Monday morning I packed up and went down to the lodge to wait for the breakfast buffet to open. My uncle Don and aunt Connie and some of their family were staying nearby and came up to meet me for breakfast.
After breakfast we went down to the parking lot to meet most of my family. My sisters, Rachel and Laura, and my brother-in-law Guesly joined me to hike the next section of trail to Cascade Locks, 45 miles total, going from around 6,000' down to just about 200' at the Columbia River.
We made out way around Mt Hood, crossing a few glacial streams. We waded across the first and had a couple log bridges for the others. We stopped at Ramona Falls for lunch.
That evening we planned on stopping at a shelter marked on my GPS but not mentioned in my book. Usually the GPS is pretty good about showing things in the right place but there was no shelter when we got there. We had just passed a small camp spot but decided to push on to the next good spot rather than turning back. Three or four miles later... we finally found a good place to camp, going quite a bit further than we originally planned, over 18 miles.
On Tuesday we had a bit shorter day, due to the long day Monday. We camped near a spring at an abandoned campground above Eagle Creek. I had to explore around in the woods a bit before finding a few old picnic tables. After eating we went back up the trail to an open hillside where we could see Mt Saint Helens, Mt Rainier, Mt Adams and the sunset.
On Wednesday we took a shortcut trail from the spring down to the Eagle Creek trail, about 2 miles of steep downhill. Eagle Creek isn't along the official PCT, but most hikers go down to Cascade Locks via that trail rather than stay on the PCT. There were several big waterfalls, narrow sections of trail along cliffs and high bridges. Dad came to pick us up, we met him about 5 miles up the trail. It was about 90 degrees by the time we reached the parking lot at the bottom. Dad drove us into Cascade Locks where we got lunch. They headed home and I got a motel room for the night to relax.
After breakfast we went down to the parking lot to meet most of my family. My sisters, Rachel and Laura, and my brother-in-law Guesly joined me to hike the next section of trail to Cascade Locks, 45 miles total, going from around 6,000' down to just about 200' at the Columbia River.
We made out way around Mt Hood, crossing a few glacial streams. We waded across the first and had a couple log bridges for the others. We stopped at Ramona Falls for lunch.
On Tuesday we had a bit shorter day, due to the long day Monday. We camped near a spring at an abandoned campground above Eagle Creek. I had to explore around in the woods a bit before finding a few old picnic tables. After eating we went back up the trail to an open hillside where we could see Mt Saint Helens, Mt Rainier, Mt Adams and the sunset.
Laura, Rachel and Guesly look like they are having a good time. The picture you didn't take was the girls examining their blistered feet. I'm glad they were able to join you for a section of the PCT. One more adventure in their book of memories.
ReplyDeleteI thought I was gonna die that first day. :P And the cliffs on the 3rd day were pretty scary. But it was worth it. It was a fun adventure and fun to see what your life on the PCT is like. Sorry if we complained too much. :) I'm glad we got to meet a couple of the other through hikers. It was weird hearing them refer to you as Redbeard.
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