Day 7 (August 23)

On Timothy Lake, a small fishing boat appears and quickly fades into the morning mists. Dusty hike to Clackamus Meadow. The horses that we don't see much of sure do leave a lot of presents on the trail, which dessicate into dungy dust... dust, dust, dust.

Historic Clackamus Ranger Station is closed -- only open Thursday through Sunday and we've arrived Monday morning. No restrooms or trashcan for us, no info on the Ollalie Lake fire closure, but worst of all I have to stare through the window at stacks of free pamphlets and trail maps, utterly unavailable. There are dozens of trails around here and I sure would love a map. There is a nice water fountain though, so we fill up the bottles and wash off some dust.

A particularly fine huckleberry

We hike on southward, and for the first time find that we have the trail all to ourselves. Solitude is nice, and we can put the the worries of the fire from our minds and enjoy the scenery (and delicious huckleberries) of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. Thanks, Warm Springs Tribes!

It's kind of eerie, though. Where are all the northbounders? Finally one comes tromping toward us through the dust. Bad news -- the original fire (from a lightening strike) has spread to several places, the trail and store are closed indefinitely, and the way around is a 30-mile walk along the highway that rejoins the trail at Clackamus. The only reason we're seeing this fellow is because he proudly bent the rules a little and bushwacked back to the trail.

We camp by a seeping spring (sadly not warm) to look over the maps and make a plan. We resolve to continue southbound, even at the risk of being forced to backtrack all the way to Clackamus.

Finally just at dusk another hiker, Just Dave, arrives at the spring with good news: a Forrest Service truck will shuttle hikers around the fire zone and back to the PCT on the other side. We'll see a big warning sign at the official trail closure point with instructions to the shuttle pickup, which runs until 6pm. Compared to walking 30 miles on the highway, that sounds pretty good to us. He also explains the mystery of the evil green moss -- it's just ordinary Spanish moss that grows out of control when the trees die, and the real culprit is the bark beetle, whose work we encountered last year in Slovakia.