Darkness is hanging on longer and longer in the mornings. Even at 7am it was really too dark to pack up, so I used the headlamp to get ready for another day of hiking. Tabasco and I went down to the lake front near the store at Shelter Cove Resort to fill up our water bottles and to use the facilities. We started hiking about 7:45am and walked the road to a jeep road over some railroad tracks to a connector trail for the PCT. Once on the PCT the brisk pace Tabasco normally hikes at was back.
After crossing Willamette Pass we climbed to three beautiful lakes, the Rosary lakes. Then the PCT bumped us around some and we were both starving and I struggled with fatigue and dizziness from lack of calories. We stopped for a cooking lunch at 11:30am to get some calories in us for the afternoon hike. Virtually all afternoon we hiked in the forest with lots of stagnant ponds and quite a few lakes along the route, but no views to the upcoming Three Sisters. I fought fatigue all afternoon and the mental struggle of having to deal with hiking dawn to dusk every day for the last 7 days and another week of it to come. I’m so sick of having to hike all hours of daylight as fast as we can hike, just to beat the pending snowstorms or rainstorms that could begin in earnest at any time.
By late afternoon we both were so tired we stumbled across roots and rocks a few times. I tried all afternoon, in vain, to get a cell phone signal so we could get a weather update for Tuesday and Wednesday. Depending on when the upcoming storm system moves in will play a role in our decision about how far to hike tomorrow and whether to take the first highway option to hitch to Sisters or to take another day and hike to the second highway, 16 miles farther. I fought all the mileage decisions left to get us to Mt. Hood, trying to time our finish day to coincide with Debi and Allison’s schedules to come pick us up. Frankly there are too many miles left, too many weather variables, and too many fatigue/physical factors for us to know with certainty when we will finish.
We hiked late into the afternoon and I pressed Tabasco for an extra mile beyond where he wanted to stop. So at 6pm we stopped for the day next to Jezebel Lake, about four miles into the Three Sisters wilderness. We set up camp and made a campfire which lifted our spirits. Not that we aren’t having any fun, but highlights of the day for me are breaks, lunch and when we take off our packs at the end of the day and make camp. I ate two two-serving Mountain House dinners tonight with no problem, 40 ounces of food. My backpack is breaking down as the shoulder straps are losing their stitching. The result has been that the pack is leaning to the left and the unbalance is causing shoulder and neck pain and is pinching my nerve on the back. General joint pain in knees and ankles continues and for both of us, our feet hurt from so many days back to back of big miles.
Our bodies and our gear are breaking down and our mental attitudes are less than all positive, yet we continue to push to reach the end before the weather ends the hike for us. After eating big dinners we sat around the campfire for a little while. I figured out mileages for the day and began this journal entry by headlamp and the light of the fire. It’s a very quiet night in the woods, with stars shining above, but a thin layer of high clouds muting all but the brightest stars. The fire is now reduced to coals and I am getting ready to head to the tent to hopefully have a good night’s sleep, something neither Tabasco nor I have had in a few nights. Tabasco’s flashlight is so weak on battery life, he can’t journal or read like he likes to do, so he is already down for the night.
Tomorrow, if our bodies and minds will allow, we will try to hike 30 miles. That’s an entire day of hiking now that daylight hours are so short. All our thruhiker friends who came through Oregon two months ago were doing 30 mile days on the relatively gentle ascents and descents, but they had two more hours a day than we do now. Soon the PCT journey will be done and all the memories and experiences of a life time will be celebrated and our current hardship will be forgotten. Today’s weather: mostly sunny; low 30, high 58. Today’s miles: 27.5; cumulative miles 2083.2.
