Up again before dawn and a little climb followed by

a short 4 mile walk to Kitchen Creek. Water filtered, feet bathed (or whole body in Freddy’s case, it was freezing mountain water…).

Not nearly as hot as day 1, but still a struggle in parts. When exposed, we’re looking at 1L of water for three miles!

Lots of lovely Manzanita trees, the odd snake and lizard, and a beautifully cool and shaded forest walk to finish the journey. It’s safe to say I’m pretty spent

Burger in Mount Laguna and a sly stealth camp in the currently close Burnt Ranchera campground.

Good little community forming in our bubble.

Out of the blue had an invitation to Little Bee’s birthday party / PCT reunion!

Flew to Amsterdam where Freddy (Energizer) VDM collected me and plied me with high quality Belgian beer before driving off next morning to Roedinghausen.

Followed a reunion with Little Bee, Second Chance, Lava, For Free and Gazelle and taking sheep for walkies!

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Sorry for the late post.

We spent a few days in Cascade Locks and all went our separate ways. The Chairman and Little Red back south for the Sierra, and Freddy and I off trail. This bouncing up and down had got expensive and we both missed family!

We however took the opportunity of crossing the Bridge of the Gods.

And one morning these two wonderful people cooked breakfast for us and provided great conversation.

Freddy and I headed for Portland and, surprise, in the bookshop met these two

I hadn’t seen Bluetooth, my favourite Texan, since Big Bear Lake!

Freddy flew home and I started a long journey South to meet Fleur, who was flying in to LA. We shall do a long road trip.

Had a late start and slowly descended down to Cascade Locks, the lowest point on the PCT. We got a teasing view of the town 8 miles away then descended down through trees to the sound of thunder, hoping we’d make it there before the storm got us!

And 1000 miles walked!

Somehow this ended up as a 31 mile day. I think we were all below our best and feeling tired in the morning, but it was Little Red’s 50th birthday so in the German tradition she offered us lunch, so we all took a detour off trail to the Lost Lake general store for burgers, over 3 miles each way. The food was very welcome and invigorated us all, so we pushed a long way to reduce the miles we will need to do to get to Cascade Locks tomorrow.

Early in the day we saw the spectacular Ramona Falls.

Felt unwell this morning so didn’t go to ski, but did manage the buffet breakfast.

Relaxed and had a midday snooze in the tent until we set off some time after 2pm for a short walking day. We got great views of Mt Hood as we skirted round, with strongly flowing creeks and snow patches.

I wasn’t at my best today, in fact the last couple of miles to Timberline Lodge seemed eternal.

Timberline lodge is a great depression era building and a ski resort on the slopes of Mt Hood. It is a spectacular building well worth a visit in itself. Moreover there is skiing here all year round.

The buffet lunch was good and I ate way too much. We then spent the day relaxing in the lodge’s public areas, with couches and real fires. They also had good local beer…

We camped 5 minutes away in the trees on the trail so we could come and go. I went to bed with the intention of getting up early and doing some skiing, but felt ill in the night so sadly didn’t.

A long day through picturesque scenery with woods and lakes, in fact my longest day so far.

Being a weekend lots of people too – but the best by far was two couples camping and fishing by Timothy Lake who treated us to fresh fruit, trail mix and a beer! More than that we got chairs and good company. It was tempting to stay there but we wanted some more miles so we could reach Timberline Lodge tomorrow in time for the buffet lunch!

Rick kindly gave us a ride into Sisters for breakfast and then on to Redmond.

It turned out the only plausible was to get to Olallie Lake Resort was by Lyft (an Uber competitor), and more strangely it was much cheaper to get it in Redmond than Sisters, even though the route took us back through Sisters!

It was quite a long drive which 10 miles before our destination turned into a forestry department road – good job the Lyft was a large 4×4. To the drivers great credit he didn’t complain even though we could only do 15mph there onwards.

Olallie Lake Resort is a lovely place, hard to get to and with no WiFi or mobile signal, so a great place for a getaway. They have cabins to rent right on the lake. Sadly we had to get some miles in and walked for a few hours through thick forest.

The mosquitoes are just starting to get annoying….