August 23rd, 2022 by Jon
When we woke up, it was dark; the trees we camped under were blocking the little bit of light illuminating the sky. We slowly made our way awake and had breakfast, which was interrupted by swarms of mosquitoes trying to get at any open patch of skin they could. We slathered ourselves in DEET before taking off. We climbed back up to the PCT and hiked along the side of a ridge for a while. We passed a number of small lakes down below; many had signs of campsites or, at the very least, trails that led down to the water’s edge. We climbed for a while, still walking along the side of the ledge, and passed 3 or 4 trail junctions that went down the ridge and around the Indian Heaven Wilderness Area.
We continued past them and kept hiking, reaching the top of our climb before descending gently down the hill. The trees became huge once again, and we walked in shade basically the entire time. After a few miles, we came to a flat, more exposed section, then reached a trailhead. We walked across it and noticed some colorful canopies set up nearby, so we walked over where a gentleman saw us, smiled, and told us to put our packs down and come enjoy some pancakes. This was our third day with trail magic in a row, and I could not love Washington more.
We sat there, hanging out with Matterhorn, who was our trail magic guru, and some other hikers as they showed up. We had pancakes, bacon, bananas, and oranges. The kindness and lengths people go to in order to help hikers continues to astound me. We spent a solid half hour there, enjoying a break before finally leaving. The next many miles we’re quite flat, and led us through a younger forest, although still with tall enough trees to keep us in the shade the whole time. We meandered over small hills and ridges, working our way east and crossing a number of small streams along the way.
After 6 miles of walking, we came to a larger stream with a side trail to a nearby campground. We took our packs off and enjoyed some lunch there. We sat for a long time, enjoying our food and a bit of reading before getting up again. After lunch, we had a few miles of descent through sun-soaked forest before coming to a beautiful bridge over a lovely stream. We crossed it, and after a winding bit of trail, we began a tough, steep ascent. The trail didn’t seem to switchback hardly at all, instead favoring the direct approach. The climb was only 3 miles, but it was very, very hard. When we got to the top, we sat on a log for a while, sucking wind and recovering.
We pushed the last 2.5 miles down the hill towards a paved forest road that would take us into Trout Lake. The hike was pretty easy, and we got there in about 45 minutes. We were the only ones there, which is a good sign because it meant the people ahead of us got rides. We sat by the road and checked the time; it was 3:00. We knew there was a shuttle coming at 4:00 that some local trail angels had set up, but we figured we would try to hitch to get some extra time in town. As we waited, a few people came out and joined us nearby.
After about 30 minutes and 7 or 8 cars going by, we got a ride! A guy from Seattle was just finishing a backpacking trip in the area and was headed to Portland. He was driving along the road and passing through Trout Lake. He pulled over, and we happily hopped in. 15 minutes later, we were at the general store, wandering the aisles and picking out food for our next section. We also got lots of snacks since we’re celebrating Singsong’s 30th birthday tonight with a hotel room and good food. Her birthday is tomorrow, so it’s really going to be two days of celebrating. Once we paid, we grabbed our package from the back of the store and took everything to the hiker area out back.
We packed our food bags and got them ready for the next section, and also got our replacement tent! Singsong’s zipper hasn’t worked for some time now, and so we got a new one (same kind as before) and plan to return our old one. Gear ready, wine, pie, and snacks in hand, we headed over to the hotel. We got checked in and settled into our room for an evening of celebrating. We had hamburgers from the local diner, pie for dessert, rose because rose… duh, it’s Singsong’s birthday, life was good.
Tomorrow we plan to enjoy this room until checkout and then head back into town to say hi to our friends and send off our old tent before hitting the trail.
