Barlow Pass to Olallie Lake Continued

Day 5: 6 + 4.5 miles

I awoke early and wandered about some before seeing that our campsite had been invaded by a couple of Clark's Nutcrackers. I was enjoying the show when the noise awoke Karen and she came out to watch too. Our entertainment over, we proceeded with our daily ritual of breaking camp.

Today was scheduled to be blissfully short: just 6 miles to Jude Lake. We could have easily made it all the way the way to Olallie Lake but we were in no rush to get to back to civilization. Most people wouldn't call Olallie Lake civilaztion; it is after all a long way from any actual incorporated area and reached by gravel forest service roads. But is has a small store and you can drive to it so to us it was civilization. In addition, there were several letterboxes near Jude Lake so Jude Lake was our goal.

We arrived at our campsite and made camp and proceeded to go letterboxing. We found two in short order at Jude Lake and near Russ Lake and then proceeded down the PCT towards Olallie Lake to get two more. For this series of boxes we were actually following the clues backwards which made things a bit more difficult. The fourth, or actually, first box stymied us for a while but just before we gave up (at least for that day) I suddenly got a thought and headed further down the trail just a bit and we found the box. We headed back north on the PCT and then headed over to Olallie Meadows (a spot you can drive to) for one last letterbox. There we saw two people who had been out gathering plants for herbal cures or some such. They were friendly and shared some water (I was without my backpack and only had a small amount of water in my fanny pack). They also reported that Portland was going through a heatwave and was having 100+ F weather. We were glad that we were at a high elevation!

We left Olallie Meadows and headed back towards camp. On the way we passed Brook Lake and decided to try out the water. Karen is a nature girl and got pretty far in. I wasn't real keen on wading in without shoes especially with all the crawdads we had seen in the water. Hot and dirty though I got in a bit anyway wearing just my underwear. I didn't want to put my shorts back on and get them wet and I figured the underwear could pass as bike shorts. In the "bike shorts" and my sleeveless shirt I thought my clothes looked a lot like something Penny's regional Jazzercise manager would wear. I felt a little funny wearing my "Jazzercise costume" but as as we had not seen anyone on the trail all day and we were less than a half mile from camp, I stayed with it. Shortly down the trail, we ran into some "Muleskinners" who are an equestrian group who does trail maintainance in the area. These guys were big and burly cowboy looking guys and here I was in my Jazzercise costume and Karen in a wet t-shirt! We chatted for a while and I can't help but wondering what they though of us. Back at camp we took some nice reflections photos and then hit the tents for our last night before Olallie lake.

Day 6: 3.8 + 4 miles

Ah, the last day had arrived! Our packs feeling quite light we headed down the trail for that last little bit. I was excited to be finishing but also sad to know the hike was coming to an end. On the trail we met a northbounder, Stairmaster, who was thru-hiking the Oregon portion of the PCT. We felt like true long distance hikers and were happy to be able to supply him with about 50 miles of trail information.

At the lake, with its views of Mt. Jeffereson, we found a note from Keith telling us where we'd be camping the last night before heading home! We walked the short bit to the Olallie Lake store, and Karen eagerly bought overpriced Cherry Garcia bars for the both of us. At this point, ice cream would have been a bargain at twice the price.

We headed down the road to the campground. Keith had managed to get one of the best sites in this dusty car campground. He had all kinds of treats awaiting us: salsa and chips, berries, and ginger ale. Yum! We let Keith get back to his float tube and we hit the trail for some more letterboxes. This series started from the end of our campground and then proceeded though some forest devastaed by bark beetle and forest fire on a unmaintained trail with lots of blowdown. We walked around Long Lake and up a ridge between Long and Dark Lakes. The last two boxes were quite hard to find with the trail being practically non-existant and the landscape having changed since the boxes were hidden. With Karen's perserverance we got the boxes and then we headed back to camp for our celebratory dinner of steaks, baked potatoes, salad, and champagne. The hike was done. We'd backpacked from Barlow Pass to Olallie Lake, 54.1 miles with our packs plus another 11.5 without!