Day 124
Start: Muddy Fork
Finish: Eagle Creek
Daily Mileage: 25
PCT Mile: 2130.3
Another chilly night that made me regret sending my puffy home in the morning, but once you are out of your bag it is alright. I can make due.
A healthy climb to warm us up first thing in the morning with a couple views back to Mt. Hood. We were starting to leave the mountain after circling it for miles.
The trail took us for miles through bright green PNW forest. Flowers were blooming, berries were ripening, and everything else was glowing green. No views, but the forest was nice and pleasant. And there was the bonus of grabbing berries on the go for snacking. Salmonberries, blueberries, huckleberries of a few different varieties, mulberries, and some other mystery cluster berries that should be safe to eat. We will see tonight.
After running the ridges for the morning and early afternoon, we diverted down the Indian Springs trail as an alternate to the PCT. Up ahead the Whiskey Creek fire was burning below the PCT. The trail remains open and upwind of the fire, but the side trail was supposed to be more scenic in addition to being further from the fire, so it was an easy decision.
We grabbed lunch at an actual picnic table in the middle of nowhere, a rare luxury out here before heading down.
There were a lot of complaints about the Indian Springs trail regarding its steepness and blowdowns. Once again, I’m not sure what the problem is since it was pretty easy trail. It was slightly steeper than the PCT, and had blowdowns through a burn area that were easy to get around. At this point, I take everything I read and hear with a grain of salt. Much is overreactions and fear mongering.
We joined a better maintained trail and the descent lessened and the trail was mostly cleared of blowdowns. It was a rather uneventful downhill until we approached a stream running in the valley.
The entire valley was filled with an old lava flow, and the stream was carving its way through it. The entire bed of the stream was the top of an old lava flow, so the look of it was quite different going over the sheet of lava instead of rocks and sand. A nice change in scenery.
Continuing downstream on the carved out trail, we quickly came to Tunnel Falls. Here the trail continued to be carved out of vertical lava, but it had to get past the falls. To make that happen, a tunnel was blasted that passed behind the water fall! Quite impressive. I’ve only seen something like this a couple times in my life.
After Tunnel Falls, we were nearing where we planned to camp for the day. We were intending a shorter 25-26 mile day today to get close to town, but not too close. There were many other hikers around, so we opted to grab an open site a little sooner than we had planned, just to make sure we got a good spot without winding up at a full site. It is the weekend, though that isn’t relevant to us.
A relaxing evening, and early night to bed to try to recover some sleep.
