After enjoying a couple days in Cascade Locks and the annual celebration of all things PCT at Trail Days, we bid goodbye to Whitney going home with my parents (and her first HS Cross Country practice the very next day!) and then Ashley and I joined an Italian thru hiking couple with a generous trail angel named Teresa who drove us the three hours back to Santiam Pass to recover our car. No broken windows and a fun adventure on back roads to get there! We had a late lunch in the mountain town of Sisters and a lovely dinner at the Tetherow Golf Club with Ashley’s aunt and uncle, Lisa and Tim.
Ashley’s feet needed to rest and it was too early for me to make the Final Push to Fifty, so Monday afternoon, Ashley drove me a half hour to Elk Lake so I could fill another gap, a fifty miler through serious Lava Country and back to Santiam Pass. It was pretty heavy with local and distant forest fire smoke, but mostly like sitting adjacent to a camp fire and fine to hike in. I pushed 12 miles until dark (and with a month to the equinox, wow can I feel the days shortening rapidly!). I saw a knoll that looked like a good site for camp but found the top covered sun ash mixed with dirt and burned trees from a ~10 year-old burn. I spent 20 minutes kicking dirt and debris around to make space for my tent, which got a new coating of blackened ash. Once I laid down on my closed-cell foam, I realized I had a nice bed of rocks under the dirt I cleared, so I was in for a lumpy night.
I was rewarded through with a clearing of the smoke (a bit) when I woke and enjoyed breakfast under the hulking profile of the middle sister, sampling some new oatmeal I’d picked up at Trail Days (nice job small vendor Ready Wise!). Then I set out, looking at 20 miles to Lava Lake camp, a car campground that was often crowded in the summer, but was hoping the road closure of Mackenzie pass from the west for the local fire would help that out…
There were several sensitive areas the PCT passed through with tight restrictions on visitors to maintain its wilderness character, but the active fires did the job, leaving this beautiful area almost empty of people as I passed through. Obsidian valley lived up to its name with improbable volumes of the black volcanic glass everywhere, in the form of boulders and scattered about on the ground like beautifully broken bottles. I took a 90 minute lunch by Obsidian Falls, reveling in the black glass, green moss, and cold water in an area where most water sank quickly into the volcanic cinder. Speaking of sinking, after the break, I filtered one more liter and proceeded to fall into the stream, backwards. Slipped once, then a second time up to my ankle and a third up to my knee. Brilliant. I then put my other shoe in the water just so they could feel equally wet as I walked.
Rounding the North Sister was beautiful with an expanding array of recent (post last Ice Age) lava flows and cinder cones. There was one last wilderness lake (Matthieu) where a surprisingly chilly wind was blowing and then I made the Lava Lake camp about dusk. Just a lone PCTer in the whole campground (lamenting that she just broke a tent pole – one of the hazards of light equipment and no fun when a long way from repairs/replacement!) I had enough space for 10 of my tents and a picnic table right by the steaming/warm lake. Such luxury after my previous night!
I had 21 miles the next day for my last part of this 50 miler (or 52 I guess with side quests). I walked the closed road again for a mile (I really enjoy this part of the experience) and was absolutely floored by the remote beauty of McKenzie Pass! A huge lava field and historical markers explaining how the road was painstakingly built in the 1860’s as a wagon road to pass through the mountains 1,000 feet lower than the alternative (still pretty high at 5,700 ft!). Amazing views of the Sisters, Mt Jefferson in the distance and the wild spire of Mt Washington in the foreground. The smoke drifted back in over the morning, but just made the mystic feel of the place even stronger. I did a small side quest to scale Little Belknap among tumbled lava blocks and lava tube caves and then finished off my Topo shoes on the sharp lava rock. They served me well for 600 miles and the Bend REI was well placed to serve up my fourth and (hopefully) final pair for PCT 23.
Ashley’s feet felt better today so she hiked in 7 miles from the other side to meet me at the PCT friendly Big Lake Youth camp where they generously offered space and shared meals! We just missed lunch but enjoyed the shaded picnic tables and again appreciated the generosity and kindness if so many places along this special trail. We walked the rest of the way out, Ashley getting a solid 14 miles herself with her pack weight. We had a glorious Phad Thai dinner in Bend and sundowner sampler (and free PCT beer) at the Crux Fermentation Project before one more lovely night at Tim and Lisa’s.
Now it’s back to Washington to try and beat the fires and first big rains/snow. We drove back to Cascade Locks and a final Oregon meal at Thunder Island Brewing where we’d sat exactly 6 days earlier to kick off Trail Days. We did a sundown walk over Bridge of the Gods together and then Ashley returned home and I began my final 130 trail miles to close out my 40’s. Ashley is going to shoot for her first solo stretch to do the White Pass to Snoqualmie Pass set I did last month and then we plan to meet up in the Goat Rocks in 9 days, on my final day of age 49. The dream conceived in that location a decade ago is a little more than a week from reality…