Aug 23rd – Rainy Days and Mondays
The rain last night turned to more of a mist. While it kept coming down the volume was far less than yesterday. Still it was a good test for the tent, which kept us basically dry. The tent is a Europa II, weighs about 2 pounds and has lots of room, even for 2 people. It’s a single wall “tarp tent” hybrid, uses a trekking pole in front and is made of 1.2-ounce silicon impregnated nylon.
We did have a couple areas dripping along seems that are midway up on each side, drips from the end where the pole goes through as a hoop, water seeping in at all four corners and some seepage through the floor. In all, it was a manageable amount of water seepage, but more that I would have liked. The two days of rain combined together were intense, and it is only a single wall tent. So I would give it a C+ in performance. Perhaps a little more seam sealing would help it improve.
The morning was misty and dreary. Water hung to the trailside vegetation, but only occasionally falling from the sky. We crossed Russell Creek, which was down about 30% from yesterdays rain engorged torrent. It was a knee-deep ford, very manageable. After getting across and climbing back up the bank on the north side, the water soaked sand and gravel gave way under the Carrot’s foot and she fell back in the creek. Although soaking wet, she had no trouble getting out, which might not have been the case had this happened yesterday. We were all set to make a run for Ollalie Lake. Then we would see how far we might be able to get before trying to meet my parents at one of the road crossings between Olallie and Timberline, if we could find them on the phone at their friend’s house.
Unfortunately our plans suffered another setback when we missed a poorly marked, sharp right turn and ended up walking 3 miles down the wrong trail. We realized something was not right when we came t an unexpected trail junction and the sign said “To the PCT 3.4 miles”. Ooops … not good. As we were trying to determine just where we were. Little John caught up to us and we gave him the bad news. Back up the trail we hiked, finally arriving at about 11:30am to the junction where w missed our turn, only a half mile from our camp. Not a good start to the day. We would now settle for just trying to reach Olallie Lake and getting a cabin to dry out in.
Light rain continued to fall. As we crossed Jefferson Park the clouds lifted enough to see fresh now on the lower reaches of Mt Jefferson, not far above us. The summit remained hidden by fog and clouds and the “classic” views of this magnificent mountain remain a mystery to us.
We hiked for awhile with Little John until he took off fast trying to catch up to his hiking companions who had been behind him and were likely wondering where he was. The Carrot ad I sampled an occasional huckleberry, as well as some blue berries found in low spots near ponds.
Approaching Olallie Lake we ran into 3 day hikers who bore the bad news that all of the cabins were sold out. Our only hope for a dry night was that other thru hikers might have already rented one of them and we might be able to crash with them. When we arrived around 5:30 we found Little John, Sheppard, Tremor and another hiker on the front porch of the office / store. Cabins all sold out, none to thru hikers. They were drying off, eating junk food and preparing to hike on a few miles.
We looked and did not have a chance to make it to any reasonable road crossing by afternoon tomorrow. Our best option was to try and get a message to my mom and dad and have them meet us here. We used the office’s cell phone ($5 surcharge), which worked only marginally if the call was placed from out on one of the docks in the lake. We left a message and returned to the porch to dry out before going somewhere to set up a wet tent.
This fishing resort is very remote, literally an hour from any other road junction, town, store etc. Off the beaten path. No traffic driving by. Anyone here was coming here. Scanning the parking lot there seemed to be two cars. Getting a ride out was a slim possibility. I talked to the people in one of the cars but they weren’t too helpful. We waited.
Finally a fisherman came of the lake and started into the other car. We were lucky and got a ride with him to the town of Molalla, a Portland suburb. Here we got a real hotel room, beer, wine, pizza and were closer to where we could connect tomorrow with my parents.
