Walks A Ways: PCT Day 116

PCT Day 116, 05 September 2022 (Monday)

"An Early, But Natural End"

Start Location:	Campsite Near Mt. Hood	Destination:	Timberline Lodge, Then To Portland
PCT Miles Day 116:	5.6	Cum PCT Miles:	2,057.1
Non-PCT Miles Day 116:	0.3	Cum All Miles:	2255.2
PCT Miles Remaining:	595.7
Elevation Gain Day 116:	1,476	Cum Elevation Gain:	366,307

Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood, OR is another one of the iconic, well-known, and much looked forward to stops along the PCT. For one thing, it is easy to get to and from the lodge using the Mt. Hood Express Shuttle service, so it is a natural place for people to get off and rejoin the trail. If rooms are available, it is also a popular place to spend the night. Lastly, and probably most importantly, the lodge has a very good, and somewhat reasonably priced, breakfast buffet. It is all you can eat, so thru-hikers definitely get their money’s worth at the buffet. I had a short hike to get to the lodge this morning, and then headed straight to the buffet. I was pretty satisfied by the time I was finished eating.

There is a nice, large public space to hangout right outside the buffet room, and there is good cellular connectivity here. So, before leaving the lodge to continue hiking, I decided to check to see if there was any change in status on fires and trail closures. Unfortunately, there was a new closure in Oregon, just a few days hiking south of Mt. Hood. The Cedar Creek fire is a complex of lightning-caused fires that has been under watch for a while. Sometime in the last day, the fire got close enough to the PCT that about 40 miles of trail in this area has been closed. This is bad news for me, because this is the area in which I was heading, and where I was going to get my next resupply.

This new fire closure meant that I had a big decision to make. Hike for a few more days until I got to the northern part of the closure, and hope that the closure would be lifted, or get off the trail. I sat at the lodge for a while contemplating this decision. If I continued hiking, and the closure was still in place in a few days, I would be stuck in a much more remote area of Oregon. I would have very limited food left, no place to resupply, and very limited, difficult transportation options to get out of the area. Also, it's likely there would have been a lot of smoke in this general area. I decided this didn’t seem like a very good idea.

I thought about maneuvering around the fire closure and hiking south of the closure. But because of all the active fires in California and Oregon, there was no guarantee I would be able to get very far. Additionally, and honestly, I was getting a little tired of spending so many days off trail, not hiking, getting around various closures on the trail. I came out here to hike the PCT, not to spend day after day trying to find some form of transportation to get to and from remote areas of the trail. On the other hand, if I got off the trail at Timberline Lodge, there is easy transportation to Portland, and then to home. Also, the section of trail that I haven’t hiked is one continuous section from Mt. Shasta, CA to Mt. Hood, OR; both being relatively easy to get to and from. So, if I decide to go back and complete the hike, it will be a pretty clean trip, assuming no closures when I do it.

After thinking through things, the decision, while hard, seemed pretty clear, it would be best to get off the trail and end my hike for now. I would no longer be a PCT thru-hiker, but a section hiker. But these days you have to have some good luck to complete the whole trail in one continuous hike. And my luck ran out. It’s a very strange feeling, it’s such a sudden and abrupt end to the hike, but one that is not entirely unexpected. I knew from the beginning that fire closures were a real possibility.

With the decision being made, there was no time to waste. I checked the schedule for the Mt. Hood Express Shuttle, and there was one leaving in about 30 minutes to Sandy, OR. From Sandy I took a local bus to Gresham, OR, and then the metro train to Portland. After getting to Portland, I was able to book a flight to Orange County for the next morning. It’s not the end I hoped for, but it’s the one I got. I will do one more blog post after this to try to summarize my hike.

“If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.” - Socrates.