Bridge of the Gods

These past couple of weeks have been some of the best of my hike, due to two reasons: the Three Sisters Wilderness and the Eagle Creek Trail.

After firing a Glock 9mm and an AK-47 at the firing range in the high desert outside of Bend, we found our way back onto the trail on a beautiful day. The weather was superb, and the mosquitos were no more. The southern half of the Three Sisters Wilderness was full of typical forest far, but the northern half was so much more. Soon we were hiking out on the Wickiup Plain...huge open space full of rolling hills with the large peak of South Sister looming above. South Sister was probably the oddest mtn I'd seen at that point...the rock making up the mtn was a pretty and deep red color, and the glaciers up on the mtn and from the past had put odd scars into the sides. Instead of having a sharp peak like most other Cascade peaks seem to have, this was much more rounded. Hiking throuhg that plain was extremely fun, and each of the other sisters (Middle and North) were fun, but not that fun. Each of the sisters was it's own unique entity though, with glaciers doing a different number on each of them.

Once we got near Mt Jefferson, there was more snow than we've seen in months. There was quite a bit of fantastic ridgewalking, with creepy clouds rolling in. The clouds were dark, but didnt' look like they were towering enough to throw lightning at us. We got to the top of the ridge, and then a huge snowfield appeared. This field of snow wasn't too tough to navigate through, we've been hiking long enough to spot where a trail SHOULD be seen through the trees due to how far the trees are spaced apart, or maybe just through plain intuition. After coming down from this, we hit a wide open meadow that still had multiple of feet everywhere. I came down by myself and started to wander around looking for the trail, and soon San Gabriel, Forrest, POD, and Disco showed up to help. We wandered around for nearly 2 hrs, unable to find the trail. The problem wasn't just the snow, it was the fact that a pretty dense fog had crept in making it impossible to tell where the ridges were around us, and certainly impossible to see the 3 lakes we should have been able to use to navigate from which were below us somewhere. About 20 minutes before dark we decided to wait until morning, when hopefully the fog would burn off once the sun rose. That night the clouds finally broke giving us rain. The next morning there was still fog, but Forrest magically found the trail not that far below where we had camped.

Sometime after noon, the clouds all broke, and the day turned beautiful. There was quite a bit of dry ground, until we hit Jefferson Park. Again...bit open field....lots of snow, but no fog this time. We found our way to the ridge north of us...and climbed up to another snow-filled north slope. Descending from this turned into the high point of the day....we all just RAN and slid, and boot-skied down the mtn in record time.

With the snow behind us, it was time to fly toward Mt Hood on dry land. For some insane reason I started hiking the next day at a CONSTANT 4 mph pace...and did a 51 mile day to have a fantastic all you can eat breakfast at the swanky Timberline Lodge. Such good food.

Now I'm getting forced off the library computer at Cascade Locks...tomorrow I cross the Bridge of Gods that spans the Columbia River, and start a 3000 ft climb up into the state of Washington, where I will spend the next month and a half.