Day 126: Mile 1955.0 - 1974.9

Got started late today--again. The excuse this time? Communications. I got some cell signal at the campsite last night--it was up on a ridge, possibly with an electromagnetic view (certainly not with an ocular view) down to Elk Lake Lodge and hence civilization--and so I spent part of the morning responding to messages from other hikers. In case you're wondering, Mark was at Timberline Lodge two days ago waiting out a storm, and Hangin' Out was at Timberline Lodge sometime in the past. Both aiming to get to Trail Days. I'm skipping Trail Days--going to hike instead (and still kind of surprised they're going to hold it, even with the Delta COVID outbreak back in Ashland)--so I won't get to see them, but I at least responded to their pings.

But getting started late was ok today because today was a big day: the day of Sisters and Obsidian.

Wetfoot had been looking forward to today for quite some time, Double Snacks too. Both were eager to see Sisters--a set of three mountains, North Sister, Middle Sister, and South Sister, all in a row, north-to-south--on a hopefully clear day (the last time Double Snacks had been here, it had been foggy so she hadn't seen the peaks). Wetfoot was also tremendously excited about seeing Obsidian Falls. She had been through this area before and see it all, but if anything that only increased her appetite for seeing it again!

Wetfoot set out from camp before me--she was planning on doing 23 miles today, whereas I was doing at most 21--and I eventually leapfrogged her before Sisters Mirror Lake. I had planned to stop at the lake for breakfast, but the comments on Guthooks said the views were much better a bit further down the trail, near the Devil's Lake Trail junction, so I decided to continue on.

And, it turns out, the comments weren't wrong!

Just on the way to the Devil's Lake Trail junction, the woods opened up and suddenly I was walking along these open spaces, the ground plain and brown but speckled in these tufts of grass that gave it a golden sheen, and cut through by a thin thread of trail, rising and falling with the rolling landscape. And then right behind that, just beyond, there rose the majesty of South Sister. A huge mountain, rising up curved slope over curved slope all the way to the top, still patched in snow, and with clouds tantalizing the peak as they ebbed and flowed. And the colors!: slopes of red and near purple soil, next to slopes of green-based gray (and yes I know that clashes but that's the *beauty* of it), and then the white of the snow, the blue of the sky--South Sister was a wallop, and so close and clear! Wetfoot caught up with me, and explained how you could take the Devil's Lake Trail and then it was a short climb up to the top via a southern approach. It wasn't a technical climb--her coworkers had done it as a day-hike--but a very steep one. For me, I was content to just gawk at the peak--no time to climb it today! But I spent some time at the junction, eating breakfast, drying my rain fly, charging my inReach (the panel was working again!), and enjoying the view until Double Snacks caught up, and I got to grouse about the view again.

Double Snacks and me headed out and hiked the next section together, she recounting her time at Elk Lake (which had gone well--she had gotten a good meal and, more importantly, had gotten to shower) (and I, having skipped it, remained my grimy self). And we hiked in the shadow of the Sisters, and as we went the clouds started to come in, slowly obscuring the peaks, but it was still beautiful. Even as we passed through some burn areas, I remarked that they vaguely reminded me of Christmas, with the mixture of green trees and white trees, the latter with their branches curling downwards as if laden with snow. (To be sure: it's *not* Christmas, the burn zones are actually pretty sad, but the *day*, the *day* was pretty happy, and that shaded everything.) We took lunch at a pond just off the trail, with the rocks behind in red and the shallow water below in green, and Wetfoot dropped by as she passed. When she was here last, this was a good pond for skinny dipping, she said, warm and isolated. Although this time there was a guy sitting there, in an actual camp chair, reading a book, by the shore: not so much for the skinny dipping this time!

We continued around the bases of the Sisters, now going around Middle Sister, and the clouds were coming in force: for the rest of the day, the Sisters would be demure, hidden behind white, but just the view of South Sister earlier in the morning, that was enough! And the trail would walk amongst the woods, then along some ridges, and along a random ridge I looked down and saw below a river, meandering along through a thin grassy valley, partially in the sun, partially in the shadow of the mountains across the way. And just these sorts of little things, they just made the day just that much more special.

Eventually, we came to the border of the Obsidian Limited Entry Area and were immediately greeted by a big boulder of, well, obsidian. And I remember Daddy-O would later comment: I didn't know it came in sizes that big! And pretty quickly we came to Obsidian Falls which even in the later part of the day, in low light, was so tall and impressive. Is this the first real falls we've seen since Yosemite?, asked Double Snacks. And I think it was since we skipped Burney Falls. But while the falls were amazing, the real magic was up above. Because the trail climbs up to the top of the falls and crosses the stream that leads to it. And here we met Daddy-O, filtering water, and he said, oh, wait for the sun to come out. So while Double Snacks got water, we waited and, lo and behold, the sun did peek out from behind a cloud, and suddenly the ground was just sparkling. Literally sparkling, with hundreds and hundreds of shards of obsidian. And Daddy-O said it's incredible--which it was--and that he wasn't able to capture it with his camera, it just wouldn't come out. And I tried and failed as well. So I guess you'll just have to go. Because for the rest of the Obsidian Limited Entry Area, as we hiked passed hillocks and creek beds, whenever the sun would shine the whole ground would go a-sparkle, thousands of glints of light, a world near drawn into faerie.

At the end of the day, we hiked to the beginning of the lava flows--harsh looking rocks all a tumble, that are nonetheless marvellously light--and camped in a small copse of trees. And I camped under the trees, but Double Snacks and Daddy-O opted to camp just behind the copse, more in the open, with a gorgeous view of North Sister and, as day faded and night came on in full, of the moon shining bright and big as it came over the mountain.

And that was the hike! Overall, the weather was good: warm when moving, a bit chilly when you stop in the breeze, but since you're hiking, that's not an issue. This morning Wetfoot had commented that it felt warmer than yesterday and that held up during the day: just great hiking weather. And just a great day today: the Three Sisters really are spectacular, and well worth the trip if you get the chance!

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Some notes:

-- Campsite > Sisters Mirror Lake > Devil's Lake Trail Junction > Mesa Creek > Hinton Creek > Pond > Obsidian Limited Entry Area > Obsidian Falls > Glacier Creek > Campsite

-- As we broke camp this morning, I talked with Wetfoot and found out that it was her 4-month trail anniversary! (Evidently people keep track of such things: I have no idea how long I've been on trail.) And she's a nurse, so we chatted about some "odd things" I picked up from my medical student friends. Like how liver transplants are some of the most tranformative: you take someone who looks terrible, skin sallow, even eye whites gone yellow!, and then they have the transplant and the next day--the next day!--they look healthy and normal. Or like how some patients get artificial hearts while they wait for heart transplants, and how that's so strange: they have no blood pressure, they have no pulse, and yet they're walking around and talking and very very much still alive! Oh, and Wetfoot--who's lived in Portland and hiked Oregon a few years ago it seems--did recommend a few things in the Pacific northwest to check out. Like the Mount Saint Helens Visitor Center, which she said was awesome: it's planted right on the crater so if it had been there during the eruption, the eruption would have blown up right into your face! (Wetfoot has a distinct like for blowing stuff up!) And it's a pretty neat Visitor Center in general, well worth dropping by after you've finished the PCT.

-- We passed a lot of "loopers" today, people backpacking this or that loop around Three Sisters. And I must admit, such a trip is pretty appealing: the Three Sisters region is absolutely beautiful, and doing a loop around the peaks--and maybe go up South Sister too--sounds like a great way to spend a week.

-- One of the loopers passed by us, going the other way, and commented to me, that's the finest mustache I've seen on trail! To which I can only say: you haven't been on trail very long! (Especially since my nose had been drooling all over my mustache all day!)

-- There also appears to be a book club in Oregon? At the pond at lunch, at the border of the Obsidian Wilderness, there were folks sitting in camp chairs, reading. And I admit I don't quite understand the appeal: if I'm out here, I want to be *doing* something, not reading. I mean, I can read at home. And usually when I read outside, I find is that the pages are too bright and then when I look away the whole world goes dark. But maybe reading in the woods of Oregon is a whole different experience and much better?

-- Oh and I saw Rooster again today, passed by him at a creek where Double Snacks and I stopped to get water. And I still don't think he recognized me. So I said hi in a cheerful way and suggested that *I* recognized *him*, and that seemed to be deliciously awkward for him! The last I'd seen him was at Crater Lake, but he had headed out even as we were coming in, and I didn't get a chance to talk to him before he left. This time at the creek, I had gotten into a conversation with an old volunteer ranger, and again, didn't get a chance to talk to him before he left.

-- Said conversation was pretty interesting. The old volunteer ranger, who was backpacking around Three Sisters with his daughter, had a bunch of insights. That the hills we were seeing just across this valley were actually the youngest lava flow in this area. That the smoke was pretty bad in the valleys, but it was clear up here, and that you can't anticipate mountain weather and where the smoke will end up. That the temperatures were hotter in general, but the cold snaps had made it seem like fall was here and here early. Lots of these sorts of things that just showed his familiarity with these lands. And that's what I most envied of him: he *knew* the *land*. And that, for some reason, is worth something--worth a lot!--in my book.

-- Oh, and there are blueberries on trail and, for a while, I would keep bending down, plucking the bigger ones, and munching away. And if you know how heavy a backpacking pack is, and how hard it is to bend down, you know how good those blueberries needed to be for me to keep doing it!

-- I did go ahead and leukotape my hips and right shoulder today. My iliac crests had gotten bruised up and sore, so I'd started wearing my hip belt wrong--pressing *against* my hips rather than sitting *upon* them--and that had relieved the immediate pain but caused new pain. With the upshot that eventually my iliac crest bruises basically started to blister, and then I developed another blister on my right shoulder where my backpack strap sits. They'd been hurting the past few days unless I adjusted my pack just right, and finally I gave up and just taped them all down with leukotape in hopes they were indeed like blister hotspots and would benefit from taping. And the shoulder taping certainly helped--that blister was starting to scab so every time I'd futz and bump the scab it'd hurt, but with the tape it became immobile--and I think the hip taping helped some too. Anyway, I'll keep the taping in place until Ashland, so another few days. The tradeoff, of course, is that the skin underneath doesn't get to breathe, but I'll risk it and see what happens.

-- Today peanut M&M color is yellow.

-- Camping cohorts: Double Snacks, Daddy-O