Day 135 (1 September) - Mile 1759.08 - 1782.26

Paved Dead Indian Memorial Road (Stayed in Ashland, OR) to Campsite at mile 1782.26

I had some trouble falling asleep last night in the hotel bed. Maybe I ate too much Japanese food or maybe it's that we had four people in tight quarters or maybe it was Brad and Tim trading snores, but I think I finally fell asleep around 11:30 PM. I woke just before the 6:00 AM alarm and wished it wasn't true. Oh well..I will be in my tent tonight so I should get a good night sleep then.

The plan was to wake at 6:00 AM, quickly get dressed, eat our backpacking breakfast in the room, and get to the trail in time to start hiking by 7:30 AM. Well...we got up at 6:00 AM and got dressed, but that's all the goals we met. Our food was in the 4Runner, so we figured if we had to go out there for food then we may as well drive somewhere, so we went to a bagel shop down the road which took a lot longer than anticipated, so we didn't get back to the trailhead till around 8:40 AM. We did manage not to dilly dally and was ready to hike at 9:05 AM.

Ready to hike

We had another opportunity to slack pack, but this time it is only for 11.80 miles where we will meet Tim for lunch. Oh well...11.80 miles is better than nothing.

Less than one hour into the hike there was a fallen tree above the trail. I thought it was pretty cool:

Share Bear under a fallen tree

About 5 miles into the hike the trail turned from nice dirt to a path covered with red lava rocks through a lava field.

Red lava rock trail

This kind of trail lasted a couple of hours as we circled the base of the volcano Round Mountain.  The lava rock fields made for good background for photos.

Brad among lava rocks

Share Bear taking a photo of lava rock scenery

Share Bear among lava rocks

Brad walking though lava rocks

As we circled the base of one volcano, another one came into view. This one is called Mount McLoughlin.

Self-portrait "Mount McLoughlin"

We had about 1 mile to get to Tim and then he was hiking towards us. We made it to the road and had lunch and packed all our gear in out bags. We will be on our own for the next 47.54 miles where we will meet Tim in Crater Lake National Park.

After lunch Tim hikes about 1 mile with us and turned around when we entered Sky Lakes Wilderness Area.

Sky Lakes Wilderness Area boundary

Oh, by the way, after lunch we got back on trail at 3:00 PM and we still had 11.38 miles till our planned campsite. We have some hiking to do!

Here is a nice PCT sign:

Self-portrait "PCT sign of the day"

We took a short break at 5:00 PM and still had 6.5 miles to hike. We are just hoping we can get to camp before sunset. Luckily the trail was beautiful this afternoon. There was some climbing and many fallen trees that we had to negotiate around, but the trial was in awesome shape.

The awesome PCT

Somehow we were able to hike the 6.5 miles in great time and made it to camp just before 7:30 PM. If only we stared out today on time, we would have made it to camp around 6:00 PM which sounds amazing.

This site was advertised to hold 3 tents and that is about what it can hold. We are in pretty close quarters tonight. Tomorrow we plan on hiking just under 25 miles, so I better get to bed. It is a cool night, so it should be good. Until tomorrow...

Close quarters tonight.