Day 1

6 miles
Up at 6, showered, went down to the buffet for breakfast, checked out and then made our way over to the train. A couple hours later we got off in Portland. We first walked to Safeway to get a couple things we had forgotten, and grabbed Chipotle on the way back to Union Station. Since Alaska doesn’t have Chipotle, this was a nice treat. We ate on a bench in the shade outside, which provided some good people-watching. We then boarded a bus for the ride to Sisters. It was fun riding up the road seeing familiar mountains and the intersection with the PCT. The bus dropped us at the Chevron, we made a pit stop inside the c-store and then walked over to where Highway 242 heads out of town. We walked along for about 10 minutes with far fewer cars passing than we hoped. However, we did get a hitch from a local guy that took us all the way to the trailhead near Dee Wright Observatory. We thanked him and then walked over to the trail sign to take some pictures. With our restart of the trail fully documented, we started walking. The trail winds up and through lava rocks, which provides great, unobstructed views (since there’s rarely a tree in the way). To the South we had North and Middle Sister mountains, plus The Husband a bit to the West. Ahead to the North we had Mt. Washington and Mt. Jefferson. We passed four people today, 2 day hikers heading back to the trailhead, a guy setting up his tent about 3 miles in where there was a patch of trees that were still alive, and a tent about a quarter mile before we stopped. This section is all burn area and the next section north of Santiam was closed our first year due to fire. I assume most hikers from our year haven’t done that section, unless they ignored the fire closure and hiked it anyway. The lava rocks, despite being mostly crazy, moon-like terrain, has swaths of trees towards the edges. Most of which were burnt. We are camped in one of the few clear areas and we are using some new attachments for the tent that let us pitch it without a rain fly on top. This makes our tent just a mesh bivy of sorts. It’s really nice to be able to stare up at the stars.