Miles hiked: 28.5 on PCT, plus 0.8.
The trail wound through more of he same forest-meadow-barren volcanic plain mosaic I had yesterday. The looming dark backlit hulks of South and Middle Sisters rose directly to the east, and as the sun climbed higher behind them shafts of light shinning through low points on their flanks showed in the thin smoke-haze.
After about 10 miles of that, the trail poured out into some of the suburbs of Mordor. It wasn't downtown or the business district of Mordor, since there were a few trees growing here and there in the jumbled dark lava, just some of the outskirts. These were flows streaming down off Middle and North Sisters, and pretty much the whole landscape seemed raw and hard like just a short while after the beginning of time. I followed some narrow switchbacks up the curiously-named Oppie Dilldock Pass (sounds like what you might yell when you hit your thumb with the hammer) then wrapped around the north side of North Sister and on down to McKenzie Pass and hwy 242.
Today it seemed that the trail deities have had enough of my griping about the thick forest and lack of views and all my talk of fast, easy walking, and decided to give me what I had coming.
"Let's give him wide open lava fields with no trees for shade!" They said.
"Yes, and there won't be any clouds for shade either!"
"And let's cover the whole trail with golf balls and baseballs and soft balls disguised as rocks so that even though there's a nice view now he can't look up from the trail." Now they're getting on a roll.
"But we'll put a bit of smoke haze in the air for when he takes a break to look around."
"OK, he's looking a little tired now. We've got him right where we want him. We'll give him a couple miles of cool forest with smooth soft trail and a little pond at the end where he can get water and have a nap in the shade. Then we'll double down and give him much more of all the same."
"Yes. And we'll make it uphill for a few miles!"
I thank the deities for the lesson in perspective, and yet it was still a really nice day with Mts. Washington and Jefferson sticking up above the smoke to the north and be Sisters slowly getting smaller behind me. I sort of ran out of snack food but then found a Slim Jim on the trail (still in its wrapper) and slurped down hat juicy little meat-like morsel.
This was the most tiring day of Oregon so far, and after the 28 miles to the Big Lake Youth Camp I was pretty beat as I hiked in under the sunset. The whole camp was deserted when I arrived, except for a line chipmunk rummaging in someone's pack for some walnuts. I shooed it away then did some rummaging of my own in he hiker box for something to make for dinner, since today and tomorrow only the camp is vacated and they're not serving any meals (they are a super hiker-friendly place and apparently normally feed hikers and do their laundry and all sorts of awesome stuff like that). Just as I was getting ready to start cooking some Hiker Box Surprise, a few other hikers came up with bags of tabouli and pita and other wonderful stuff that the camp director had invited them over for. These bags were leftovers, and these awesome hikers offloaded this awesome food on me and I shoveled it down along with some fresh melon and got back to feeling normal. I lounged around in he little hiker lounge they have in a worn out but well fed state of low productivity, then eventually way past my bed time I rolled out my bed next to the building and faded off looking up at what seemed like a remarkable number of stars.
Birds:
Oregon Junco
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Steller's Jay
Gray Jay
Orange-crowned Warbler
Lincoln's Sparrow
Clark's Nutcracker
Mountain Chickadee
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Red Crossbill- really long bills
Cooper's Hawk
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Common Nighthawk
Hermit Thrush
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