Around midnight it started to rain and continued to rain all night. We hoped the rain would help put out the fires but when we started hiking we saw it barely wet the surface and was scattered with some areas completely dry. We hike all morning through forests previously burned by fire-not a pretty site. But soon the area changed as we entered the Mt Jefferson Wilderness.
Mt Jefferson - you can see the smoke on the right side of the mountain from the waterfall 2 fire
We would have hiked more miles if it hadn't been for the wild blueberry bushes we found on the trail. We stopped and picked a pint of the most delicious blueberries and later I made a hiker-type blueberry tart for dessert. It consisted of fresh blueberries, butterbuds, sugar and cinnamon inside a tortilla, cooked on the fire. It actually was pretty tasty (ok, so you had to be there and be hungry).
We leapfrogged with Ooops as he was busy taking more pictures. At sunset we ran into Backwoods at Rockpile Lake where we camped for the night.
The weather turned cold and windy and we had a restless night.
The next day we hiked 20 miles and went around Mt Jefferson.
We ran into many hikers and I was surprised to climb up a hill and see some familiar faces making breakfast-- none other than Liane, Nico, Alex (now called Tom Sawyer) and Dan. They were back on the trail, having rejoined at Callahan's. It was so good to see them again.
We later met a new hiker, Masa Fumi, from Japan. He was very familiar with the Tankara fishing rod I had secured to the side of my pack and gave me a private lesson on how to use it.
Thanks Masa !
We were in a much more scenic part of Oregon now. See for yourself...
The next day we walked through the detoured area until we reached the highway. There we found other hikers getting a ride to the trail head and were fortunate to get an invitation to join them. Honey Bear, Spud, and a few other hikers piled in the back of Honey Bear's dad's truck. We picked up Masa along the way and saw no other hikers on the road. Once at the detoured trailhead we bushwhacked our way through part of the Indian Reservation until we reached a logging road and eventually rejoined with the PCT.
Heart
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