Day 25

   So I have arrived here in Trout Lake! A very nice man at the grocery store offered to put me up at his place, which I am very thankful for! I totally didn't expect it.
  The hike in to the forest road was pretty fast for me--I did 14 miles in 5.5 hours. Not all of it was flat, either... I think I must be getting stronger or something.
   Tomorrow I need to talk to the forestry people (and hopefully hikers) about the next stretch. It would take me about 4 days to do, in theory, but I've heard some stories about Goat Rocks. I want to go, but I am worried...
  Randomly, some forest service guy invited me to see some local cave with his friends. So we went to this place called the 'cheese cave,' and then afterward went to pick huckleberries. Pretty neat!

14 miles hiked, mile 2226. Trout Lake.

Day 23/24

   Well... I talked to a hiker on the way up, and he informed me that Goat Rocks are as I feared. Things might have changed by the time I talk to people at Trout Lake, but I think I might be going home sooner than I'd like. He also had a lot to say about how snow packed the area north of Snoqualmie is... I can't believe the stuff he went through to go south!
   So if I do decide that this is the end, I'm going to give myself a bit of an extension by returning south and stopping at Stevenson, WA. There is a bus there that can help take me home, or so I've read. So in that scenario I have another week or so out here in the woods.
   This section had a pretty extreme area of mosquito activity. I don't think I've actually seen so many blood-suckers in one place in my life. There's a lot of meadows, ponds, lakes, patches of snow, and other forms of standing water in that area, though, so I guess it is to be expected. I will plan accordingly when going back through there, lol.
   I caught glimpses today of Mount Adams and Mount St Helens. They are beautiful.
   I should be in Trout Lake by tomorrow afternoon... If I manage to get a hitch. I have heard it can be difficult.

Mile 2212, Twin Buttes Road. 4203 feet.

Day 22

   Pretty average day, though I was startled when I realized a tree was collapsing as I walked by. Spilled most of my peanuts trying to get out of the way!
   It's nice to see how well the trail is kept up here. There are signs and bridges everywhere, and I've already passed a PCT cleanup crew. Kinda takes some of the edge off.
   Camped next to a stream today. Nice to hear the water pass by. I think I'll be spending most of tomorrow morning going up 3000 feet. Better make some coffee!

15 miles hiked, mile 2179. 827 feet.

Day 21

   Made it into Washington! I've only just crossed in, but already things seem different. The forest is more alive with plants and moss, and there are way less overturned trees. Also, I often see these long, thick slugs and random mushrooms on the side of the trail. I already kind of like this state better than Oregon, though I may be a bit biased because I live here. I've also noticed that the trail seems to be more well marked here.
   This was my first 20 mile day. It was kind of hard on my knee and feet, so I'm probably not going to do that again. I'll stick with my 15-18 average.

20 miles hiked, mile 2164. 1400 feet.

Day 19

  Got through the end of Eagle Creek. Hanging out in Cascade Locks now, and will be doing my laundry tomorrow as well as relaxing. A nice lady at a fruit stand gave me more cherries than she had to when I told her I was a backpacker. :-)

   It didn't rain much today, which I'm glad for. The forest looked prettier today than usual because of the showers.

   11 miles hiked. Close to 0 feet elevation. 

Day 18

  Well... Apparently last night, at 3AM to be precise, some guy in a neighboring campsite (probably 70 feet) decided it would be a good idea to start chopping wood. Let me repeat for emphasis: some random guy in the woods was chopping firewood at 3AM!!!
   I thought it had to be some kind of bear smashing wood for grub or something, but no... lol.
   Today was generally a lot easier, though the downward course on Indian Springs Trail was insane! It took me about an hour and a half to go straight down in elevation. I couldn't help but feel really bad for anyone who had to go up it. It's an extreme climb. If my calculations are right, I think it's something close to 2000 feet over 2 miles. That is tough!
   Once on Eagle Creek Trail, I met these guys who had attracted a cute little friend. Apparently this little bird had been following them before they stopped to eat, and for the time I was talking to them, was bouncing around looking for scraps of food. Really cute!
   Anyway, the rain decided to arrive early. As of now, it's beating rather persistently on my tent. It wasn't so bad earlier today, and I'm hoping it'll go back to being a more casual shower tomorrow morning... I can only hope. Because it's raining here, I assume that it's snowing around Goat Rocks right now. I hope that doesn't mess things up for me. It will probably be around a week before I arrive at Trout Lake, so maybe some good weather will make up for things.
   Tomorrow I'll be seeing some nice waterfalls and arriving in Cascade Locks. Pretty exciting, since I will soon be entering Washington.

   17 miles hiked, Eagle Creek Trail. 2100 feet.

Day 17

   Tiring day. Got lost twice and had to do two river crossings. The views of Mount Hood were often gorgeous.
   33 miles until Cascade Locks, and 13 miles until the Eagle Creek section begins... We'll see if I get to town by the end of Friday. I think the trail is relatively flat from here to the Washington border.

  13 miles hiked, mile 2111.

Day 16

  Well, got my package and charged my stuff, so I'm back out today. I left at around 4, and I don't really like stopping after a certain hour, so I got 4 miles in today. My energy levels were feeling pretty good after all the calories I got in at the lodge.
   A guy at the store told me there's going to be rain on Friday, and I'm pretty sure that's the day leading in to my arrival to Cascade Locks. If I get some good mileage in over the next two days, I can probably make that last rainy day more like a half hike day. Apparently Saturday will also have rain, so I'll likely be taking a day off over there to stay dry. After that I guess I'll rough it to Trout Lake.
  
Mile 2099, 4 miles hiked. 5190 feet.

Day 17

  Happy 4th of July.
  So I'm here at Timberline. I had the lunch buffet, and it was pretty good. They had these cups of cream... Not sure what exactly they were... But they were really good. The climb up here was pretty steep, as expected, but the views of Mount Hood were gorgeous. Pretty windy up here. Can't help but think this is going to be like the first night of camping I went through. I just hope I don't wake up too much.
  I think my resupply package isn't here because it's a holiday. Hopefully it'll be in by tomorrow sometime
   Timberline Lodge, 3 miles hiked.

Day 16

   Camped out on the side of Mount Hood right now... The notes mentioned there being campsites here, but I barely squeezed my tent into a little subdivided space. Still nice to kick up my feet!
   Most of the day was a bit windy and cool, which was nice. Saw a lot of day hikers milling around after crossing Highway 26. I got the sense that a lot of them were city people.
   Ever since getting on the mountain, I've been hearing a lot of miscellaneous forest noises. It's sort of 'Princess Mononoke'-esque. I guess it's partially from the wind moving stuff around, but I like it.
   I'll be hiking around 3 miles tomorrow before getting to Timberline Lodge. Hopefully there's a place around there to pitch my tent after I'm done doing my business.

Mile 2092, 18 miles hiked. 4885 feet.

Day 15

   I am at Timothy Lake! The weather is great out here, so I figured I'd wash my hair and some of my clothes before getting comfortable in my tent. Tons of drunk people here celebrating the holiday weekend.
   Spent most of the day under tree cover listening to podcasts and Shakira. I passed out at 7PM yesterday because I was so tired. I think I must have gotten around 11 hours of sleep. I guess it did the trick because I didn't get that same sleepy feeling today.
   Timberline is another 20 miles from here, so I think I'm gonna be hiking most of it tomorrow and then heading in the day after for the buffet and my package. There's not really anything here in the way of resources to make me wanna stick around.
   I think my feet are officially broken in at this point. They look pretty horrific, but I guess that's what it takes to handle the abuse I give them. Only took two weeks. :-p

Mile 2074.5, 18 miles hiked. 3284 feet.
 

Day 14

  Almost since when I started today, I was tired. Not sure where it's coming from, except for the effect of the snow days. My feet are still a bit sore as well, so I put in 14 miles today. Was sooo tired when I laid back on my air pad! I'm supposed to put in somewhere in the neighborhood of 16-18 miles tomorrow to get to Timothy Lake... Hopefully I can do it all in one day so I can just relax the next day at the campground. Then another 18 miles to Timberline Lodge! I'm hoping to hit up the lunch buffet, since I'm not crazy about breakfast ones. Everyone I've talked to has said it's amazing.
  Tried the old bleach filtration system for my water, and I'm happy to report that I am so far not sick. The water I got today was out of a slow moving creek, so... I think if something were to happen, I'd have noticed already. Doesn't even really taste any different to me.

  Mile 2057, 14 miles. 4491 feet.

Day 13

   Here at Olallie Lake, and everything is good. I've got a coffee and some kind of wafer candy thing, sitting on the deck of the shop. My feet are still a bit sore, though not as bad as they were last night. If I can walk decently tomorrow morning, I'll be out of here. Not as bad, but my core and arms are also pretty sore. Any time I move to sit up, it's a little bit painful!
   Today I guess I'll be reading books and watching people fish on the lake. I think it'll take 3-4 days to get to Timberline depending on how long I stay at Timothy Lake. There's allegedly showers there, though I can't confirm or deny that.

Day 12

  It's been a long day... But a good day. Sorta? It was a lucky day.
  I didn't get much sleep the previous night because of all that had happened, and also because my feet got the pounding of their lives. Right at around 6 I ate some breakfast and pulled down camp, and then we were on our way to get out of there.
  It took around 2.5 hours to cover 2 miles because we kept getting lost over the snow and also because the portion we could get over required some degree of scrambling. Once we got out of that, there were still some difficult portions, but we finally made it back to a regular part of trail.
  At lunch, some day hikers stopped by and told us that the second half of the way to Olallie Lake was covered with snow. We knew we had to go to a side trail to get off the PCT, but being in the middle of nowhere, were kind of lost on how long it would take to get to a town. Well, we were SUPER lucky, and met up with this PCT cleanup party. One of the guys there, Marty, offered to drive us to the lake and even gave us beers!  He really went out of his way to help us, and even showed me how to purify my water with just some bleach. So, so thankful. He really is a saint.
  My feet look really bad right now... like blisters on top of blisters. I was dumb enough to walk through a stream without removing anything, so they became monster-like. Me and the hiker I'm with met up with some other hikers, but I'm so tired I have to pass out. Gonna take a zero here tomorrow, and hopefully my feet heal. If not, I guess I can stay another day.
   Apparently from here to... Trout Lake, WA is free of snow (and also clear of fallen timber!), so I know at this point I might be going that far. There's no way at this point that I'm going to do any trail sections that have snow. Falling off a cliff is not in my life plans.

Miles 2043, 25 miles up. Olallie lake.

Day 11

  Today was just plain bad. Whatever snow issues I had to deal with yesterday became double the problem today. There were long stretches where I had to scramble along cliffs to get around snow. And when I couldn't get around them, I had to dig my feet into the side and hope that I didn't slip down. In short, it was SKETCHY AS FUCK.
  To top it off, in the middle of the scramble both my Steripen and Nalgene were lost. There's no way I could go find them, so I need to buy new ones. Another hiker found me, and we spent hours trying to find our way around piles of snow to stay on trail. She doesn't have GPS, so without me she most certainly would have been lost. We should be at a lake right now, but instead we're in the middle of nowhere and not sure which direction the trail actually goes towards.
  Yeah. In short, this day blows. If I find out that the snow is this bad after we get to Olallie Lake Resort, I'm going home to regroup. There's no way I'm putting myself through this again.
   I read on the trail notes that Olallie doesn't accept drop packages? I don't know.

Mile 2018, 13 miles hiked. 6053 feet.

Day 9

  Things started off nicely enough today... I got to eat a nice pancake breakfast, my shipment came in the mail, and then I had a burrito before heading off for the trail. As I went up in elevation, the snow started to appear. By the time 5 rolled around, I was mountaineering on the sides of cliffs to get over the snow (and the trail below).
  I've never camped on snow before, but this is apparently where the 'small campsite' is supposed to be according to the Halfmile data! Pretty interesting day!

13 miles hiked, mile 2005 of trail. Elevation 6473.
90 miles until Timberline!

Day 7

  So... tried for hours to get a ride at Klammath Falls to Crater Lake, but no one stopped. So me and another hiker had to walk to a KOA to camp and then head for Bend via Amtrak in defeat. I'll be bypassing a lot of bad conditions and mosquitos, though, so there's that. Met a lot of nice people while hitchhiking, and I'm very thankful of each of them for stopping for me!
  I'm at a youth camp west of the town of Sisters, and I totally didn't expect the kind welcome I got! They invited me in for dinner, but before that we sat in this room to sing songs to acoustic guitar. I believe they are Seven Day Adventists. The meal was really nice, and I'm glad to be able to stay here for a few days before a package shows up.

Day 6

It's been a crazy day figuring out how to get around the bad trail conditions. I'm in Klamath Falls with another hiker figuring it out. We will be in Bend tomorrow, and then likely Sisters the next day. I guess I'll come back to see Crater Lake another time.