August 10th, 2022 by Jon
We woke up after a very solid night’s sleep from our long day. We ate breakfast in our fortress, A.K.A. tent, to keep the mosquitoes from eating us alive as we tried to eat our food. Once we packed up everything we could from within our tent, we braved the mosquitoes and the cold and stepped outside. The sun hadn’t come over the ridge yet, and so the shade felt ice cold. I hiked with my sweater on for the first time in weeks. We pushed over a pine-covered ridge before coming to an open meadow. The far edge of it was a sheer rock wall, and behind it, one of the Sisters towered above it.
We walked down into a small depression and hiked along that, still in the meadow, for a half mile or so. We climbed out the other side and came to a small stream. When it’s cold, we go through way less water, so even though it had already been a few miles, Singsong and I had each only drunk a quarter of a liter. We kept pushing and hiked through an old burn, with lots of green-looking regrowth among the white skeleton trees that still stood on the hillside. We hiked down through the burn off the side of the mountain, went up and over another ridge, and could see mountains and valleys far out to the west, with clouds filling every valley we could see.
We hiked up and over that ridge, and then down into yet another valley where we walked past a few section hikers. They’ve been all over the place in this section, and we could see them packing up camp. We got to the edge of the meadow, and before going up, we took a long break in the trees at the base of the climb. We had gone 6 miles in a little under 2 hours, so we felt we had earned some of the time back. After a snack and a break, huddling with Singsong’s jacket over our legs to block the wind, we started hiking again. The trail led up the ridge to the east, and we followed it, got on a ledge, turned as we did, and headed north again. We picked up water at a stream here, and it was ice-cold. There were still a lot of snow patches on the mountain above, so it makes sense.
After filtering, we continued on, hiking across rocky, exposed bits of trail, ducking into groups of trees for only moments, then back out onto the exposed trail. We came to a sign that marked the beginning of the Obsidian Limited Entry Area. As PCT hikers, we could pass through here but not camp here. We hiked up to Obsidian Falls and took in its beauty for a while before pushing to the top of the ridge, where we found a small creek that fed the falls and had an amazing mountain backdrop behind it. Obsidian appeared in the trail, the creek was flowing, the sun was shining, and it felt like one of the best lunch spots on the trail.
After about an hour, we kept walking through the obsidian area, looking in awe at the mountains, water, and meadows here. Besides Crater Lake, it was the most spectacular part of Oregon so far. From there, we climbed for a long time up a ridge and came to the edge of a massive lava rock flow. The trail became completely lava rock, and we wound our way through fields of it for a few miles before getting back into the forest. The trail wound its way past a few creeks and streams that were exceptionally cold and tasted amazing. We passed another set of lakes with a set number of designated campsites and admired them from afar. Our PCT permit doesn’t let us camp at the Matthieu Lakes area, so we continued on.
The next few miles went through an old burn section, and I enjoyed the sound of the wind in the trees. I had a stare down with a deer for a while, and it didn’t move until I saw quite a ways past it. Eventually, I came to the intersection where I could take a side trail to Lava Lake Camp. It’s a primitive campground with a pit toilet and picnic tables, and we wanted to camp here for the night. We were out of stove fuel, so I asked the woman next to us if we could boil some water on her stove, and she happily agreed and even gave us 4 nectarines! They were seriously amazing, and we each had one with dinner and plan to have the other one tomorrow morning with breakfast. We sat and talked just the two of us at the table for a long time before finally calling it a night and hopping into our tent. Tomorrow we have 18 miles to the road, and then we will get a double zero in Bend!
Great post and super great job with the last photo!~
I didn’t mean to but that last symbol at the end