21 Miles
The wind howled a good portion of the night, which made for a cold morning on the saddle. The sun didn’t quite make it through the trees enough to be effective. My pack normally sits outside next to my head. It’s nice for ease of access, but also makes it easy to hear critters. A mouse was crawling up my pack last night so I knocked the bag through the mesh. That scared it off, but it came back. Shooed it away and it ran over and climbed the mesh above Marie’s head. I knocked it down and then it took off for good. Being the last day before town, I could eat almost all of my food. It’s great. Plus, we should have town food in the morning. Also great. A man in full priest vestments came down the trail before we packed up. Probably a church retreat or something. The trail was mainly descending all day, with a few shorts climbs. The first climb was up q ridge that had great views of Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens. The first lake we stopped at we pulled water. The second lake was our morning snack break. After we ate, we hiked back up to the PCT and ran into Stoked. She was hiking without Right On Time because he had gotten off trail yesterday due to a hip injury. A mile or so later, we ran into a sobo hiker that suggested we take the Sawtooth trail that was coming up. We decided to go for it and it was a fantastic decision. We had a short climb up to some exposed sections that gave great views. Mt. Hood was peaking out, Mt. Adams in full display, Mt. St. Helens on the other side of the ridge, a big stretch of ripe huckleberries, and even Mt. Ranier on the northern descent. Not the actual PCT, but it should be. The trail junction had enough space for us to hang out and eat lunch. A father and son (both with Trump 2024 hats) came up asking if we had seen huckleberries around. They even had their berry buckets hooked to their belts. We told them about the bushes we saw up the trail and they headed up. On the way to our next water source we passed a bunch of berry pickers, each with their own bucket contraption. Our campsite is nice, although crowded. There’s a stream near us, we are a bit removed from the group, and it puts us about 5 miles to the road. From there, we can either hitch or get on one of the trail angel shuttles.
PCT Hike 