PCT Day 126
September 3, 2021
Mile: 2229.9 to 2240.0 (10.1 miles)
Start: Comfy hotel at Trout Lake Valley Inn
Finish: Burnt Rock Pond tentsite
There was no rush on our part to leave the peaceful town of Trout Lake, Washington today and our main concern this morning was food (of course) and not much else on our minds. We sat inside the breakfast area and had a lazy meal of oatmeal, homemade marionberry jam (aka the tastiest variety of blackberries), hard boiled eggs and fruit. I knew we had to get back on the trail today because we’d been relaxing in town too long and everything was booked up with the start of the Labor Day weekend. Shannon had some work issues pop up so we decided on catching the 3 PM shuttle back to the PCT from downtown Trout Lake and planned our day around that. I went back to the hotel room to journal, sip green tea and be super relaxed.
We checked out of our hotel room late and slowly puttered around the property, eventually making our way back the mile to town along the country roads.
Shannon always likes waiting until the last 15 minutes of our hotel stay to pack up so we checked out a little bit late but luckily there were no penalties. We wandered up to the main drag in the tiny town of Trout Lake which is basically just a general store, post office and a taco shop that comes three times a week. The town looks pretty much the same as it did in 1919 from the old photograph hanging in our hotel. The only difference 100 years later comparing the old photo to today’s downtown seemed to be that the horses on a muddy dirt road have been replaced by cars and pavement. Other than that, Trout Lake has pretty much stayed the same.
Shannon and I dropped off our backpacks back at the hiker hangout spot behind the General Store where we were greeted by Fluffy the chubby mouse-killing cat and a small gaggle of ducks clucking around the yard. The taco truck was open today so we stood in line behind a dozen forest fire fighters, locals and hikers also ordering food. I had to laugh at a small group of PCT hikers chowing down on tacos next to the truck and wedged in between them on the bench was one of the locals’ gray bulldogs. The chubby dog was batting his sweet sad eyes at the hikers in hopes of getting some scraps but the hungry thru-hikers weren’t falling for his tricks. Trout Lake seemed to have all sorts of friendly cats, dogs and ducks wandering around the downtown area and it was a fun place to pass a few hours watching their comings and goings.
We had dropped our backpacks at the general store earlier in the afternoon where Fluffy the cat rubbed up against our legs. Fluffy lives at the store hunting mice and is quite large, quite friendly and apparently quite flea-ridden. Ugh. After petting the cat, we were all itchy from whatever fleas had jumped over to our legs and hands and dumped tons of hand sanitizer all over us in hopes it would kill the bugs. Luckily, the biting soon stopped so we wouldn’t become super nasty in terms of hygiene issues on the trail. Oh, the joys of living in the woods.
Shannon had some online business to take care of before we hit the trail so we passed the time using the WiFi and drinking coffee and tea from the combination cafe-restaurant-gas station-auto mechanic. On our way to the café we ran into our buddy Twilight who we thought had left town yesterday. Today his knee was all wrapped up and he was limping which looked painful. Twilight told us he only made it 8 miles before his knee gave out on trail and he had to turn around and come back the 8 miles to town. He was staying at some camp nearby that we called “Camp Jonah Hill” or “Camp Jonas Brothers” with a spunky hiker gal named Cookie Pie. It sounded like Twilight was going to try to rest for a few days and let his swollen knee shrink and then hitchhike up the 100 miles to White Pass to meet back up with his Tramily (Trail Family aka the people you like hiking with so much that they essentially become family). Hopefully his knee turns out fine and he gets back on trail! It was sad to see him get injured this far on the PCT. He’s such a nice guy and I would love to hang out with him and his boyfriend sometime.
At the cafe we grabbed some tea and coffee and sat under a shaded roof on a comfy bench, reading a book and writing in my journal as Shannon sorted out some technical issues with his online business. It was a gorgeous day sitting there and as we looked in the sky it seemed to darken and the smell of smoke became stronger and stronger. It was unnerving to see wildfire smoke blow into town. We guessed maybe some of the smoke had blown down from the forest fires 100 miles north of us by White Pass but we weren’t sure. Hopefully the smoke won’t get too much worse but it was definitely irritating my eyes making them itchy and red and making it a little bit harder to breathe than normal. We wrapped up our café date after spending a few hours jamming out to their hilarious playlist of Disney songs interspersed with crazy rap and random 90s hits and headed up to the general store.
Since we had signed up for the 3pm shuttle back to the PCT we were eager to not miss the free ride back to the trail and made our way to meet the shuttle a bit early. While we were waiting, a PCT hiker with dreadlocks who had been trying not to let the sweet bulldog eat his taco truck lunch earlier in the day came by with a box of enormous freeze pops to share with other thru-hikers. Shannon and I thanked him for the trail magic as we chowed down on the frozen sticks of bright green sugar water in the hot afternoon sunshine. What a day!
At the general store we looked around for where the shuttle might be because we didn’t want to miss the ride or be late for the shuttle as the drivers are volunteering their time and we’re trying to be respectful. Soon we met Doug the local Trout Lake Trail Angel who was the friendly mastermind behind arranging all the PCT hiker shuttles for the town – something like coordinating rides for 1,500+ hikers and scheduling dozens of volunteers. It was cool to meet a trail legend and thanked him for all the services he provided to the trail and the sleepy town of Trout Lake.
Soon a very nice lady Trail Angel named Mary pulled up and 4 of us hikers squished in her car along with her large Labrador retriever. She had lived in Portland, Oregon for 50 years with her husband and hers was kind of a sad story. The couple had built a cabin out here in Trout Lake and were going to retire when they hit 70 years old. Her husband seemed like he was really excited about it and prior to retiring he biked across the entire United States. But a couple years after his cross-country biking trip, Mary’s husband was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer and passed away. Unfortunately life passed him by too quickly and he never was able to celebrate his dream of living in a cabin in the woods with his wife like he had planned on. Mary’s voice wavered a bit while telling her story and it was very sobering to hear. It affirmed our beliefs that it’s just so important to live your life purposefully and not wait until you’re older to do the things you want to do. Your health is never guaranteed and neither is your life.
As we drove in silence up the mountain roads, I thought back to stories similar to Trail Angel Mary’s that I’d heard from some of the older guys I worked with at my last job. One guy at the shop died 3 days into his retirement so he never was even able to enjoy his time off after spending 45 years working at the same company. Another died a few weeks before retirement, having a heart attack on the factory floor. Like so many others at our corporation, he was declared dead in the ambulance on the way to the hospital so that the company wouldn’t have the negative branding image of an employee dying on their property (a very common practice for them to do). What was the point of working all those years and spending all your time in an office and factory, slowly saving up money in your retirement fund but never being able to enjoy it? I’m still trying to figure out the answer.
The two girls who were shuttling with us back to the PCT started chatting with Trail Angel Mary about a local wildfire that had devastated this area a few years ago which was a sensitive subject for the locals. Apparently the fire had been caused by a rowdy teenager throwing fireworks into the dry gorge. Several people had walked by the young firework thrower asking him not to toss the explosives into the drought-ridden timber but the troublemaker continued despite being old enough to know better. What ended up happening was exactly what you would think would happen if you shot incendiary devices into a brushy bone-dry canyon – the whole place erupted in flames instantly. 50,000 acres of forest and homes in Oregon and Washington vaporized over the course of a few weeks, entire towns were evacuated, roads closed and 6 months after the fire was started, it was still smoldering underneath the winter snows that had blanketed the area.
The day that the teenager threw the fireworks and started the Eagle Creek Fire, they had to evacuate by helicopter 60-70 people who were out hiking including elderly backpackers and a lady who was pregnant who then had complications because of all the smoke and ended up having to go to the hospital. 150 people were trapped overnight in the woods at the same Eagle Creek Trail that we’d hiked a week prior when the fire cut off the popular trailhead escape route. Some of the hikers out on Eagle Creek said they turned a corner and the fire was only 5 feet away from them which sounds incredibly terrifying. The teenager was tried and convicted in a highly publicized court case. The young arsonist was sentenced to 10 years probation, 2,000 hours of community service and fined $36 million in restitution for his negligent actions. From what the girls were saying, it sounded like that family and the teenager had been completely ostracized by everyone in the area not only because of the amount of damage, injury, loss of property but also because the trial was headline news for a while.
The girls riding with us in the car had their own theories about why this idiot teenager started the fire, convinced that part of the blame for the fire couldn’t be helped because in their minds young men were inherently more immature than women. One girl cited a psychology podcast she’s listening to on trail that told her men’s brains are less developed as teenagers which I mean I guess I get but to me it sounded more like some quasi-factual B.S. It sounded more like this chick was trying to act like an expert in neuropsychology after listening to a single podcast episode and justify the actions of an individual through stereotypes. With Shannon being the only guy in the van, it was kind of weird that the girl basically said all men are stupid and the other ladies agreed. The thing is, you don’t see 99.99% of teenage boys starting massive forest fires – it was just this one asshat. You can also argue that pseudo-science over the years has put down different groups or genders for another group’s gain. For a long time women couldn’t hold technical jobs, vote, open their own bank accounts or have the same rights as men because they were “prone to hysteria” that had been “scientifically proven.” Or how different races have put down other races because of their skin color with “scientific facts” that the different races are slower, their brains are smaller, etc. Show me the large scientific studies, the data, the statistical analysis, published technical papers and who funded the experiments – don’t just think something’s true because you heard it on a podcast. Any jerk off the street can record themselves talking and call it a podcast! Okay, I’m down off my soapbox now.
Anyways, the girls sharing the shuttle ride with us were kind of annoying to put it plainly and the minutes slowly ticked by as we wound up the road and they continued to go on about how superior women are. I tried to focus on Daisy, Trail Angel Mary’s golden lab dog, who was spending almost the entire car ride licking my arms and legs for some reason. One of the girls also heard a status report about a potentially trail closure worthy wildfire that was only 5 miles east of the PCT about a week’s hike north of us. We’d thankfully arrive at a mountain pass before hiking through the fire where we’d surely have cell service to assess if the inferno was too dangerous to continue hiking next to. Soon we rolled up to the PCT crossing where several other hikers were waiting to head into town and we thanked Trail Angel Mary, gave her $10 donations for gas money and hiked as fast as we could out of there to get away from the annoying girls. Daisy the dog jumped out of the car, excited to get a little exercise up at the trailhead and have a new set of sweaty hikers to sit next to and lick the salt from their skin.
Shannon and I hiked fast through the towering pines and thick stands of chest-tall ferns, carefully picking our way around fallen logs. This was an area where we were on high alert as the Eagle Creek wildfire in 2015 created tons of widowmaker trees where one strong gust of wind could topple the timber and smash you. Unfortunately, in 2019 one of these widowmakers crushed and killed a hiker named Finn from Germany shortly up the trail from where we got dropped off. We were extra careful here, especially as we entered into a burn zone where the trees were all widowmakers that looked like they could easily fall and kill you if you weren’t paying attention. It was a very sunny hike today since there’s no shade anymore and our legs were already very dusty from all the ash and sand. The thick layers of ash from the burnt pines made for excellent fertilizer in the soil and the huckleberries here were primo eating.
We were passed by two mule trains on the trail and it was impressive that the sturdy animals crushed the trail miles so quickly. The lady at the head of the second group of pack animals said that her horse wasn’t scared of strange humans wearing large backpacks but that her young mule was pretty frightened of hikers. The cowboy lady asked us if we could not look the mule in the eye when it walked by which we respected. We scrambled off the trail into the bushes to yield to the pack animals, the horse in the lead followed by the mule and chased behind by two dogs that looked more like wolves instead of pets. The cowgirl told us that the mule was only 8-years-old and that they’ll work until they’re 45-years-old. I learned something new today!
I dragged behind Shannon as I snapped photos in the golden light but he left me notes in the sand to send messages to catch up. The wildfire smoke became thicker and thicker in the mountains beyond. You could hardly see anything to the west because of the thick smog and the sky was dazzling in an odd way because of how the haze and the beams of sunlight mixed. Shannon and I finally met back up at our campsite after I was dragging my feet in order to take photos. I had started sprinting a little bit down the trail in order to not get caught by the annoying girls we shuttled with and also because it felt a little mountain lion-y out here. A tent was already set up in one of the two camping spots near the pond and we met friendly, down-to-earth Wetfoot who was already set up in her tent. We introduced ourselves as Voodoo and Princess North Star and asked if we could camp near her. Wetfoot was super nice and said of course so but she was going into bed at 7:15pm because the mosquitoes were bothering her.
We settled in as quietly as we could, not wanting to bother Wetfoot who was going to sleep soon and brought our dinner over to the hard packed shoreline and blueberry bushes of the tiny pond to enjoy a lakeside evening meal. I flew the drone for a little bit and over the tops of the trees we watched the colorful sunset sparkling on the glaciers topping nearby Mount Adams. In the twilight the glacier turned a kaleidoscope of rainbow colors and we snapped some cool drone footage as dinner cooked. Shannon and I sat by the clear water, quietly eating dinner and enjoying the peacefulness so as not to disturb Wetfoot who had gone to bed early.
After dinner we balanced on a log that stretched way out into the depths of the pond and carefully scooped water from the sandy depths of the lake to filter. As the water bubbled up from my Smartwater bottle I saw a newt or salamander swimming in the pond in the dark of the night. Bats flew around us eating up all the bugs that we had been a little bit bothered with during dinner and mosquitoes that had driven Wetfoot into her tent early. The night started to become quite chilly so slightly shivering I threw our food bags in her tent because there was nowhere to hang them in the weird pines and went to bed. In the middle of the night, something very heavy with hooves or boots walked down the PCT waking me up and had my heart thumping a bit. I’m thinking it was either an elk or a very large deer because you could feel the ground shake. I’m not gonna rule out Sasquatch but I definitely did wake Shannon up as the footsteps got closer. I was a little on edge because Shannon had packed out smoked salmon and it stunk up the tent that would’ve attracted any meat eater for miles. Luckily the stomping creature left after a while and we went back to sleep in our cozy salmon-scented tent.
