Trail Angels Bring a Little Trail Cheer

Oregon, Section C: Highway 140 to Highway 138 (the rest of the section)

Section D: Highway 138 to Highway 58 (near Willamette Pass)

Section E: Highway 58 to Highway 242 (near McKenzie Pass)

Charles and I are now 1983.7 miles down the trail and over halfway done with Oregon. We are so close to the 2000 mile point I can hardly believe it!

It should go without saying that we absolutely adore and love all of our trail angels. We’re a little lost in town sometimes and finding people willing to offer a place to stay, shower and do laundry, offering a ride, leaving water caches, or even just leaving some drinks on the trail is absolutely amazing. We received an overwhelming amount of support in California and that just rolled over into Oregon. I plan to do a final blog post after the trip partially dedicated to our trail angels, just to show how much help we’ve received.

This past week we had eleven trail angels since leaving Crater Lake!

Around Highway 138 we met a trail angel offering sodas, chips, cookies, and watermelon. He was meeting his wife at different trail points and decided to help out some hikers along the way.

We had low mileage leaving Crater Lake to meet two of our friends from college, Brian and Kori. They met us around Highway 138 and cooked us breakfast in the morning. After, they hiked with us for ten miles. It was a fun day catching up (they both live in Idaho, so we hadn’t seen them in awhile) and enjoying the landscape. Kori also gave Charles an on trail haircut!

There was also a dry section of trail leaving Crater Lake, so some trail angels put out three giant water caches for hikers.

After parting with Brian and Kori, we realized we had 48 miles and about a day and a half to meet our next college friend, Annika, at Shelter Cover Resort. I hiked my first thirty-one mile day and it went over without a hitch. We had some beautiful scenery, passed the highest point on the PCT in Oregon, and camped at Summit Lake.

The next day we entered Diamond Peak Wilderness during our morning hike to meet Annika for lunch. We enjoyed talking with her for a couple hours (I hadn’t seen her since my second to last semester of college!) and did a light resupply at the store. That evening we camped at lower Rosary Lake, the start of a couple lake filled days.

We entered the Three Sisters Wilderness and passed multiple lakes, including Desane, South, Mac, Horseshoe, and Dumbbell. The sky in the morning was relatively smoke free, but late afternoon it felt like walking through a cloud again as we passed near another fire. We camped for the night next to Mesa Creek, a nice change in water quality (while the lakes were beautiful, nothing compares to a cold stream).

Our second day in the Three Sisters Wilderness I felt like I was walking through my dream landscape. The land was a perfect alpine setting with mountains, clumps of conifers, and streams. We also visited Obsidian Falls, a gorgeous waterfall that cascades over obsidian rocks. We also walked through large fields of obsidian rock that glittered in the sunlight. That morning was slow, due to some sauntering on my part.

In the afternoon we walked through some lava fields. The first section was alright as the trail was mostly gravel. While mildly frustrating to slip every few feet, it was much better compared to the last lava field of the day, where the trail comprised of large rocks (it really hurts the feet).

At Highway 242 we received a ride from two ladies to the town of Sisters. From Sisters we hitchhiked into Bend where we were fortunate enough to stay with a trail angel couple. A friend I worked with at Jacob Lake a couple summers ago, Nichole, lives in Bend and she was so wonderful to treat us to dinner last night.

Now it’s time for some major food planning. We are mailing one box to Timberline Lodge, our second to last stop in Oregon, and three boxes to Washington.