Barlow Pass to Olallie Lake Continued

Day 4: 15.9 miles

At 2:56AM I awoke to a flickering light shining into my tent. It was from a distance away and very bright – too bright to simply be a star. It looked light a car’s headlight. Perhaps it was a Q beam? Was someone coming through the woods? It was not in the direction of the jeep road or the trail – unless the trail or road made a sharp turn I didn’t know about. It was pretty consistently shining towards us; flickering away occasionally. With my dark mesh tent, I doubted it could see me but Karen’s tent was a ghostly white. I quietly listened for voices or noise but didn’t hear anything. The light seemed to be coming from a constant position. I was terrified Karen would wake up and say something out loud to confirm our presence, something I was hoping was still in doubt to the other party. The light got brighter, though was still coming from the same direction. I was really creeped out. The light kept getting brighter. After about 15 minutes, a breeze mover the trees and it allowed a better look at what was now a crescent shaped light. Ah, silly me. It was just the moon rising through the trees.

Feeling secure I went back to sleep until 5 when a rumbling and roaring woke me up. It was getting louder – very quickly. It sounded like a freight train. Karen awoke too and shortly the noisemaker stopped approaching, though it remained loud and we quickly surmised from some new sounds that we had camped very close, perhaps a 100
yards or less, to a logging site. Instead of watching the Indians create a new clear-cut we broke camp without even making breakfast. We hightailed it down to the Warm Springs River (which is ice cold) and despite the odor left by horses, made breakfast and did laundry.

We began our long gradual climb towards and up North Pinhead Butte. Highlights along the way included a lovely spring and our last view of Mount Hood. Continuing on we heard singing as we rounded a curve near the saddle between the North and South Pinhead Buttes. Ahead of us we spotted a young woman on a rock. We introduced ourselves; Pippi was her trail name, she had thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2002 and was doing a long portion of the PCT. She was hiking alone and liked to take a long break during the heat of the day. It worked out well; after 12 miles on the
day which was our hottest, least shady, and with the most elevation gain, we were happy for an excuse to stop and join her for her break. We talked shop and were flattered that she complimented us on our light packs. She didn’t know the weight of her pack, but it looked bigger and heavier than ours. I don’t think she had had the luxury of being able to buy all new and lightweight gear. As she was northbound we exchanged trail information. She was trilled to hear that we had had no problems with mosquitoes and warned us that going south, we would. It was actually during this conversation where I first pulled out my DEET. We also talked about letterboxing. Pippi actually knew about it and even had a friend who letterboxed. We gladly stamped her datasheet with our stamps! Rested up and with several miles to go we reluctantly said our goodbyes and headed down the trail.

We stopped at a campsite at Lemiti Creek. Most of the trees were dead or dying from a bark beetle infestation, something that has been plaguing much of the forest we had been walking through for a while. The mosquitoes were also quite bad. But it had water, flat campsites, and we were tired so we made do. We set up Camp Mosquito, made dinner, and quickly retired to our tents. We were treated with a nice sunset just before we dozed off. It wasn’t long though before the rain started. We learned we could put up our rain flies quite quickly, though the rain stopped just as we finished.