Date: August 10 & 11, 2017
Miles: 2190.5 – 2233.5
This morning started in the lush green, quiet forest that reminds me of childhood camping trips, with a vintage glow from the rising sun through tree branches and the smell of dry evergreen incense.
We passed into the Indian Heaven Wilderness in the afternoon and took a short side trail to a campsite on the eastern shore of Steamboat Lake.
The next morning, we hiked out to Forest Road 23 to hitch a ride in to Trout Lake.
It took a while to get a ride in. While we were waiting to flag down a car headed in the right direction, a couple headed the other way stopped and gave us water, fruit and yogurt. They asked us a bunch of questions about the trail and we had a lovely conversation. After about 20 minutes, we caught a ride and made it in to town in time for breakfast.
We loitered in front of the grocery store for a good part of the day, sorting through our resupply boxes, startling regular customers with our disheveled appearances, and eating.
We grabbed a ride back to the trail from Gary, a retired forest service employee who spends his free time being a trail angel and ferrying dirty hikers all over the place. Without people like Gary, life would be much harder for us.
We hiked about 7 miles through the Mt. Adams Wilderness and camped in an open area at the top of the hill we were climbing.
We had a beautiful view of the sunset on one side of us and Mt. Adams on the other.
We had the usual ramen dinners and then headed for our tents. There were a few dark clouds that appeared quickly, so we all battened down the hatches in case of rain. A few minutes later we heard Fluffy utter a couple profanities and then exclaim that he accidentally dropped 100 small sewing needles in his tent and could only find 21 of them. While I was laughing so hard I cried, a HUGE thunderstorm erupted to the south of us and we excitedly/nervously waited it out as rain poured down on us and the lightning and thunder passed over us and on out to the East and West. My heart was pounding. I love thunderstorms but I’m usually not IN them. Short bursts of lightning and faded rolls of thunder continued from the distance as I closed my eyes and went to sleep.
