Tues. July 5     Miles today: 16    Total so far: 961.9       Begin Oregon Section G

This morning was the warmest yet–50 degrees at 5:00 am!  The sky was clear, too, and it didn’t take long to reach Barlow Pass (Highway 35), which actually was the very first road ever built over the Cascades, in 1845-46, by a Mr. Barlow.  Considering the thickness of the forest and the undergrowth here, that was quite an achievement!  By crossing the highway, we officially entered Section G, the last part of the PCT here in Oregon.  Yahoo!

River canyon near Mt. Hood

We had an 1,800 foot climb ahead of us, so we started “chugging up that hill”, and finally got to timberline, with awesome views of Mt. Hood, whose sides are all carved with deep river canyons. 

Monty and Mt. Hood

We could see the skiers up high on the snow–they loked like moving dots.  The PCT became a bit of a slog, because it left the dirt behind and moved into deep, soft sand, with rock ducks to mark the way.  To add to the fun, it’s quite an uphill climb, which means with each step up in soft sand, you slide DOWN a bit.  We felt as if we were at the beach, trying to climb a sand dune!  But what was really amazing to me was that even in the sand, there were still wildflowers.

There it is--Timberline Lodge!

Once we reached the Salmon River canyon, we could see Timberline Lodge across on the other side, so when we got to the bottom of the canyon down by the river, we stopped to wash up and clean up in the icy snowmelt water.  “Ooh, how refreshing!!!” 

Spiffed up as best we could, we climbed out of the canyon and headed for the Wy’East Lodge to pick up our resupply box.  A cheery staff lady got it for us, then we went out into the hallway to sit down and go through it.    We leaned our trek poles against the wall, and had only just sat down, when a young guy who had the “thru-hiker look” came by, walking fast.  When he came up to us, he “screeched” to a halt, and said, “Hey, those are TREK poles!  You guys must be thru-hikers!”  We thought that was very funny, considering the fact that there were people running around everywhere with SKI poles, that he could tell the difference so quickly. 

Turned out he was “Hellcat”; we’d seen his name in trail registers, so it was a lot of fun to meet him personally.  He is the sweetest guy you’d ever want to meet, so I have no idea who named him “Hellcat”.  Hellcat wanted a picture of himself with us, and used a fascinating technique which we have ever since called a “Hellcat picture”, since we now do the same.  He put his head right by our heads, stretched out his long arm (holding the camera), aimed the camera, and took a picture.  Voila!  There he was “with” us! 

After sorting through the resupply and reloading everything into our packs, we had a “Wy’East Power Breakfast” and spent the rest of the morning resting and writing journal stuff.  Then we had BIG, juicy hamburgers for lunch, along with the crowds of young snowboarders (“riders” I believe is the proper term) and skiers, who were enthusiastically discussing their morning runs.  Then Bill went off to air sleeping bags, while I continued with phone calls, writing, finding information, etc.  At one point, I was “on the trail” of WHERE to mail a letter, and WHERE was the PCT register?? This particular trail led me to the Timberline Lodge lobby, where the front desk was happy to take my letter, but had no such thing as a PCT register. 

However, at a table in the lobby were a couple of Forest Service rangers, so I went to ask them about river crossing conditions up ahead.  (A PCT thru-hiker died last year not far from here while trying to cross the Sandy River.)  While I was taking to the rangers, a middleaged man was listening, amazed at what Bill and I were doing.  Finally he burst in with, “But if you just keep hiking every day, how do you find a campground every night?”  “Well,” I said, “what we do is when the sun starts to touch the horizon–about 7:30 or so–we start looking for someplace reasonably flat and big enough for our groundcloth.  When we see something, we stop and camp.”  The man looked horrified and turned to the rangers, only find them leaning back in their chairs and grinning.  “That’s how WE do it when WE’RE out in the woods,” said one ranger.  After an incredulous “Oh!”, the man scurried away.

“Chores” all done, I went off to reconnect with Bill, but could not find him.  I ended up wandering all over the place around the Lodges, especially the little tree grove where I thought we’d agreed to meet.  I grew more and more upset and worried, thinking about the Sandy River crossing ahead, and frustrated at not being able to get going on the PCT.  After some time, I finally found Bill, who was upset with ME for not meeting up with him.  Turns out we had mutually misunderstood where to meet.  I thought it was one place; Bill thought it was another place.  We were both very frustrated.  Shame on us!  Little did we know that God was at work, organizing a “perfect timing” scenario.

We headed off on the “roller coaster” PCT north of Timberline Lodge.  The trail does a lot of diving down into one river canyon and climbing steeply up the other side, ready for another dive down, over and over again.  The trailbuilders had to put in a lot of retaining walls, which have turned into rock gardens for mosses, wildflowers and ferns.  Beautiful!  Mt. Hood was wearing a wispy little “scarf” of cloud on top, but farther north we could see clouds that looked like they meant rain.  And since it was July 5, I thought it was very appropriate that there were whole stretches of trail lined with RED Indian paintbrush flowers, WHITE yarrow blossoms, and BLUE lupines!  Mt. Hood was “decorated” for the 4th of July!

At a junction, we detoured off the PCT for a bit to walk through “Paradise Park”, which is basically very steep but very green and “wildflowery”, including lots of wild lilies.  Back at the PCT, the trail went back into the trees, where sword ferns and more blooming rhododendrons decorated the forest floor.  But I was getting “scared-er and scared-er” as we approached the Sandy River.  We were following a very vigorous, rushing CREEK, which in and of itself would be a challenge to cross–what would the RIVER it was headed for be like?

When we reached the Sandy River, my heart just sank.  It was a roaring, muddy, raging torrent, with one skinny log going across between some boulders.  Bill went to get some clean water from the side creek, while I stared at the Sandy and prayed, “Oh God, please help me–somehow I have to get across that!”.  I could see a bunch of obviously-Boy-Scouts just starting to set up camp on the OTHER side of the river.  I was just wondering how the Scouts got across, when suddenly, there was a Boy Scout standing right next to me.  He asked very politely, “Ma’am, would you like some help to get across the river?”  My immediate thought was “I can’t BELIEVE this!  I’m the little old lady being helped across the street–well make that RIVER!  Oh no!”  But what I actually SAID to the polite young Scout was, “Yes, I really need help!  I hate river crossings.  They are scary.”  “You just wait here, ma’am,” said the Scout;  he carefully crossed the log and hurried to a big strong leaderly-looking man, who in short order was zipping acros the log over to me.  “I’ll take your pack across first, ” he said cheerfully, and with my pack slung over one shoulder, he easily crossed over and came back.  Meanwhile, Bill and I had both scrambled across the rocks to reach the “near side” of the log.  Bill went across by himself, then it was my turn.  One Scout leader stood on the far side ready to help me there, while the big strong leader said, “I’ll walk across with you, and I’ll hold you by the elbow.  if you feel like you are going to fall, just be sure you straddle the log.”  What he did was incredibly helpful.  He stayed so close that actually I was sort of leaning on him, and since he was steady as a rock, I never did feel like I was going to fall.  Near the other side, the other leader stepped out and helped, too.

And so the river crossing I had dreaded, where last year a thru-hiker died, was all done safely, because AGAIN, the Lord did His “perfect timing thing” as a gracious gift to me, His scared kid, in the form of Boy Scouts and their “fearless leaders”.  Now I understood the reason for the delay in finding Bill up at Timberline.  Had we left at the time we’d planned, we would have been totally on our own to get across the Sandy.  I was so grateful to the Lord, and felt TOTALLY unworthy, when I thought about how grumpy and angry I had been when I couldn’t find Bill.

The Scouts offered to share their dinner with us, but we’d already eaten on the trail, so we thanked them for all their help and pushed on for a little while before setting up camp.  It was so warm, and the mosquitoes so minimal, that we were able to take “baths” before settling down for the night.  There was a gorgeous sunset, but it looked like rain, so we set up the tarp and prepared for a wet night, just in case, and a good thing we did–the rain began a little while after we were in bed.  Bill said, “Look, God’s timing again–it didn’t start to rain till we were under the tarp”, and I heartily agreed with him.  And since we were on soft sand underneath us, we were very comfortable, and had a “good sleep” all night.

A bunch of the hikers organized a huge breakfast this morning of bacon, eggs, homefries, pancakes and fruit salad, washed down with “cowboy coffee” made in a big pot, since the coffee machine wouldn’t work.  Yum!  We all ate like pigs.  The dogs, of course, were interested in everything we did, and after breakfast, “Buddy” followed Bill and I into the RV and made himself at home! 

Donna's flowers--with tents for thruhikers in background

A group of us got organized to ride “Big Red” into town, and while people were getting themselves together, I walked around the garden, enjoying Donna Saufley’s flowers. 

"Big Red" ready to roll

 Then we all crowded into the van, with Panda at the wheel and Bethany with the map, acting as navigator.  Most of the rest of the day, we spent locating items we needed.  Bill got new shoes, I got trek poles (TWO of them, this time), we got another pair of patella straps so we could both have two.  Bill got his watch fixed at a jewelers (now that was a WEIRD moment!  We were in a very upscale mall, in our now-clean hiking clothes, and Bill’s beard is, let’s say, grown out some, and we walked into this very fancy jewelers to get a new watch battery and have it installed.  We got some VERY strange looks!). 

Thruhikers at In 'n Out

 Lunch was at In ‘n Out–best hamburgers and fries in the west!  For the first time in my life, I ate a “Double-Double” with fries and a milkshake–and no worries about calories!

In the late afternoon, we were back at Hiker Heaven, where all of us had giant “clean-out-the-refrigerator” salads for dinner.  Bill and I worked on the logistics of our change of plans.  I still felt very sad at not going straight on through the Sierras, but I told myself, “Don’t take it for granted that exactly at the time we were here at Hiker Heaven, that thruhiker came back from the Sierras and warned us all about how bad it was.  If we had gotten here two days earlier, we would have missed him, and who knows what kind of serious trouble we might have ended up in.  This is God’s mercy to us, and I need to respect Him and be grateful.”

The evening entertainment tonight turned out to be a visit from Lawrence the Trail Gorilla (we actually did meet him before, at the highway before the Desert Divide).  He told us many tales of his amazing efforts at improving and maintaining the PCT in Southern California.   He is the one who put up the little sign showing where to turn off for Eagle Rock.  He put up little signs pointing out where poison oak was so that nonCalifornians would know what to look for.  He put up the shower in the tree at Tule Springs….etc.  Wow!

And by the way, all the hikers are getting a good laugh out of a list that Donna Saufley posted.   Here it is:

10 WAYS TO SPOT A FORMER THRU-HIKER:   10) Wears the same clothes every single day .     9) Sleeps on the floor next to the bed. 8) Ignores the toilet–prefers to dig little holes in the backyard.    7) In the kitchen, a string hangs from the ceiling with a tuna can and stick tied on.      6) Puts on gaiters to walk to the mailbox.   5) Uses stairs at work rather than elevator–insists upon taking a snack break upon reaching the top floor.  4) Wooden floors are all pockmarked from pole tips.   3) 40% of household food budget goes to pop tarts and snickers bars.   2) Declares each morning that “this will be another zero day.”   1) Says things like, “Hey Mom/Honey, can you slack me to the mail?”

Well, number 2 applies to us!  We have decided to take one more zero day here to let Bill’s feet heal as much as possible!  Donna Saufley has a guestbook, and everybody writes in it.  Bill wrote the “lyrics” to a song he made up while we were on the trail and heading for Agua Dulce.  The tune is “Oh, I Come from Alabama With My Banjo on My Knee”.   It goes something like this: “We are marching to the Saufley’s, to the Saufley’s we will go,  Our feet, they are a’hurtin’, but our pace we will not slow.   We are going to the Saufley’s now, for food ‘n drink ‘n rest,   We are going to the Saufley’s,  ’cause, the Saufley’s are the best!”  (Chorus):   AGUA DULCE!  The hikers’ heaven on earth!  If you’ve got a list of trail angels, the Saufley’s rank is FIRST!”