August 6
Miles: 13.9
Mile Markers: 2035 – Ollalie Lake Resort (off trail)
Miles to Canada: 606.8
I woke up to some raindrops falling on my tent but I slept in a little bit because I figured it was only 13 miles to Ollalie and so I didn’t need to get up right away.
I finally got going and as I hiked, it progressively started to become more and more misty out. I started climbing over a ridge to the other side and as I approached the top, the wind started picking up quite a bit. It was really foggy, and I couldn’t really see much in front of me. At the top of the ascent on the other side was all snow, and it felt a little sketchy because I couldn’t see the end of the snow, but I started walking over it. The wind was kind of pushing me and I figured I would just go really slow, but the snow started sloping downward into a bunch of rocks at a pretty steep angle, and I couldn’t see a good way down.
Behind me, I heard a voice. It was one of the women I had met at Big Lake Youth Camp. The snow field had started off flat but then started curling down towards a bunch of rocks below so we weren’t sure how to approach getting down. It was raining and so the snow was becoming icy and I sent my micro spikes home a long time ago. There were a couple rocks sticking up and I thought that maybe I could get to the rocks and like shimmy my way down. The woman decided to just glissade down into the rocks. I was a little anxious because of my ankle, and landing on a bunch of jagged rocks, but she hadn’t gone very fast down the ice. I just stood there for a second and she encouraged me and asked if I wanted some moral support, and I said yes so she waited and I got down just fine.
I actually didn’t glissade at all in the Sierra because by the time I got there, a lot of rocks were starting to stick out of the snow. So, I walked my way down the passes rather than sliding down. It wasn’t actually that bad, but with the wind and the icy snow, like I always say, one wrong step and you’re done.
After that, we lost the trail, between the fog and the snow, we couldn’t tell where the trail actually was, so we had to scramble down the side of a hill which was loose rocks, which is a little sketchy. It was too foggy to see much more than about 15 ft in front of me, so if there was a better trail down I certainly couldn’t see it. There were some cairns that I tried to follow. I think whoever built them probably built them because that North side of the slope gets a lot more snow.
I went around the side of a cliff. I guess if you could call it that with a lot of loose rocks. I think slate maybe. A southbound section hiker approached me, and I gave him a warning about the snow, and told him it would probably be easier going uphill than downhill, but just to be careful anyway. He told me that there was a road parallel to the trail, a forest road that would bypass a bunch of blowdowns. He said it was rocky but probably not as rocky as the trail. Once I got to the road I opted to take the road because my ankle still wasn’t feeling amazing. There were some abandoned campgrounds along the way that I figured I could stop at and make some lunch.
It was really depressing being in the burn areas. Everything was burned. The trees were falling over. There were a lot of dead trees that seemed like they might fall over at any moment. Many were making creepy creaking noises. I’ve now walked through a number of different burn areas, but this was the first time that it really got to me. I just felt depressed. I walked by a number of campground signs that had been burned. They must have been really nice campgrounds at one point and now they were nothing. So much of Oregon has been a burn area, there are just so many forest fires and so much debris in the forests now.
I just felt really angry with everything happening politically, with all the funding being cut for national parks and national forests, for forest maintenance, for trail maintenance, for firefighting. It’s just a complete and utter lack of regard for stewarding these lands, the corporate greed of those who want to mine the lands and destroy the forests to make money that they’ll never even see in their own lifetimes. It’s disgusting.
I walked down the forest road going through all these burned campgrounds, and the one good redeeming thing were all the huckleberry bushes. I took a few breaks and sat down next to a ripe bush just eating berries while I rested. At one point a girl on a bike went by. It felt so random. Why would anyone else be up here?
I passed an upside down 600 mile marker on the trail today. Obviously that was for SOBOs, but it means that there’s only 600 miles left of the trail for me. The closer I get to Washington, and the closer I get to the Northern terminus, the more I’ve been thinking about my real life and what happens next, and what’s happening in the world. For the most part, I’ve tried not to read the news and have tried to stay in my little hiking bubble away from all of these bad things happening, but they bleed more and more into the trail life and there’s always reminders of the outside world. You can’t ever really leave it all behind out here.
As I approached Ollalie, I walked with a girl named Anya who had been trying to keep up with other hikers and felt like she was burning out. I sat and chatted with her for a while, and it was really nice conversation. I gave her $4 because Ollalie was cash only and she didn’t have any cash. She promised to venmo me back but I said not to worry about it.
I saw the woman I had hiked with. I think she said her name was Chance, and I saw Aloha again which was nice.
I also saw the biker who had crept up behind me on the trail. She was biking the Timberland Trail, and she was also from Seattle. I sat with her and Aloha for a while, talking about Washington. The biker wanted to go to PCT days but felt like she wasn’t really a backpacker. She joked that she wished she was backpacking sometimes, and we joked that we wish we had a bike sometimes.
In a funny twist of fate, I also saw the rude couple I hadn’t seen since San Jacinto. The ones who laughed at me for asking if they wouldn’t mind setting up their tent a little further away since they were laughing about snoring. When I saw them, it occurred to me that they were probably the people who had the southern accents – the people who had to camp in the bushes because I scored the only campsite just before the park boundary where we weren’t allowed to camp. A long-awaited case of karma being delivered – 2,000 miles later. Muahahahah. They just bought some snacks at Ollalie and then continued on, so I didn’t see them again and hopefully I won’t. I thought back to my revenge fantasies about putting rocks in their packs, and when their backpacks were just leaning up against the building, when they were inside, I thought about putting some rocks inside, but I think making them sleep in the bushes was revenge enough.
I was pretty tired, so I decided to stay at Ollalie, because they let hikers camp there for free and it was starting to rain, so I set up my tent in a spot that I thought was away from most people and I got in my bed at 5pm and was ready to go to sleep. Around 7pm, I heard a bunch of people kind of loud and obnoxious setting up their tents right next to mine, and I had set up my tent right next to a picnic table. One of these hikers sat at the picnic table, making food pretty loudly. I was kind of annoyed and I poked my head out to see who it was, and it was Roses.
It’s funny because hikers are actually pretty obnoxious in general, but they’re a lot less annoying when they’re people you know and like. I might have scolded them to try to be quiet and maybe ask if they could go cook somewhere else. But instead, I got out of my tent and cooked dinner at the table with Roses, and the boys came out and we all hung out for a while. It was nice to see them again. Rocky had plantar fasciitis so she had stayed in Bend to go see Blaze, and was going to be resting, but she would catch up with them in a few days.
They started talking about Ferdinand. At first, I thought this was a person, but apparently it was a little rubber snake that kept putting in each other’s backpacks, secretly. They decided to put Ferdinand inside of Warpaint’s sleeping bag when he went to the bathroom. They are a really fun group.
Around hiker midnight (which is 9pm) everyone went to bed, and it was nice to have seen some familiar faces. For as annoyed as I had been the last couple days with the other hikers around me, it was actually nice to see these specific, annoying hikers.
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