Day 114 - Thursday, August 19

Tenting at Desane Lake (mile 1941.6). Walked 36.8 miles today.

We got up at 5 and got moving just after 6. After a little trouble finding the trail back to the PCT, we finally started down the trail. We got to a lookout of Odell Lake and admired it for several minutes.

It's definitely one of the best scenes of the Oregon section, especially with the smoke and the sunrise light. We continued on and reached Willamette Pass, where we had hoped to get to a week ago; however, that didn't happen, but we're here now!

After crossing the road, we started up the next climb and actually got some blue sky overhead as the smoke began to blow out of the area. We passed Rosary Lakes and hiked on quickly, getting 20 miles in by 1:30 pm.

We reached Charlton Lake and had planned to eat lunch here, but there was a sign just past the junction to the lake: Trail Magic Ahead.

We ran down to the lake to get some water and then hiked ahead for two minutes before meeting Ducky's mom and dad (Ducky is their son who did the trail several years ago). They were awesome and had hot dogs, chips, sodas, and cookies, plus, chairs to sit in! There were only a few hikers here and we ate and hung out for almost an hour before getting up and hitting the trail.

We hiked through a bit of forest before entering a large burn area which lasted for several miles.  The smoke also started to blow back in as we hiked through this section.

We had to climb over tons of trees, but eventually got through the section. At our next break, I told Frank that we weren't going to make our campsite tonight by our goal of 8:30 pm based on our speed.

Rule 1: Don't tell Frank she can't do something.

After the break, she took off with a speed that I haven't seen before. We flew by several lakes and I stopped at one for 6 minutes to get water.

She continued on and it took me almost an hour to catch her (and I was going about as fast as I could). When I did catch her, I accidentally scared the crap out of her as she had her headphones in and was jamming out to Shania Twain.

Rule 2: Don't disturb Frank's Shania-jamming.

We powered on as the light faded. Finally, we reached out site...at 8:20 pm. Just in time for Frank to prove me wrong. We quickly ate dinner and went to bed...another long day planned for tomorrow.