Day 14

22 miles
Turned out to be a beautiful night full stars and the sound of the river flowing by. We got moving and headed for the Panther Creek campground, which would allow us to use a toilet, empty our trash, and then get water from Panther Creek. We needed to carry for 9 miles and 3200ft, and it ended up being a relatively smooth hike up. I think a large part of that was the weather being cooler. It was rather cloudy and at times it sprinkled a bit, so we stopped at one point to put in our pack liners and bring all the rain gear up from the bottom of our packs. First time we’ve needed that stuff, which I’m glad. At the top we stopped for lunch with Yardsale and Chickadee. They’ve been going roughly our speed and taking many of the same breaks most of yesterday and today so we’ve chatted a bit. They even cleared a spot to camp since we were all headed to the same point. We met Marshmallow, who we also saw at lunch, who is trying to catch up to the other members of her group. She joined our group at the end of the day, which I’m glad, she seems like she wants company. One of the guys in her group was staying in the room next to ours in Cascade Locks, small world.