After pulling myself out of the comfort of the motel in Sisters, I successfully hitched backed to the trail. Just as I was passing the trail to the parking area, a guy introduces himself to me and says he is doing trail magic and asks if I need anything. I say, “No, I have lots of everything.” Then he says, “Did you see the sign warning about conditions ahead?” I follow him down to the parking lot and there is a laminated sign that says something like,
“ATTENTION HIKERS–the trail past Santiam Pass is treacherous and should not be attempted without crampons! PCT thru-hikers should hitch to Lolo Pass.”
There was no date, no phone and no indication of who posted the sign
Just then a section hiker who was finishing up his hike appears and says, “I’m going that way. I can take you to Lolo Pass if you want.” So, I took the ride and skipped 100 some miles of trail.
Back on the trail at Lolo Pass I meet other hikers who hiked through and they said it was snowy but definitely doable. I felt duped.
Skipping took the fire out of my hike. Which isn’t a totally bad thing..there may have been a little to much fire in my hike any way. After I got back to the trail, I just hiked a little bit and then sat down and watched Mt. Hood and ate away at my now overly supplied food bag.
The next day I slept in till 10:30 am I took long breaks during the day, laying in the woods looking at the sun shine through the vine maples for hours.
Now, I’m in Portland hanging out at my son’s and future daughter-in-laws place. They live in a swanky downtown apartment building that serves free good coffee all day long in the lobby. I met a guy in the elevator with a carbon fiber bike that says it is so light they had to put weights on it.
There is a North Face shop in the building and an REI a few blocks away. Might check out some gear while I’m here. My Mountainsmith Ghost got here yesterday and is now repaired. I’m going to see if REI sewers can repair my Mountainsmith CDT.
Be back on the trail soon.
Glad to hear things are going well! Best wishes from an east coast reader!
It sure seems to me that there’s some kind of effort out there to get us off the trail. All the fire closures, all the hype about the smoke, hype about how certain small towns are insular hold-outs for anti-social people so you better get a ride from Truckee, etc.
Yeah, there is. I’m sure they mean well but they don’t realize how important the hike is to us.
I’m still fuming about that sign maker and I know hikers who felt duped when they got the bad information about hitching from Quincy-La Porte road. Some hikers skipped 80 miles of trail for no reason but a trail angel handing out misinformation.
Hikers need a source of good trail information and the PCTA is useless in supplying it. So, instead, we get overprotective trail angels stepping in with bad information ruining our hikes.
Hi Crow – Why not hitch right back and un-dupe? Just curious. Good luck either way! 🙂
Yeah, I can do that after the hike. But hitching out and hitching back will cost at least two days and put me on a tighter schedule.
I’m never going to commit to a finish date again. It’s just to big of a drag to have a date hanging over my head.