Familiar Places and Faces

8/24 - Timberline Lodge, OR - Mile 2,100

Out of all the places I’ve written these newsletters from, my current location may be one of the coolest. The Timberline Lodge is an old wood ski resort, and the area I’m in is a circular room built around a giant stone fireplace, and filled with comfy chairs. It also has an incredible breakfast buffet; it’s been a long time since I’ve felt so full. (Regrettably, I didn’t take any pictures of the food. After asking up at 4AM and hiking 10 miles up a hill to get there on time, my stomach wouldn’t let me do anything before grabbing a plate.)

You may be familiar with Timberline, even if you’ve never heard the name; while making The Shining, Stanley Kubrick used the lodge for exterior shots of the Overlook Hotel.

The lodge is the last resort of many in Oregon; I’ve stopped at ones at Olallie Lake, Shelter Cove, and Big Lake. The latter generously offers free meals to hikers who arrive at specific times, which was a welcome break from the same food I've been eating for weeks on end.

It’s been an interesting state to hike through. As I head north, the landscape begins to look more and more like home, and I’m starting to walk into places that I’ve visited before by car. The most obvious example is Crater Lake, which stunned me just as much as it did when I was there in 2020 — maybe even more so, as I got to walk around almost half of the rim, on one of the PCT’s most famous alternate routes. (For some reason, the official trail doesn’t offer any views of the lake, instead taking you through a now-burned forest.)

I also took a few days away from hiking to visit Portland, where I got to see Becky, along with my friends Kadeem, Cristina, and Jay (a former co-worker that graciously let us stay at his house and pet the cat he was babysitting). After four months of hiking, it was great to get at least a brief taste of normal life, and to see people that I’ve been missing desperately.

Not that I’m quite tired of hiking just yet. For the most part, the terrain through Oregon has proven as easy as people say it is. In the week or so between Ashland and Bend, I was able to hike around 35 miles each day, even hitting 37 miles one day. And, after my few-day break, I was finally able to break the 40-mile a day barrier, though I don’t plan on making a habit of that.

I’m also very pleased to report that I no longer have to deal with the swarms of mosquitoes that made my life miserable in the first half of the state. There were times when I’d look at the mesh of my tent door, and barely be able to see outside because of all the bugs pressed against it, craving my blood. The bugs have been thinning for over a week, but I’m still itching from the days when I couldn’t even escape them while hiking as fast as I could.

Oregon has also been the state of on-trail reunions. You may remember that, upon reaching the snow-packed Sierras, Door, Kidska, and I decided to flip up to South Lake Tahoe. Lots of the people we were hiking around throughout our trip through the desert made a similar decision, but went up to Washington and started hiking south. As I’ve continued north, I’ve started to run into a lot of those people again, which is always delightful. I’ve never gotten tired of the conversations about how things have been since we last saw each other, and of swapping advice for the trail ahead as we walk in opposite directions.

I was also able to finally catch back up with Door and Kidska, after we got separated in Northern California. While we probably won’t get to hike together much more (we’re just traveling at different paces), I’m glad I got to see them again, and to formally promise to come visit them and give them food once they reach the section of the trail that’s close to my house.

There has been, however, something familiar, but unwelcome: wildfire smoke. It’s something I have to deal with every year as a resident of the west coast, but it hits harder when you’re outside pretty much 24/7. For a week, I was breathing air that health authorities would label “unhealthy,” or even “hazardous.”

Thankfully, things have mostly calmed down, though that doesn’t mean that fires have stopped affecting my trip. In northern Washington, around 35 miles of trail are currently closed due to fires. There’s a detour available, but it’s 70 miles of trail that hasn’t necessarily been maintained — and that could also be at risk if the fire suddenly flares.

At the pace I’m going, I’ll probably get to Leavenworth, WA — the town before the closures — in less than two weeks. If the trail isn’t reopened by that point, I’ll likely take a bus back to Spokane, rather than trying to push on through the detour. I’d love to get to the ending monument at the Canadian border this year (it’s currently still open, but with still active and uncontained fires that could change any time), but I’m just not sure the detour would be worth it. It skips a part of the trail that’s apparently extremely beautiful, on top of adding miles and difficulty, which will likely be compounded by smoke-filled air.

I haven’t made any final decisions yet — a lot can change in a dozen days — but I’ve already started mentally preparing to go home a bit early. The process has been a bit like the five stages of grief, though it’s almost as exciting as it is a bummer; I’ve got a list of things I want to do, movies I want to watch, and foods I want to make when I get home, and I can’t wait to get started on them.

With that said, I’m still absolutely looking forward to the trail ahead. I’m hoping to get to Cascade Locks tomorrow, where I’ll take the Bridge of the Gods into Washington state. That is, by the way, another place I've visited before. Unfortunately, that means I know how terrifying it is for a pedestrian to walk across the car-dominated bridge.

From there, I’ll have at least 300 miles of hiking left to do, through some very beautiful country. There are also some delights left in Oregon, including waterfalls that you can walk under, and views of the ginormous and still snow-capped Mt. Hood.

Of course, if I want to see those views I’ll have to get out of this very comfy chair, and actually get hiking again. Or maybe I’ll just stay for the dinner buffet…