Lost Lake to Wahtum Lake

Day 4, Lost Lake to Wahtum Lake: 13.4 miles

The time at Lost Lake must have been refreshing as the trek back up the Huckleberry Mountain trail didn’t seem bad at all. We continued our journey down the PCT and soon met up with some hikers coming the other direction. They said that they had seen someone illegally camping under a tarp just off the trail a mile or so back. We hurried up the trail assuming the scofflaw was Ryan. It was. We got there just in time to see him getting a ticket from a Ranger for illegally camping in the Bull Run Watershed. It looks like he will be fined separately both for camping, having a campfire, and for not properly storing his food so his fine will be $15,000! Look for the AtlasQuest premium membership prices being raised to $100 a month soon. With so many people addicted to AQ, I expect Ryan will shortly be turning a profit from his little run in with the law.

Reunited we got back to hiking, our goal was Indian Spring campground which would make something like an eleven mile day. After getting to camp with about a liter of two of water each day so far, I decided to carry less weight this day. Pretty soon we reach the side trail for Buck Peak, Buck referring not to native Americans or wildlife but the dress code. Ryan, apparently quite modest, refused to follow the dress code but Karen and I made the trek to the top, which was well worth it not just for the view but also the abundance of big, juicy huckleberries.

Continuing on, we were looking for the end of the Bull Run Watershed which would mean we were about four miles from Indian Springs. We went a long way without seeing the end and I assumed that we had either missed the sign or that it just wasn’t well marked. The next waypoint was a crossing of the old Larch Mountain road, two miles from Indian Springs. We finally saw a sign and it indicated the end of the water shed! I calculated that we had been hiking only around 1 mile an hour. Even accounting for breaks, that seemed really slow. We were pretty disheartened. Shortly though we crossed the road and we recalled that while the sign indicated the trail was 11 miles on the watershed, our maps indicated only 9 miles. Apparently the guy in charge of putting up the sign was a lazy bum and didn’t want to hike the two miles from the road to put it at the right place. We soon left the forest and began traversing the side of Indian mountain with its incredible views of the foothills of Mt. Hood. It is quite amazing to see the vast forests and hills there are between Mt. Hood and the gorge. We were able to identify the Eagle Creek canyon and spotted Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens. Soon we spied Ryan sitting against a cairn with his umbrella and Mt. Adams in the distance. You could also just make out Mt. Rainier. We were just minutes from the campground and I took the last sip of my water. I had finally carried the optimal amount of water! At the campground we looked for the spring. And looked. And looked. We found several dry creek beds but no water! Karen was out of water too and Ryan just had a little left. The next known water would be at Wahtum Lake, another 2.6 miles away with no water to sip along the way. With the daylight rapidly waning, we didn’t have the luxury of looking for the spring anymore so we headed down the trail. Ryan went out front, I stayed with Karen who impressed me with her hiking speed: she even did a little trail running at times. A one point we stopped to take our water bladders out to get the last few drops of water out. We each got a very welcome swallow of water. We hiked on and Karen said she could smell water. I thought I could too and then Ryan came up the trail with water and wet bandanas for us. It turned out we were just around the corner from the lake. Ryan hadn’t expected us to be so close behind him. We still appreciated the effort by Ryan!

We made camp and Karen pulled out her last surprise: tequila shots – complete with salt and lime! Ryan doesn’t normally drink so just the half of a shot he did was enough to get him happy enough to reenact his crotch fire incident from the AT. We discussed the next day. The previous plan was that we’d just hike from Indian Springs to Wahtum lake for an easy day and then do some day hiking at the Lake. Now that we were already at the lake, Karen and I decided to just stay two nights at Camp Double Time. Day hike weren’t challenging enough for Ryan so he hatched an idea to hike to the Benson Plateau and back.