Wed. July 6    Miles today: 24.2        Total so far: 986.1          Oregon Section G

(Note: there are no more pictures with the text for a couple of days because I was dumb enough not to notice that the camera memory card was almost full)

It was still raining as we broke camp this morning, but the first item on our agenda was doing a PCT alternate trail to go see Ramona Falls. Wow!  The falls are like a huge rock wall with water cascading over it.  I wish I could have taken a picture of it, but it was 6:00 am, and in the deep, dark forest, so I didn’t even try.  We hiked along pretty Ramona Creek and eventually found a protected spot for breakfast.  Back at the PCT, we came to a sign that said, “PCT hiker bridge, follow pink flags” and sure enough, off into the forest went a crude trail with shocking pink flag markers.  We followed it as it went twisting through the trees and came to the banks of the Muddy River, which looked pretty much like the Sandy–a roaring muddy torrent–and there across it was a large fallen tree.  Somebody had flattened its top surface and made a little “railing” on one side.  Hurray!! Thankyou to whoever did that!  Even I could cross without fear.

Now we faced what our guidebook described as a “killer climb” up Bald Mountain.  Whew!  It was long and tough, and it was STILL raining, but the wildflowers were plentiful.  Views?  Well, all we could see were clouds, and soon we were IN the cloud and could only see about 40 to 50 feet ahead of ourselves.  And then we began to meet SOBOs–lots of SOBOS, a total of 7 altogether.  It turned out that all of them had spent the Fourth of July weekend in Portland, got back ontrail yesterday, and here they were.  I don’t remember ALL their names, but I do recall Tomato, Dick Tracy, Wildhair, Buckeye and Twisted Sister.  They all said we had nothing to worry about, snowwise, in Washington State.  Finally we reached Lolo Pass.  No more killer climb–whew!  But still the rain continued and TOTALLY NOT FAIR–the mosquitoes–lots of them–were out, too, and swarming us whenever we stopped.  (I thought mosquitoes couldn’t fly in rain??) 

We had planned to stop for lunch at Salvation Spring (we thought that was a great name) but the mossies were so awful there that we quickly hurried on.  Finally we set up the tarp in the woods so I could cook up mochas and some beef stroganoff, before we hiked on in the rain.  The guidebook was rhapsodizing about the views.  We saw clouds and nothing more.  But an amazing thing happened at our afternoon rest break.  We were sitting on some lava boulders, with the wind blowing (no mosquitoes!) when suddenly it was as if God pulled aside the curtain of clouds for a minute and let us see through. It was sort of like an oval-shaped picture window, and far away and down below, there were SUNNY fields and forests!  Bill saw it first, and we both got all excited and encouraged.  Then whoosh, back came the clouds and we couldn’t see a thing.  But now we knew two things:  1) There IS good weather ahead and  2) Wow, are we up WAY HIGH on the mountains!

By the time we reached Indian Mountain, which had awesome alpine wildflowers, the rain had stopped, but it was still very windy and cloudy.  The gusty wind was blowing the clouds around, twisting them and lifting them, so we could see more and more.  There were a few soggy-looking backpackers at Indian Springs Camp, but we moved on, ate supper on some wind-dried lava rocks, and hiked on to Wahtum Lake, where we stopped a bit early to set up our very wet tarp and let it dry out before REALLY making camp.  The sun TRIED to help as it was going down–it actually shone for about a minute. Finally we went to bed, comfortable, but very hungry, and thinking about good food in Cascade Locks tomorrow!