Day 9

17 miles
Our campsite had trees that shaded us from the morning sun, which can be annoying with this open air tent. Not complaining, just an aspect of it. The breakfast buffet was half-normal people, half-hikers. Jay was sitting with Malcolm and his friend, and Whimsy showed up eventually too. An older gentleman eyed me up and said, “You must be hiking the PCT.” Sure am! He told me he had also hiked it in 2013, but it was much different then. The snowpack in the Sierra has been a topic with nearly every hiker, and this man brought it up too. Most thru-hikers this year are skipping the Sierra and flipping down after the border. I imagine we would have done similar. I think the desert section would have been fun this year, to see snow, abundant water, and cool temperatures. Totally different than our year. After breakfast we poked around in the Lodge and then headed out. Along the way we passed two groups of PCTA volunteers doing trail maintenance. We got, what I assume are, our last views of Mt. Jefferson. It’s neat to see it so distant to the South when before it was so distant to the North. We’ve covered some hard miles this week and those views were earned. We are only about 24 miles to the Oregon-Washington border and that will close out Oregon for us (we are technically missing some miles near Ashland but whatever). Before we stopped for lunch, we leapfrogged a bit with Big Box. He was getting water right before a tricky river crossing. He chose to go through barefoot, but we decided to go upstream a bit to where it forked and cross the smaller portions. He made it across just fine, and so did we. Marie took her shoes off and crossed both portions, I managed to rockhop with dry shoes. Lunch was relaxing in the shade, the first time we have eaten lunch on trail without setting up the tent to keep mosquitos off. Our route today took us by Ramona Falls, which was beautiful. Some day hikers were standing behind the sign that said “Don’t stand here”. Idiots. The steep sections and switchbacks, mixed with the old growth forest felt very much like the section going into Dunsmuir. I guess it makes sense that over so many miles you’d get some deja vu. We rolled down to camp where Jay was already setup with a couple other hikers. He came out of his tent and chatted with us while we ate dinner. You meet a lot of people on trail and some you can quickly tell you’d get along with them in real life too. We’re planning to do about the same miles tomorrow and camp somewhere on the Eagle Creek alternate.