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.