe it was the long day yesterday, maybe it was just that I’m eating too much Nutella. But my pace was slow, and I felt tired. I didn’t even take many pictures.

Eventually, the trail began to scale Mt. Hood, and I got clear views.

And, soon after, I reached the Timberline Lodge. I had a resupply package there, and I wanted to take a look at the building. It was a beautiful WPA-era building in a scenic setting.

After sorting my resupply and examining the building’s history placards, it was getting dark, so I went back up to the trail and pitched my tent.

The stars were out in full force, with a clear milky way across the sky.

Note: This post is out of order. It is from earlier in my hike when I didn’t have time to keep my blog up-to-date, so I’m posting it now.

I had a slow start today. I needed to figure out how to carry my bear can. In the position I’d carried it in yesterday, it’d slipped out, so I needed to find a better way to attach it to my backpack.

I tried several ways, but decided on just a slight change to the position I’d used yesterday (as shown in the Kennedy Meadows picture). I tied some orange cordage onto the side of my backpack, connecting the body of the pack to the lid, such that the bear can could no longer slide out the side. It was clearly homemade, and wouldn’t last forever. But, it didn’t need to last forever, it only needed to last until Sonora Pass, where the National Park Service’s bear canister requirement ends.

But there was lots to worry about before Sonora Pass.

After crossing the bridge over the the Kern River fork that we’d slept by, we started a climb. The Kern River water wasn’t very good, there were cow pies next to it, but it tided me over to the next water source, Cow Creek (much better-tasting, ironically, because it didn’t have any cow pies nearby).

Elizabeth finished filtering her water before I did, and she wanted to go faster, so she went ahead, and we split up for the rest of the climb. I finished my filtering soon after, and started uphill.

I reached the pass (Olancha Pass I think?), and noticed we were above 10000 feet — a taste of the high passes to come. The treeline should be not much higher.

The vegetation seemed different up here. Dead tree trunks, at least, had a distinctive spiral pattern in their wood, as if they were twisted very slowly as they grew.

Descending from the pass, I asked another hiker if he’d seen the woman in the bonnet pass by. He said about 20 minutes ago. I hiked a couple minutes, and asked another hiker the same question. He said 10 minutes ago. Then, about 30 seconds later, I saw Elizabeth sitting on a rock, finishing her lunch.

I started setting up my own lunch, but something was wrong. Elizabeth wasn’t moving. Then, she slumped over, and dropped her food.

She came to quickly, but described symptoms like seeing the wrong colors, dizziness, and nausea. She fainted again (again, only briefly).

We rested. She asked if the people we camped with last night have all gone by, one was a medic. I wasn’t sure. We rested some more.

An hour or so later, the medic came by. He checked her symptoms, and thought it was altitude sickness. He suggested rest, then to camp at the lowest altitude we could easily get to tonight.

We thanked him, and he started hiking away. I quickly said, “Just a second — I didn’t get your name. I’m Town Food, this is Pitter-Patter.”

“I’m Professor Kind” he said, and walked off.

Soon afterwards, we were ready to go. Our new destination for the night was the lowest campsite nearby, Death Canyon Creek. Elizabeth seemed to be hiking fine now — we passed most of the people who had passed us while we were resting.

(N.B. I now think Elizabeth was not having altitude sickness, since it didn’t happen at the right time. I think it was blood-sugar related, and caused by food.)

We arrived at Death Canyon Creek in the early afternoon. It’s a popular campsite — maybe 15 hikers were there.

Being at a campsite this early in the day was a different experience, with people taking their hike at a different pace from us. Somebody was practicing throwing rocks with a sling. Someone was sunbathing. Other people set up their tents just for midday, then cleared out in the afternoon.

We took our time setting up tents, filtering water, cooking dinner, chatting with the other hikers, etc.

Someone made a campfire later in the evening. We sat nearby and chatted with the other hikers about everything. Elizabeth tried a dinner experiment where she mixed fried snack peas into instant potatoes. It was a culinary failure, but it did turn the potatoes greenish.

Soon enough, it was time for sleep. We’ll see how Elizabeth feels tomorrow.

The Olallie Lake Store is just to the west of a small mountain. So, the sunrise doesn’t hit it until fairly late. This, coupled with the fact that the backpackers’ tenting area was in the trees meant that most hikers, including me, got up fairly late.

As I went about my morning tasks, a couple groggy, hungover southbounders asked about the spring again.

Since I was next to a store, I wanted some town food for breakfast, but the choices were limited. The Olallie Lake Store only has power when the generator is running, and it usually isn’t. So the things they sell are mostly trail food. I settled on coffee and Hostess little chocolate donuts — both things I could have on the trail. The total cost for these meager provisions was $5, plus $1 for refilling the coffee.

But, sitting on the front porch of the store, sipping hot coffee on a cold morning, looking out over the lake, was well worth it. I had a long chat with a retired hiker doing the Oregon section. We chatted about who backpacks and why, as the coffee warmed me up for the day.

After all this, I wasn’t actually on the trail until about 9:45 — a tremendously late start. This wasn’t a big deal, though, because my next resupply was at the Timberline Lodge, about 50 miles away — probably 2 easy days. I could try to get there earlier in the day, but the all-you-can-eat breakfast there was famous.

The trail today was standard Oregon: Tall conifers, with knee-high berry bushes on either side, and elevation changes that were gentle and few.

In fact, the trail was so gentle, I got going really fast. I’d seen Bill and Breanna’s names on a list of Olallie Lake campsite users, and thought I might be able to catch them.

The miles flew by, one after another, all day.

When I finally got to my target campsite, I wasn’t the first to arrive. There were already two backpacks there. They were similar to what I remembered Bill and Breanna carrying. There was a bear canister there, even though bear canisters weren’t required here — Bill always used a bear canister, even in the desert. There was a two person tent pitched in the center of the campsite.

Instead of people, though, there were two pairs of shoes. Probably their owners had gone downhill to the lake. So I set up camp, and started eating dinner, wondering if Bill and Breanna were out swimming.

As I ate my third tortilla, a young couple I hadn’t met before came up from the lake. We had a brief chat about today’s trail, and went to bed.

In the end, I passed just about everybody I’d seen at Olallie Lake, but never saw any sign of Bill or Breanna.

Today may have been my fastest day, though it wasn’t my longest — over 30 miles in 9.5 hours, lunch included.