Day 128 : The Three Sisters

25th August 2013
Mile 1969.5 to 1988.5 : Mesa creek to Lava Lake Trailhead
Mileage : 19

Average mileage since day 101 :

As predicted I woke up with wet everything thanks to the rain and the inadequcy of my tent to keep me dry. Luckily there was a pause in the rain long enough for me to break camp, and so I managed to stay relatively dry while I got ready to hike. Today hike saw me skirting left around the day's set of volcanos, the Three Sisters, and they were not happy to see me. By mid morning I was trudging up wet and slippery trails trying to avoid stepping on the sharpest shards of obsidian that littered the trail in some sections. All three sisters, Southern, Middle and Northern, were hiding in thick cloud and clearly I was hiking through the oregraphic influence zone caused by them as I hiked either in rain, or clouds all day. The wet conditions makes stopping and resting unpleasant, as all that happens is that I get more cold, more wet, and more miserable, so I didn't really stop except to get food out of my rucksack to munch on the hoof. By the middle of the afternoon though my morale had sunk pretty low, and I had little desire to hike more miles, especially given the long exposed lava section which my map told me I was getting pretty close to, and the amount of lightning i was witnessing. A couple days before coming into Shelter Cove there had been a lot of lightning and corresponding thunder, and after each flash I would crudely work out how far away I was from it in order to judge the danger levels. Today I tried to do something similar, but found I couldn't do it due to the shear amount of lightning flashes all around the mountins. Hiking down to the pass the rain, thunder and lightning were continuous. It wasn't really dark enough to see the individual flashes, especially given that I was walking under a forest canopy, but the thunder just became one long rumble that would vary from a low volume and frequency rumble to huge bangs almost right overhead. Originally the day's objective had been the Big Lake Youth Camp, where I had a resupply box waiting for me, but coming up to McKensie Pass I decided I had had enough of the weather for the day and would attempt to hitch into either Bend or Sisters some miles east from the pass. The trail has an uncanny ability to throw highs and lows at you in quick succession, and today was the perfect example of this. My morale was at a real low coming into the pass, and I didn't fancy my chances hitching in the storm, but as I emerged at a carpark I bumped into weekend hikers Shay and Beth with their teenage daughter Lu just getting into their car. They were only too happy to help out a fellow hiker, and soon enough I was on my way to the small town of Sisters. As I had not planned on stopping there, I had not bothered to find anything out obout Sisters or Bend, so had no idea what lay in either of them. In the end I got dropped off at the local bustling coffee shop, and thought about my next move. I decided the best course of action was to start talking to anybody and everbody who would listen to me, and talk loudly enough that everyone would know I was a PCT hiker and had a British accent. The combination of the two has served me well numerous times on the trail and I had faith in them here. Within minutes an elderly couple had suggested I go up to the local firestation where, they assured me, I would find information on trail angels and if the worst came to the worst, I'd be able to stay. After that a girl about my age piped up to say she was working for the summer at the Big Lake Youth Camp that I had been due to get to that day, and that I'd be more than welcome get a ride with her back there for the night as they had ample room given the camp as there were no children there at the moment. Minutes after that another guy, Dan, chimed in. Dan is a Forest Service employee just back from spending two weeks on the PCT managing a trail maintenace crew and that I could stay with him. Jackpot. So within 20 minutes of arriving in Sisters I had a place to stay with a shower, laundry, kitchen and even a ride back to the trail courtesy of Dan. "The trail provides", there is little else to say. 15 minutes after that I was being given the tour of his Forest Service house which was his home whenever he wasn't out on the trail himself. In theory Dan lived with other Forest Service employees, but given the outdoor nature of the work that they do the house is more often than not empty. Dan proved excellent company as we cooked dinner together, had a couple beers and swapped trail stories until I was struggling to keep my eyes open. The most interesting and blood curdling story he told me was about the time he had been struck by lighting. He told me that most people don't actually get hit directly, but rather indirectly as the current dissipates through the ground, and this is what happened to him. He says during one trip out in the wilderness he had gone to bed one night and then woke up, or regained consiousness i suppose, to find that he had suffered fairly significant burns all over his body. It was a sobering story given my recent encounters with lightning, but not sobering enough to keep me from nodding off after a couple beers, so I took myself off to bed and slept in a bed for the first time in a long, long time.