A Jaunt on the PCT II, Day One

Earlier this week, Zach and I were able to do a three-day hike from Timberline Lodge to Cascade Locks! Here's my journal from the trip…

Day One, August 18th, 2019

We woke up late and ate a leisurely breakfast, getting on the road with Gary by about 10:00. It was cloudy in Portland, but once we started climbing toward the peak of Mount Hood, we left the clouds behind and sailed through the winding roads under clear skies. Around noon we pulled up to Timberline Lodge, ready to continue where we'd ended before.

Gary, Zach and I hiked up past the lodge and turned left on the trail emblazoned with a huge PCT emblem, and joined a scurrying line of people heading alongside the mountain. To our left, Timberline Lodge was framed by the undulating blue mountains and the distant peak of Jefferson. Pale lavender Cascade asters grew in evenly-spaced clumps across the sandy ground, forming meadows between the firs.

We paused at the edge of the Mount Hood Wilderness to fill out a permit, then joined the long line of people hiking into the wilderness. Although we've certainly hiked in more crowded places, it felt anything but wild out here, and we had to constantly stop and step off-trail to let people by, or say "excuse me" and power past slower walkers.

After a couple miles, the crowds began to thin, and as we delved down into a valley and crossed a little stream, only a few hikers remained. 

Gary had previously suggested that we take a little detour onto the Paradise Park loop, a trail that hooked up with the PCT in this section, and we agreed. So instead of continuing on a flat trail among the trees, we turned to the right and hiked between thickets of huckleberries and red elders toward the timberline. 

Before long the trees began to clear, and soon we were in a landscape dominated by meadows— and such meadows! I gawked, unable to believe the sheer beauty and diversity I was looking at. 

Thickets of purple lupine, spikes of bright red Indian paintbrush, clumps of Cascade aster, little sunbursts of arrowleaf groundsel, spikes of Cascade Canada goldenrod, white flower-clusters of American bistort, shapely leaves of green false hellebore sticking out like florists' decorations, and a bunch of other flowers I couldn't identify: all forming the most gorgeous gardens I could imagine. None of the meadows were uniform; each one was shaped by the slope it was on, and lines of color marked where streams flowed down and encouraged new flowers. On the dry meadows the lupine and asters reigned; along the trickling streams, pink clumps of purple monkeyflower and scattered subalpine mariposa lilies became dominant. I floated through the flowers in a dream.

See how the drift of yellow flowers indicates a stream?

After a few hours of hiking, the trail rejoined the PCT, so we said goodbye to Gary and parted ways: him back along the loop, and us forward into drier and more forested terrain.

We hiked down the mountain, ate peanut-butter-chocolate wraps at a campsite near a creek, then set out onto a boulder field to cross the Sandy River.

Even here so near its glacial source, the Sandy River is a raging torrent of opaque water. Zach and I approached, looked at some thin logs laid across the river— right at the water level, slick and shiny— then tried to find another way. There wasn't one, so we took deep breaths and approached the makeshift ford. It was less than ten feet to cross, but the water looked deep and dangerous. A wrong step could get you soaking wet at best and a broken bone at worst. 

Zach went first, inching across, and then I followed, my legs trembling the whole way. Then we laughed in relief on the opposite bank, tried to find the trail through the unmarked boulder field, and ducked back into the forest.

It doesn't look like much, but it's a torrent!

Hooray, we made it!

We ended up taking a short detour that we'd taken before, to see Ramona Falls. I'd remembered the falls as being pretty, but when we approached, I was shocked to find yet another feature that I'd remembered smaller than it was. The 120-foot face of black volcanic rock rose up through the trees, laced with an incredible embroidery of falling water. Zach and I gaped.

We traced our path through the woods, which were flooded with stripes of golden evening light. We stopped to talk to an Australian woman who was visiting the Northwest for the first time— beautifully dark-skinned and full of friendly joy, she was soaking it all in and happy to share the wonder.

This part of the trail was particularly scenic: a carpet of moss rolled over everything, trees grew out of boulders and rotting logs, mushrooms pushed up silently, slugs made a slow-motion slither across the trail, and the sunlight filtered through the fir trees.

The bridge and person are considerably closer than the falls, making it look smaller than it is. 120 feet tall!

Unfortunately, around this time I began to have stomach trouble— not enough nausea to keep me from hiking, but enough to be unpleasant. By the time we stopped at a nice campsite along Muddy Fork River, I was more than ready for rest.

Because of my roiling stomach, I wasn't able to go to sleep, but I tried anyway, putting in earplugs and closing my eyes. I drifted in and out for a while, and as the woods grew dark I noticed that the trees around us were faintly illuminated. My half-asleep brain couldn't figure out why, until I craned my head back and saw a bright white light shining through the woods far away. I thought it was a headlight at first, until I realized that it was actually the moon. So I laid awake in the moonlight and marked time by watching it rise, slowly, slowly, through the trees.

~~~