Start point
Site at 2,025.1
End point
Olallie Lake, mile 2,048.3
Miles hiked
23.2
Wilderness area
Willamette National Forest
Mount Jefferson Wilderness
Mount Hood National Forest
People I met
Wrong Way
Diver and This
Fireball
The day on trail
It’s gonna be a hustle kind of day. We have a lot of miles and a time limit. There’s a little resort on Lake Olallie which has food, drinks, and camping. Camping. Can be set up anytime. The store closes at like 7 or something. So I gotta hustle. No time for a leisurely lunch.
Let’s go! Into a burn zone!
And let’s cross a river on a tiny stick!
Yeah that stick totally bent and got my feet a little wet, but it wasn’t too bad. I had to walk upstream about 100 feet to find a decent place to cross. And it worked out well.
This small river…creek? Carved out a beautiful valley.
A little farther up there was a small creek with a bridge over it. Easy peasy.
This apparently was an offshoot of the Whitewater Trail. Had a Whitewater River in California and a Whitewater Trail in Oregon. Will there be one in Washington?
I got to the Mt Jefferson Wilderness, one piece of it is restricted to camping due to fragile vegetation.
There were small streams and creeks coming from it. I think some of them are from the glaciers on the mountain. They have the glacial flour texture that’ll wreck your filter.
And there were reminders all over of how fragile and affected the landscape was.
There were lots of random rose hips plants all around one stretch.
And then…Jefferson. Standing there.
I was required to take a moment to admire a small butterfly.
I love when mountains rise out of the landscape as I walk from them.
And the departure from Jefferson was something amazing.
I had to wait about 20 minutes for this photo because there was a couple just standing right in the main view of it trying to take photo after photo. Oh well. Sharing is tough sometimes. Funny, since I’m poly as hell.
The trail had a quick switch around a bend, down, and then through some forest, obscuring views of Jefferson. In the forest I met Diver, from Germany, who didn’t want to hear about any views so she could be surprised. I was so excited for her to see it unfold in front of her.
And shortly after that I got my first view of Mt Hood.
There were a few reminders of how the weather changes through the year, like this massive cairn to mark where the trail is in high snow conditions.
There was a sign with a sign.
And a lingering snow crossing, another reminder of the weather here.
It was a low stakes snow crossing. Hopefully. Though you truly never know what’s sitting under it, this one seemed pretty benign. And it, luckily, was.
I was starting to get close to the time I’d have to make, to make it to the lake on time. I couldn’t really stop anymore, and my right index toe was starting to get a hot spot. Of course, when I’m in a rush is when I start getting a blister. I ignored it and pressed on, focusing on making the miles to get soda, beer, and snacks.
There was a sign letting me know that I was leaving Mt. Jefferson Wilderness.
And a couple other signs, including a trail network one. Sadly I couldn’t study it. Got a schedule.
The trail had a really pretty meander around the side of a mountain.
And a burn zone. So many burn zones. This one was the final stretch to Olallie. 1.5 miles to get there, so about a half hour to 40 minutes. I’ll make it with maybe 5-10 minutes to spare!
I booked it. Hard.
And finally arrived. There were a ton of campers already set up. Two girls I’d met prior were there, and there were a few other people I’d seen.
Ketchup was amazing and met me with Dr Pepper and a beer. She was afraid I wasn’t going to make it. I set my stuff down at a picnic table, went to the store, and bought her a drink to say thanks, and a couple others for me.
I grabbed an empty spot next to Ketchup; she selected a site with two spots to save me a space. I got my tent set up, no rain fly because the weather was perfect and the space was minimal.
I sat down with Ketchup and a few others and started cooking my dinner. Fireball, a different one than the one I met near Crater Lake, came in. She was out of fuel and the shop had closed. I had a lot of extra, so I gave her about 2-3 days worth with my little FlipFuel knockoff. It’s nice to be helpful.
After eating, I wandered to the dock to grab some photos of the lake. It was so pretty.
I took a few moments to go over to the clean water tap with my soap. I needed to take off my shoe and assess my foot. I was very much expecting a bad blister that needed cleaning.
Indeed, I had a blister. It had worked its way through a couple layers of skin. I washed it and put antibiotic and Leukotape on it to keep it protected as much as possible.
I sat up with some hikers for a little bit, but the sun was going down and we were fast approaching hiker midnight. I set a silent, vibrating alarm, to wake up for a bit to catch the Milky Way over Olallie and Mt. Jefferson.
Worth it.