Days 106-124, Miles 1,716-2,144: Sloregon

Many PCT hikers take on something called the Oregon Challenge—knocking out the whole state in two weeks with a high-miles, no-breaks push. We had other ideas. After flying through NorCal to make up lost time, we were intent on savoring Oregon. Our strategy included frequent breaks, family visits and plenty of leisure time. 

On Day 106, we slept in for the first time in a while. I made it all the way until 6:15 a.m. After running a few errands, I met up with my college friend Paul, who I hadn't seen in years. He lives nearby and drove over to see me. Over lunch, we caught up and shared memories of our college days. It was a real treat to see an old friend after a long couple weeks of hiking. 

After lunch, I saw some other familiar faces: Mandy and Mamie! They had finished the Sierra and returned to Ashland to continue their journey north. Two months after we'd parted ways, we'd made our way to Ashland at the same time and would get to hike together again. Mamie is on a tight deadline, with nursing school starting in the fall, so she'll soon be outpacing us to finish on time. For the time being, we were happy to see each other, share stories of our experiences and prepare to get back on trail together. Later in the day, Matt and I took in a free concert in the park before heading back to our trail angel's house for a lazy evening on the deck. The next day was full of errands. Becky, our trail angel, drove me to REI, where I was able to exchange my tent. My zipper had broken, and I was not eager to head into mosquito country with a door that wouldn't close. Then it was on to the grocery store, where I bought trail food and then shipped it ahead to myself. I also mailed 18 postcards, my penance for being bad about writing earlier in the trail. 

I finished my chores in time for an afternoon showing of "Dunkirk," which we agreed lived up to the hype. After dinner, we went back to Nancy's place. Nancy, another trail angel, was putting us up for our third night in Ashland. Both of our hosts were generous and welcoming, making our long stay in town a good one. We got back to hiking on Day 108. We stayed among the trees, with only gentle climbs. After a long lunch and nap session, we hiked on. All afternoon, we watched dark clouds and heard thunder nearby, but thankfully only got hit with a light sprinkle. After 32 miles, we set up a late camp. It was good to be back with Mandy and Mamie. After nearly 1,000 miles apart, it felt right to be hiking together again as we started our way through Oregon.

The trail stayed flat the following day, alternating between thick forest and exposed volcanic rock. After lunch, we had to make a plan for the trail ahead. A forest fire had closed a section of the PCT near Crater Lake, just two days up the trail. We learned of a trailhead before the fire where we could exit the PCT, so we decided to press on another day until we hit that point, hoping to hike as many miles as we could before the blaze forced us to skip ahead. 

We hiked along ridgelines on Day 110, taking in some exposed views, which have been more rare in thickly forested Oregon. As we hiked into afternoon, showers splattered us as thunder rumbled nearby. We set up an early camp and enjoyed a lazy evening around a campfire, playing games and telling stories. 

The next morning, we got to sleep in, with only a few miles remaining before the fire closure. We detoured off to a trailhead at the point where the PCT had closed. Thankfully, we weren't hard-pressed to find a ride. Matt's family had come out to visit on vacation, and we'd arranged to have them pick us up from the trailhead. They drove us into Crater Lake National Park, which we would have hiked into had the fire not blocked our route. After we got a campsite, we spent the rest of the day in hiker luxury. We sat around, told stories, played card games and ate copious amounts of food. Matt's family grilled us steaks, salmon and veggies—all done to perfection. I also picked up a care package from Mike, my first boss and a good friend from Michigan. It was stuffed to the brim with cookies, chips and other goodies. As rain started to fall in the evening, we broke into the whiskey sampler pack he'd sent to help us wait out the storm. 

Day 111 started with a sad goodbye. While we were taking a zero day with Matt's family, Mamie had to press on to meet her deadline. Mandy was meeting her brother in Bend, a few days up the trail, and decided to hike out with Mamie. However, we're planning to reconnect with Mandy not far down the trail. 

We parted ways, sad to see them go but hopeful Mamie's push would get her to the finish line in time. Though we'd only had a few days back together, we'd thoroughly enjoyed sharing our journey again—even if it made it that much harder to say goodbye. Mamie had been a great hiking buddy, and I'd enjoyed getting to know her as she'd become part of our trail family. She more than lives up to her trail name—Xtra Tuff—while simultaneously being one of the sweetest, more caring people I've met. She'll have to push hard to get to the border, but if anyone can make it, it's her. 

After we left the girls, the rest of us hiked down to the lake, where we caught a ferry to Wizard Island. We took a hike to the top of the island, a volcanic caldera with 360-degree views of the lake. Matt and I had taken this hike when we traveled to the lake two years ago, and it was fun to get to share it with Tigre and Matt's family. 

When the ferry dropped us back at the lakeshore, the guys and I took some jumps off a cliff into the frigid lake. It was an exhilarating chill after hours in the sun. 

Back at the campsite, we enjoyed a wonderfully lazy afternoon, lounging and chatting and not doing much of anything. After some more grilling, we called it a night. We got back on the trail the next day, following a flat morning with a few climbs past dramatic peaks. As has become the norm, we hiked through afternoon showers, but again avoided a full-on deluge. In the afternoon, we hit the PCT's highest point in Oregon and Washington at 7,560 feet. All downhill from there. 

As we got going on Day 113, we crossed paths with a 20-strong fire crew heading the opposite direction. When we crested a nearby ridge, we saw smoke pouring off a hillside a mile or two south of us. As we watched, a helicopter circled the blaze and dumped a plume of water on the hill. We continued north, thankful to be putting distance between us and the fire. 

We knocked out 20 miles before lunch, then enjoyed a lazy few hours eating, lounging and swimming in Summit Lake. After a shorter afternoon hike, we called it a day and camped by a little stream. 

Not long into the next morning, Matt and I hiked a side trail to Shelter Cove to pick up a care package from our buddy John. Along with an encouraging note, John had sent a box stuffed with delicious goodies and a bottle of whiskey. We happily added the food to our packs and hiked on. After a cloudy, chilly morning, we hiked through yet another afternoon drizzle, passing numerous lakes along the way. When we got to our planned campsite, we saw a sign announcing trail magic just a half mile ahead. At a nearby dirt road, we found Sparkles, a 2016 PCT hiker who had brought her niece out to help provide for hikers. They grilled us burgers and stuffed us with cookies and pop. After spending some time with them, we found a campsite a little ways up the trail and warmed up with John's whiskey as the night got chilly. 

We hiked through thick fog on Day 115, visibility low as we passed through spooky burned-out sections of trail. Our beards quickly became saturated with dew. As the weather turned sunny later in the morning, we stopped every now and then to forage for huckleberries. Props to Mamie, who had showed us to keep an eye out for these berries along the trail.

Late in the afternoon, we reached Elk Lake, where the trail had just closed due to another fire. The closed section, part of the Three Sisters Wilderness, is one of the most beautiful stretches of the PCT, and we were bitterly disappointed to be missing it. 

As we waited at a resort for a ride to Bend, some friendly employees offered us a ride on their pontoon boat, which we eagerly accepted. After a relaxing cruise of the lake, we returned to shore to find $20 and an encouraging note on my pack. I have no idea who left it, but Liza, whoever you are, you helped salvage our day. 

In Bend, we were hosted by Liana and Peter, friendly trail angels who let us camp in their yard. After some beers and great conversation, we turned in for the night. Our hike the next day was an abbreviated one, with fire closures before and after a 17-mile stretch of trail. We decided to hike what we could, knocking out the 17 open miles before taking a zero the next day back in Bend. For the first few miles, we hiked through a Mordor-esque lava field. The sharp, uneven rocks dug into our feet and kept us wobbling on our ankles. 

After passing the lava field, we'd started climbing a ridge when a firefighting helicopter passed overhead with a pod attached below it with a cable. The chopper hovered just off the trail and dropped off the pod. When we crested the ridge, we saw plumes off smoke coming out of the forest just a few hundred yards off the trail. As we hiked on, another fire crew walked by in the opposite direction, heading toward the blaze we'd just passed. It was our closest fire encounter yet in the tinderbox that is Oregon.

In the afternoon, I hiked a side trail to a nearby camp to pick up care packages from my mom and Aunt Kathy. The goodies, spending money and encouragement made the extra mile and a half more than worth it. As we knocked out the last few miles, Tigre came up with a brilliant idea. We began foraging in the huckleberry bushes beside the trail, eventually picking enough to make a pie. Our trail angels had offered to make dinner, and we didn't want to show up empty-handed. After our huckleberry detour, we hit the road and caught a hitch back to Bend. Our driver told us she was traveling to a festival to watch the upcoming solar eclipse and get married. To herself. Our self-marrying hippie chauffeur got us to town, where we bought more pie supplies and headed to Liana and Peter's. Back at the house, we met up with Mandy, who was rejoining us along with her brother Ben. A senior at Vanderbilt, Ben had decided to use the last week of his summer to hang out with his sister and do some hiking. We feasted on a delicious dinner prepared by our hosts, capped off by our huckleberry pie. The evening also featured a showing of "First Blood," with Peter quoting every single line from memory.

Day 117 was a zero, which we started with a few hours in a nearby coffee shop. We spent some time wandering around Bend, grabbing hot dogs from a corner cart before sampling some beers at Deschutes Brewery. 

Later in the afternoon, I went to a sports clinic in town. For the past 800 miles, I've been dealing with pain in my shoulder that has grown increasingly worse. Over the past couple weeks, it's become borderline excruciating when I'm wearing my pack, making each day's hike a struggle. At the clinic, I was able to get a shot of a powerful anti-inflammatory, as well as a prescription for the same drug in pill form. Hopefully this helps keep the pain minimized going forward. After the clinic, I grabbed food for the trail ahead, as well as four pounds of salmon. We'd offered to make dinner for our hosts, and I got to grill up some massive fillets. With tasty contributions from everyone, we enjoyed another feast, sharing lots of laughs before we called it a night. In the backyard, we were astonished by ash from the nearby fire that fell on us like snow. Our hosts were totally unfazed, telling us it was a regular occurrence. 

We waited out most of the next day in the nearby town of Sisters. With the next 40 miles of trail closed due to fires, we were waiting on a trail angel who had offered to drive us out to the remote trailhead where the PCT reopened. While we waited, we hung out at a local coffee shop, reading, playing card games and generally being lethargic (my Michigan friends will be happy to note that The Sandlot is quickly picking up euchre). As I walked to the Post Office to drop off a package, I realized the mountain range we'd seen towering above town a few days before was now completely enveloped in smoke. I stood mesmerized for 20 minutes, watching firefighting planes make run after run at the fire. Thankfully, the wind was not pushing the smoke toward town, but it was eerie watching the massive pillars of smoke towering not far from downtown. 

Late in the day, our ride to the trailhead picked us up. We wedged into the cab of his truck, along with another thru-hiker who was along for the ride. After three cramped hours on windy roads and bumpy dirt tracks, we made it to the trailhead, where we immediately threw down our sleeping bags and went to sleep. The terrain on Day 119 was more flat than we'd had in a long time, allowing us to knock out easy miles. Mandy's brother Ben wasn't accustomed to the long miles we usually do, but he kept pace admirably throughout the day. 

Our lunch break quickly became nap time as we made up for lost sleep after our late ride to the trail. After some more steady miles in the afternoon, we called it a day at a horse camp, where we met some friendly equestrians who shared their fried chicken and potato salad. Early the next day, we took a side trail to Little Crater Lake. Hardly a lake, it's more like a pond that's unusually deep and clear. After a break to admire the unique feature, we kept moving. We took another snore-filled lunch break before moving on, encountering our first views of Mount Hood in the afternoon. We made an early camp by a spring, playing cards and reading as we enjoyed a low-key evening. 

Day 121 was one our stomachs had been awaiting for quite some time. We knocked out a three-mile climb—with stunning views of Mount Hood—to Timberline Lodge and its legendary breakfast buffet. We unleashed our hiker hunger on waffles, eggs, sausage, hash browns, frittata, yogurt, oatmeal, fruit, pastries and smoothies. Bloated to the point of immobilization, we hung out on the lodge's comfy couches and passed the rest of the morning idly. 

Once we'd digested enough to move, we caught a ride to the nearby highway and started looking for a hitch. Where were we going? South. We knew the path of totality for the next day's solar eclipse was somewhere south of us, but we had no idea which towns we'd hit along the way. Before long, we all got picked by a van, and the driver told us the little town of Madras was the epicenter of local eclipse viewing. As we neared town, we saw field after field filled with thousands of RVs. One local distillery was offering tourists the chance to camp out—for the low price of $500. Being hikers, we are sneaky and have low standards, so we weren't worried about finding a place to camp. We quickly found a dry creek bed down a small ravine behind some trees at the edge of a parking lot. Just stealthy enough to do. As we hung out in the shade, we heard from Tony and Ellen, the RV-traveling couple we'd crossed paths with twice before. They were driving to Oregon for the eclipse and wanted to know where we were. As it turned out, they were heading to Madras as well. Once again, by total happenstance, we'd found ourselves in the same place at the same time. At this point, we stopped calling them trail angels and started referring to them as our guardian angels. When Tony and Ellen rolled into town in Tinker Tank, their RV, they picked us up and took us out for barbecue. We caught up and shared stories of our travels over the summer. We'd hiked 2,100 miles and they'd driven more than 4,000, so there was much to tell. The next morning, we all met back up to watch the eclipse. We watched as the moon slowly cut a path across the sun, then gasped as darkness fell in a matter of seconds. Just like that, in the middle of the morning, it was night. In the sky was a brilliant white ring, so mesmerizingly beautiful I won't attempt to do it justice here. As the moon traveled on and the sun poked free once more, we stood motionless, mouths agape at what we had witnessed. We attempted to describe what we'd just witnessed, but failed to come up with anything more profound than "Wow."

The crowds started to disperse, and we prepared to head to the road to start hitchhiking back to the trail. Tony and Ellen stopped us, saying they wanted to give us a ride. Even though that meant driving through hours of standstill traffic in the opposite direction of their home, our guardian angels insisted. As Tony fought traffic, Ellen made us a delicious lunch. We tried to take out-of-the-way dirt roads to beat traffic—first we were thwarted by a row of hay bales blocking the road, then a sign reading "Your GPS is wrong." Indeed. 

As we meandered back toward Timberline, we passed the time reading, napping and playing cards (let the record show that Tigre and I, in our first game of Spades, pulled off an epic comeback to defeat the Godwin siblings). 

After hours of slow progress, Tony pulled off and drove us to a nearby lake. Then our hosts pulled out their stand up paddle boards and taught us how to ride them. We let the traffic clear as we paddled around the lake, learning how to balance and steer and rooting for each other to fall in. A few of us took a long swim across the lake and back, a refreshing workout after a day of idleness. 

As evening fell, we finished the drive to Timberline, enjoying a final meal with Tony and a Ellen in the RV. It had been one of the more memorable days of our hike, with an eclipse, a run-in with old friends and a fun afternoon at the lake. 

We said goodbye to our friends as we headed back to the trail, and we also had to bid farewell to Ben, who was heading back to start the school year. He'd been a fun addition to the group, and he'd gotten to experience some great trail and crazy side adventures. His week with us had been a blast, and I'm sure Mandy enjoyed getting to share the trail with her brother—just as I had with Carter and Anna on Mt. San Jacinto. We got moving again on Day 123, hiking ridges as we walked by the west slope of Mount Hood. The terrain changed frequently, the trail alternating between sand, rock and dirt. Some massive downed trees slowed our progress, but we worked our way through, eventually knocking out a substantial climb before our daily lunch/nap.

As we hiked a ridge later in the day, we saw saw smoke emanating from a nearby hillside. We were stopped by a Forest Service scout who took down our names and contact information so we could be notified if the fire worsened. We set up camp at a spring just before the worst of the smoke. 

We spent the next morning hiking through smoke, my Buff pulled up over my face to keep as much of it out of my lungs as possible. We started descending and caught our first views of the Columbia River, Washington on the far side. After a long climb down, we hiked into the riverside town of Cascade Locks, where we grabbed lunch under a bridge after foraging for blackberries in the bushes along the trail. Mandy and I walked to a nearby ice cream stand, where a friendly patron paid for our cones, which we topped with our surplus blackberry pickings. 

We'd have to wait to hike the last few hundred yards into Washington. After lunch, Tigre's friend Olivia picked us up and took us to her place near Portland. We took showers and spent the afternoon relaxing and sharing stories. After spending the evening at a local brewery, we called it a night.