Day 117 - Sunday, August 22

Tenting at Pinhead Saddle (mile 2059.2). Rejoined the trail at mile 2049.8 and walked 9.5 miles today.

We slept in until 6:30 this morning and then fixed ourselves a big breakfast with the leftover eggs and sausage from Kaurine's trail magic yesterday.

Today, Kaurine is going to drive us around the 2020 Lionshead Fire closure. The trail is actually open for another 27 miles, but getting out from that point is logistically difficult, so we opted for the easier exit point at Santiam Pass. After breakfast, we packed up and went into the town of Sisters, which is modeled after an old western town. We did our resupply at the dollar general and Ray's grocery and then went to the local park (which was right along a stream and very nice) where we organized our food and the headed off to drive the 3 hours to the other side of the fire closure.

Central Oregon is very different from the Cascades. Because it's in their rain shadow, it reminds me more of dry parts of western Colorado, especially with some of the rock formations. We saw Mt.Jefferson (which was in the closure area) and Mt. Hood (which we'll see up close in a few days).

We got on some windy, one-lane back roads and finally reached the area just north of Olallie Lake where the fire closure ended; so we'll miss 48.8 miles of the trail. We put our packs on, said bye to Kaurine and the dogs, and headed off down a side trail that got us to the PCT after about half a mile.

This is an area that most hikers have had to skip this year due to the logistics of getting here and the area was full of ripe huckleberries that we ate as we hiked along. We hiked through forest and onto the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. We were going to stop at the first site we came to, but it looked pretty busy so we moved on. Just after this site, we found our first blueberries of the trail and I pigged out for a few minutes before we kept going.

The next site 0.4 miles away was surrounded by dead trees and it was windy, which made me uncomfortable. The next option was a little more than three miles away. I suggested that maybe there was a spot at a dirt road in 1.7 miles, so we hiked to that. There were no spots here, fresh tire tracks, and moderately recent mountain lion scat. Seeing this was not a good place, we hiked on even though Frank was hurting everywhere. We hiked through a burned area and back into a forest, climbing up to the site where we found it was already occupied.

It was getting dark and our last hope was a site in another 0.2 miles. We got there and found a huge site occupied by nobody. I found an area that was somewhat sheltered from the wind and set up camp. We got in the tent and ate dinner which for me, ended up being a quart-sized bag of Cheetos.  Looks like another cold night tonight.