After seven straight days, we took a rest day on day eight. This let us regroup and check out future hikes (we drove up to the end-point for the next hike and then continued all the way to the Columbia River and then around). Also, heeding the advice of a certain poster on this site, we visited Huckleberry Inn in the town of Government Camp (she wasn’t kidding about the size of those maple bars, and Huckleberry milkshakes were the perfect antidote to too many straight days of hiking).
When we woke up the next day, intending one more hike, the weather had changed. The night before, the prediction for this day had been for cold and drizzle. That sure looked accurate as we got going.
It was 47 degrees and clouds were blowing through in the Mount Hood parking area:
As always, these two were ready (just give the word - please!):
The cold persisted up at the trail:
This shot shows summer skiers on Mount Hood. I couldn’t believe how small they looked (little dots), but there were lots of them:
And then we were off on a partial traverse of Mount Hood in the clouds:
Alex is 200 feet away and only just visible in this shot:
A lot of this part of the hike consists of getting past the creeks and rivers that start as snow-melt high on Hood. Typically we’d come to the edge of a huge erosion canyon and then switchback down near it, cross the stream/river and then move back up a little.
Here’s the edge of the Zig Zag River erosion canyon:
There’s a creek down there (if someone had told me we were on the Oregon Coastal Trail this day I could have come close to believing them):
Down the switchbacks:
To Zig Zag River:
Repeat for Rushing Water Creek:
And then the biggest canyon of them all (and the biggest set of switchbacks down), the Sandy River:
Mount Hood started making wispy appearances when we took a break on this river:
We were down at low elevation now and we stayed there past a few more creeks. The Muddy Fork crossing:
And then the last big climb of the trip, back into the forest:
We saw Mount Saint Helens (in Washington State) through breaks in the clouds and trees:
Other breaks let us see a very dramatic version of Mount Hood:
And then Lolo Pass, the end of this trip and this year’s very satisfactory PCT season:
Post-script: I told Tricia what I’d posted about Lolo Pass in the Volume 35 thread. I said that I thought Lolo (as in Lolo Pass) was a combination of of the modern acronyms L.O.L. and Y.O.L.O. and that it stood for “Laughing Out Loud Once.”
Her immediate reply was simply: “HA.”
I sure like her
