Day 16 (September 1)

A beautiful day to get back to the trail. Both the actual weather and the weather forecast are looking calm and bright.  Now, we could have tried to arrange a ride from the hotel, or we could have called renowned local trail angel Lloyd Gust, but even with the road closed due to fire it was so easy to get a ride down from the pass to Sisters... it'll be a breeze to catch a ride back up! The westbound drivers will be falling over themselves to see who can get us first! Ah, not so...

I hate hitchhiking, especially while hiking, which is why I never intended to visit Sisters in the first place. But here we are, aping foot-powered self-reliance but begging for a ride. We're all clean and fresh, though! And the Oregoneons are so friendly! Deb can do small talk in five languages! No luck, it's just 3 solid hours of being judged and rejected, quite disheartening.

We've walked half of the 15 miles back to the trail before a couple of nice young men from Washington finally honor our hail. They're heading out on a hike themselves, the Obsidian Trail that circles the Three Sisters. Thanks, guys!

And so it happens that 72 hours after our initial camp at South Matthieu Lake, we're back in the exact same spot.  Hoped to get a lot further today but too much time walking & thumbing.

We can still make out the outline of our tent in the dirt. One thing has changed though: we're cookin' with gas! Our stove is "Primus" from Sweden. It's on the heavy side, so I imagine it was hand-forged from raw ore by some beefy Swedish blacksmith to whom grams feel like milligrams. We enjoy our first hot dinner (mashed potatoes and black beans, courtesy of the Big Lake Youth Camp hiker box) and hope for a snow-free morning.