After another break back home, it was time for my THIRD drive south during this WalkAbout and second consecutive stay in Ashland, Oregon. A month ago I got to enjoy a brief overnight say with my parents on the way south to rejoin the trail at mile 1320 in Chester California. This time, it was a drive with Ashley to actually join the trail here and start tackling Oregon! On the way down, we had a lovely lunch with my cousin Russell in Portland and saw a bit of his epic project for adventures coming in his life as he builds out the interior of a Sprinter Van he purchased in March, stripped down to the metal and built back up by his hands.
Ashley and I spent the morning of the 4th of July at the aptly named Swank House in Ashland, watching the parade and getting our gear set by the proverbial white picket fence. We arranged a ride at midday with another awesome local trail angel who lives just a few minutes from downtown. Such amazing people, ONCE AGAIN who love helping PCT hikers passing through. A beautiful blend of favors and small business as she was happy to give short rides from her place or Ashland to the trail 15 minutes away and was available for fair compensation for longer drives. So we left our car in her driveway, got the short ride to the trail and then was set up to pay her for the two hour ride back to Ashland from Crater Lake after we completed our 125 mile section hike over the next 8 days.
We set out a bit past 1pm, leaving from right around the I-5 Siskiyou Summit crossing, the fabled spot that makes driving from home to California in the winter spicy. But the last vestiges of snow here had been gone for several weeks and it was fully into summer season, finally. We’d encounter some snow still during this section, but not for a while. This was mile 1720 on the PCT, coincidentally exactly 300 trail miles north of my last trail rejoin about a month ago. It’s often considered the start of the Oregon section going north bound, even though the actually CA/OR border crosses the trail at mile 1692, about halfway between Ashland and the previous major pit spot, Seiad Valley, CA. We may try to sneak in this section Southbound during our hoped October bonus sections to fill in some of the gaps…
But, I digress: We hoped to cover around 13 miles, a bit ambitious on our first real trail day out together, starting so late in the day. However, I was feeling pretty confident that Ashley would have no problem keeping pace after our test run up Aasgard Pass back home just 5 days before getting on-trail here. That was an 11 1/2 hour, 13 1/2 mile, 5,100 foot vertical effort with a big scramble up the pass, which she did with ease. Most of the trail in southern Oregon isn’t over steep, rugged terrain, but there was still a lot of vertical gain, right out of the gate (and we actually went south to go north for a bit!) We stopped for a 4:30pm ‘lunch’ near Pilot Peak, an iconic volcanic plug visible from I5 and an important way marker for travelers passing through for eons. As we sat down to eat, Mt. Shasta popped into view too, which would continue to be visible all the way to Crater Lake, visually part of the PCT for nearly 500 trail miles from around 1350 leaving Lassen NP and though Crater Lake at mile 1830!
After our late lunch, we were game to find a good campsite when we felt like it, whether 8 miles in for the day or 15. Since it was the 4th of July, we thought it would be cool to have a view back north towards the town of Ashland for their official show. There was a marked camping area around Hobart Bluff, which met that criteria, but I also saw a short side trail to Little Pilot Peak, just a bit passed 10 miles for the day. I figured we could carve out a flat spot for the tent if we tried that out and it was even better than we could have hoped! Views towards the sunset and Ashland to the Northeast and back towards Shasta nearly due south. A perfect wind-sheltered spot for our tent and almost none of the bugs that would come in later for our trail visit! We sat back to enjoy the views of Ashland to the Northwest and Shasta to the south as the sun set. We whipped up some Phad Thai for dinner and then sat back in our luxury item chairs and watched the fireworks rise above Ashland at dusk in the distance!
We were a little reluctant to leave this beautiful spot, but pushed on in the morning, stopping first just a mile up the trail at a piped spring bringing crystal clear cool water from somewhere deep in the mountain. We passed a road where some day hikers were out, including a small group of volunteers and kids out to enjoy the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument through a local non-profit. They asked what we were doing and we said ‘walking to Crater Lake this week’, which was still nearly 100 miles in front of us. We asked if anyone wanted to join us on the walk. There was much vigorous head shaking, but one little girls said ‘yeah, that sounds like fun, I’ll come along!’ We loved her enthusiasm, and hope she’s a future PCT thru hiker in the making.
While we slept OK the night before, we were still adapting to sleeping on the ground with nothing but an inch of foam between us and the dirt. So about 6 miles in, we stopped for lunch and then whipped out those foam mats to lie to take a nap on the grass in the shade of a tree (also realizing the heat was sapping us a bit as it was some 95F in the local lowlands and at least 85F even up over 5,000 feet.) That nap was a good 90 minutes and when we began to advance again, we heard there was a good BBQ spot not far off the trail intersection when we hit the Green Springs Highway/Route 66. We saw on the map there was a quiet road that took us back north after stopping for BBQ, covering roughly the same miles as the PCT that went further to the west. Since the PCT Class of 2023 is just totally off the rails, we made our own personal adaptation, highway walking, getting a ride for the last 3/4 miles after a kind local insisted, and then having our second dinner on the trail be an amazing dish of tri tip steak and a tall ice cold beverage! While we were eating, a couple women who were on a motorcycle tour stopped by our table to ask if we were PCT hikers. Sure thing we were, Ashley having earned the badge a solid 20 miles on the trail in the bag this section. We had fun answering their questions about our experiences and then another dose of trail magic – they bought us some ice cream! This little things just keep making the trail the pinnacle of humanity, and we are grateful for every dose and whiff.
We had about 4 miles to walk down the road, declining a couple more offers for rides, one understanding, the other looking at us like we were just nuts for choosing to walk on a road rather than take a ride. All of it just made us smile. Tonight’s camp was in a designated PCT camping area by Hyatt Lake. Basically a huge field in a clearing with it’s own, highly valued, pit toilet and trash can. There were maybe 8 others camping on the other side of the field, but this place could have accommodated 200 tents if so needed! No need to break out the stove tonight, helpful as we were a couple meals short on this 8 day/125 mile push. We slept happy with that belly full of BBQ 🙂
July 6th saw us cover 15 miles, as we continued to add a couple miles to the daily total each day during this opening stretch. We had lunch on the shores of Howard Prairie Lake, a reservoir that locals said was as full as it had been in years. As we approached, I saw this near-perfect cinder cone pyramid in the distance, and realized I had no idea what volcano this was. It turns out this was Mt McLoughlin, an extinct volcano, but the one closest to the former Mt. Mazama, now Crater Lake. When I think I have a good grasp on all the current and former volcanoes along the Cascade Range, I’m reminded that nope, I either didn’t know or had forgotten. We slowly became interested, enamored, and then obsessed with this beautiful 9,500 foot tall peak as we approached from the south. After gazing it across the lake, we decided to walk the shore and up through a campground to rejoin the trail. There were some spigots at what we thought was the public campground, but turned out to be a private campground. One gentleman came by to let us know the land was private as we had started to fill our water bottles and we profusely apologized. He changed his tone immediately and another local was again so kind and generous. After I explained I now had over 700 miles on the trail this year, he said ‘wow, can I shake your hand!’ My first thought was, well, I’ve also skipped over 1,000 miles to get here, and many of the thru hikers that started around the time I did are pushing 1,200 to 1,500 miles at this point. Strange way the mind works I guess, discounting that I’ve ‘only’ done 700 miles and feeling like a slacker…
Speaking of not being a slacker, Ashley was in Day 3 now of her PCT experience and was just ON FIRE after lunch. We had a 2,000 foot climb ahead of us, with the one water source in a 12 mile stretch towards the top. She pushed the pace so hard (already 10 miles in for our day as we started the climb) that I could barely keep up, averaging over 3 mph/20 minutes per mile. As a general rule, that is the magic threshold for me as I generally average 2.5 mph/24 minute miles and with Ashley on board, her pack actually a little heavier than mine, pushed our pace higher than I had been during all previous stretches. You could say, I was in awe. After we filled up at the water source, using my collapsible 4 liter bottle with it’s extra 8 lbs, we knew we’d have to scrap to find a flat space to camp. The only marked camp in this next 6 mile stretch was occupied and we failed in an effort to find the top of ‘Old Baldy’ bushwhacking through the forest near by. I was a little misled by the mountain’s name as it really should have been called ‘Old Shrubbery’ with all the brush about. We did finally find a descent spot just a couple more miles beyond, with the filtered light of the sunset through the trees and the last spot when then the mosquitos were mild until we hit Crater Lake, still some 50 miles ahead of us.
Day 4 dawned beautiful again, the few mossies floating about but not attacking too hard. We had a decision point for our day’s destination, both about 16 miles of walking today. Either sticking to the main PCT and going more west towards Fish Lake, or breaking off on a connector trail to the east to Lake of the Woods. We were influenced by the grantor of my trail name, Quaking Leaf, who was just a couple days ahead of us now, hiking Oregon with his 14 year old daughter (trail name, Dig Dug) and decided to follow the path to Lake of the Woods. First we stopped for lunch at the South Brown Mountain Shelter, which famously hosted a gargantuan rat in a big rats nest in it’s corner. Yep, the rats nest was something else and we poked our heads inside the shelter, and then poked right back out, not interested in meeting said rat. There was a nice hand pump for filling up water and about 6 other PCT hikers about sharing stories. One of the guys, we’d seen earlier in the day when he passed us, was a local legend named Handyman. A couple weeks earlier when Erin and I were leaving Burney Falls, we’d heard about this guy who had fallen on his face, fractured his skull, been airlifted out to a hospital in Redding, and then was back on trail the VERY NEXT DAY. Well here we were, this was the guy hanging out for lunch 300 trail miles north with now just a little red mark on his left check where he’d smashed his face. A few days later in Crater Lake, we heard other hikers regaling his story to another group. Endless stories arise from this trail experience, but this is becoming one of my favorites. I mean who cracks there face open, gets a heli ride, and doesn’t miss a day on the trail???
Shortly after this stop, we took that connector trail and that also coincided with our first jaunt through TRUE mossie territory. Ashley was wearing her yoga pants instead of her skort for this section and paid the price. These tiny blood sucking ladies were laser accurate, landing on her hips and hamstrings no matter how fast we walked, landing a solid 100 bits up and down her legs before we left that stretch of the gauntlet. She wasn’t pleased, but I’m sure she contributed to the lives of 100,000 new mossies yet to be born. Things looked up for us as we finally strolled into the Lake of the Woods resort. Another part of Oregon I was completely ignorant of and was just absolutely fabulous beauty. Evening sun filtering through the tall trees as we sat down, hopped on some WiFi and had a couple HUGE meals with a 16 oz steak for Ashley and roasted chicken for me. It was a Friday night in July with perfect weather (cooler by the lake) and as expected every bit of lodging and formal camping was taken, reserved weeks or even months earlier. But as luck would have it, there was a single available night at the secondary campground, aptly called ‘sunset’ and we were able to set up camp and then watch that sunset over the Lake, setting behind McLoughlin to cap the first half of our Ashland to Crater Lake run in style. As the light faded, we also concluded: We are walking from this lake shore, to the summit of that volcano tomorrow, come hell or highwater!
