Day 9, Sept. 3, 2014

Light snow on Mount Adams.

Up at 7 a.m., breakfast at Panther Creek Campground. Spent the morning shuffling cars. We now have my truck parked at Cascades Locks, the end of this hike, only 35 miles down the trail. A surprise when we drove through Trout Lake again and got a closer look at Mount Adams – a fresh sprinkling of snow on it.

Mount Hood with no clouds. But highway and oil train.

Then the uncooperative Mount Hood decided to come out of the clouds while I was driving the truck to Cascade Locks. While trying to get a picture of it in the clear, an oil train flew by in front of me. Just can’t get these mountains to do my bidding.

We parked John’s car on a road that crosses the PCT four miles down the trail from the Wind River Road, which means that when we “finish” the hike at Cascade Locks we will come back and hike those four miles. But we can do it with light packs, just water and rain gear – and hiking poles, of course.

The trail featured a 1,700-foot climb up Sedum Ridge and then 1,700 feet down. Downhill is as hard on my knees (three surgeries) as the uphill, and they are hurting tonight. Hope they don’t swell up before morning. More climbing tomorrow, but it will be over 16 miles.

Our camp site at Rock Creek.

We are camped at Rock Creek Road (which is not a road we could have used for a car shuffle). It has the only reliable water on the trail for a long ways in either direction, and there are several hikers camped here. John found us a good spot on top of a hill that we had all to ourselves until just as the final light of the day was fading away. Then two thru hikers climbed up to our spot and asked if there was room for them. They set up beside us, cooked their supper in the dark and settled into bivouac bags instead of tents.

While I admire these thru hikers, I also wonder about some of the things they do. Come into camp and set up after dark? Just not my style. Cut a few miles off the walking and find a place while there is still light. If water is a problem, plan to collect enough at the last water spot and do a dry camp. But then you would have to know something about the trail, and I get the idea that some thru hikers know little about the areas they are passing through. Talked to one thru hiker who confessed that he had no clue what a huckleberry was and now regretted walking through miles of prime berry picking without ever sampling a single one. And lots of the hikers have been asking us to identify the peaks for them. John and I have the advantage of having lived here for years, but John is also incredibly knowledgeable about the trail, the vegetation along it, where the water is and the best campsites. That’s because he’s a dedicated reader of trail guides. And I’m the lucky leech who gets to suck up all this information from the spreadsheet he has provided and from his commentary when I can stay close enough to hear it. Seems to me that if you are going to dedicate five to six months of your life to walking 2,500 miles on a trail, you’d want to know what you were looking at. But maybe that’s not the point for everyone hiking straight through.

Just to prove my statement above about John’s knowledge of the trail, below is his identification list of the flowers he observed on this trip:

Here's a photograph John took of flowers in the Goat Rocks Wilderness.

John’s Flower List

White Pass to Cascade Locks

Aug 25 – Sept 5, 2014

White

alpine buckwheat     Eriogonum pyrolifolium

American bistort    Polygonum bistortoides

elmera     Elmera racemosa

fringed grass of Parnassus     Parnassia fimbriata

Gray’s lovage     Ligusticum grayi

Parry’s catchfly     Silene parryi

partridge foot     Luetkea pectinata

pearly everlasting     Anaphalis margaritacea

rusty saxifrage, Alaska saxifrage     saxifraga ferruginea

sharp-tooth angelica     Angelica arguta

sickle-top lousewort     Pedicularis racemosa

silverback luina     Luina hypoleuca

sitka valerian     Valeriana sitchensis

strawberry     Fragaria virginiana

thread-leaf sandwort     Arenaria capillaris

Tolmie’s saxifrage     Saxifraga tolmiei

trillium-leaved sorrel     Oxalis trilliifolia

white-flowered hawkweed     Hieracium albiflorum

white heather     Cassiope mertensiana

white spirea     Spirea betulifolia

wooly pussy toes     Antennaria lanata

yarrow     Achillea millefolium

Yellow

arrow-leaved groundsel     Senecio triangularis

Cascade wallflower     Erysimum arenicola

fan-leaf cinquefoil     Potentilla flabellifolia

large-flowered agoseris     Agoseris grandiflora

mountain arnica      arnica latifolia

mountain monkeyflower     Mimulus tilingii

smooth hawksbeard     Crepis capillaris

spreading stonecrop     Sedum divergens

wall lettuce     Lactuca muralis

orange

orange agoseris     Agoseris aurantiaca

pink

broad-leaved willowherb     Epilobium latifolium

Lewis’ monkey flower     Mimulus lewisii

pink mountain-heather     Phyllodoce empetriformis

spreading phlox     Phlox diffusa

red

red columbine     Aquilegia formosa

scarlet paintbrush     Castilleja miniata

small-flowered paintbrush     Castilleja parviflora

purple

alpine aster     Aster alpigenus

asters (other)

coast penstemon     Penstemon serrulatus

Cusick’s speedwell      Veronica cusickii

larkspur     Delphinium menziesii

lupine

mountain bog gentian     Gentiana calycosa

blue

common harebell     Campanula rotundifolia

green

green false hellebore     Veratrum viride

one-sided wintergreen     Orthilia secumda

Berries

blackberry

blueberry

blue elderberry

bunchberry

false Solomon’s seal

huckleberry

juniper

mountain ash

Oregon grape

queen’s cup

rose hips

salal

snowberry

star-flowered false Solomon’s seal

thimbleberry

Passed a couple today who were both plugged into ear buds. Had to ask what they were listening to. She was hearing a science book entitled “Breast,” and he was listening to The Economist.

 

Twenty-six miles to Cascade Locks.