On the 29th, we awoke at first light through the fir trees, packed up our gear, said goodbye to a couple of our campsite friends who were awake, and hit the dewy trail by 6:45— a record for us! The trail today was much the same as yesterday, allowing us glimpses of Mount Jefferson behind and Mount Hood ahead, but mostly just pleasant woodlands. Sometimes the hills grew steep, but the trail cut a fairly level path along the sides of them.
Although two of my toes were forming blisters, and my legs were still aching from yesterday, it felt good to walk in a continuous line. The flat trail meant that we could keep an unchanging pace, watching the miles roll by under our feet as we chatted about anything and everything.
We crossed a large burned area (not super new, but definitely within the past few years) carpeted with pink fireweed and full of birds (northern flicker, mountain bluebirds), then switchbacked across a field of gray volcanic rock, with a view of the snow ribboning down Mount Hood's peak in the distance.
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| See Mount Hood? |
Seeing that we were getting far ahead of schedule, we committed to spending a full two hours at a campsite near the banks of the Warm Springs River (which was actually icy). We had no books, music, or other entertainment, so it would be a challenge, but we were determined to slow down. We washed our dusty feet in the river (while squeaking about how cold it was), rinsed our socks and hung them to dry, spread out our sleeping pads and took catnaps, chatted with some section- and southbound hikers, watched the sunlight move across the trees, and tried to quiet the inner voices telling us to walk, walk, walk!
At last, we had made it to our self-imposed deadline, and leapt back onto the trail, only to have our butts whooped by a gentle but never-ending climb up the mountain. By now the sun shone hot on our necks in between the trees, and the dry air sucked all the water out of my mouth. Within a few miles, we had mostly emptied our water bottles.
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| Old-school trail marker |
Now we were in an all-too-familiar dilemma: running out of water. The next spring was still four miles away, and we had less than a liter. We had planned to make camp early, but now we had to go the next four miles so we didn't get dehydrated.
Fortunately the trail leveled out, taking us into a woodland of old, deeply-furrowed Douglas firs banked with a carpet of moss and evergreen needles. We flew along the trail, but I was getting a dehydration headache and also becoming very hungry.
By the time we skirted the southernmost edge of Timothy Lake and stopped at a spring, I was in another familiar situation: being really, really grumpy. I threw a hissy fit because I sat in some pine pitch, and Zach force-fed me some couscous. It was delicious, and I felt much better afterward.
We were planning to stop for the night a little further among a stand of firs, but decided at the last minute to walk another couple miles in order to set ourselves up for the 13-mile loop around Timothy Lake the next day.
By the time we'd walked an additional two miles, I ached from every muscle, and felt discouraged that we had only gone 18 miles… until Zach told me that we'd actually gone 23. We were hurting and out of shape, but we had done a respectable thru-hiking-distance day!
We camped at a designated site right on the shore of an inlet of the lake. Golden sunlight painted the sky, ducks paddled away, and ospreys wheeled overhead. We set up camp, flopped down on the sleeping pads, and were fast asleep before it even got dark.
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| The view from our campsite |
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