A glorious night of sleep—no rain. Followed by a glorious morning ritual—no hole to dig. There’s not even any rain in the forecast for the next two weeks. We were working pretty well together as a group and see nothing but smooth sailing for today. What could possibly go wrong?
Even though it’s our 4th day on the trail, which is usually when we physically feel the worst, we decided to kick up the mileage a bit. (At least Bear and I did; we’ve found it’s usually best to not let the women folk in on the plans until the complaining starts later in the afternoon). We could easily make it to Timberline Lodge today which is only about 18 miles away, but we decided it would be best to lay up a little short to maximize town time tomorrow. It looks like an easy 4300’ of ascent with a couple of short declines totaling 2800’ down. The highest point we’ll get to today is 5500’ above sea level which might take us into some snow.
The trail started out with a 1200’ + climb right out of camp. Bunny doesn’t do well starting out with a climb. Bunny doesn’t do well with a climb at the end of the day either. And, as we discovered today, she doesn’t handle climbs in the middle of the day very well, either. Bunny is not a climber. In her defense, day 4 of hiking and she hasn’t been feeling well since before we started the trip.
Everyone wanted to try to get reservations for a hotel tomorrow night since it’s the 4th of July. I was willing to take our chances on finding someplace. I agreed that if they wanted to get rooms, I was fine with it as long as I didn’t have to do anything other than pay. When we got to the top of the climb, we discovered we had cell service. Bunny was under the weather and acting slightly spacey about finding the hotel phone number. I ended up finding the number and making the call. I got connected to reservations to a woman who speaks English as a second language (after just starting to take lessons). This was exactly the reason I didn’t want to get involved with the reservations. After a painful 30 minute conversation where we had to make individual reservations and give CC no’s, we were finally moving again.
We completed the first up and over by noon (5 miles plus an aggravating phone call) where we stopped beside a river for a leisurely lunch. This is a pretty popular area for day hikers around Mt Hood and the locals are doing a very good job with wearing face masks and social distancing. Even if the federal government has given up on trying to stop the spread of COVID, the state and people of Oregon are taking it seriously.
The early afternoon saw our biggest climb of the day. It was over 5 miles to get to the top of a roughly 2000’ climb. Bunny started falling behind and Dancing Dog stayed back with her. After a couple of miles, we took another break for everyone to catch up. Bunny was not a normal flesh color. She was ashen color with bright red cheeks. She was hurting. I was a bit worried, so I dropped back to walk with her the rest of the day. In reality, I was dragging quite a bit as well. We made it to the top of the climb about 40 minutes after everyone else.
We had originally talked about taking a side trail called “Paradise Loop” but Bear and Sassy had had the chance to talk to a few people that had been over it. It sounded almost solid snow even though it was only 400’ higher than the PCT. We decided to skip it entirely.
Bunny and I had drained all of our water on the extended climb (plus, I’m pretty sure Bunny was already slightly dehydrated because she doesn’t like to drink much in the afternoons—-she refuses to get up in the night to pee). There was a snow melt seasonal stream in about a half mile after our high point. Everyone had waited for us to catch up. We all stopped to get water and a snack at the stream. It was already past 6 and we still had another 3 miles to go. If we were lucky, we’d make camp by 7:30 and we weren’t certain of what the camping looked like. Bear and Sassy decided to head out at a faster pace to secure us spots by the Zigzag River.
About 15 minutes after Bear and Sassy left, the rest of us packed up and hit the trail. As we entered a glacier basin, we could see Bear and Sassy crossing over the opposite rim. There were lots of patches of snow to cross over which slowed us down. Bunny and Double D aren’t very comfortable on the snow. I know Bunny was having flashbacks to last year’s PCT experience. I let Bunny lead since she was still not herself. This was the first mistake in a chain of mistakes.
We came to the second junction of Paradise Trail. Bunny was feeling pretty good now and just blew on through the intersection. I was fumbling with my camera because some of the setting had gotten changed. Double D and I just followed in her wake. Second mistake.
In another 1/2 mile, Bunny said she needed to stop for a bathroom break. Double D just kept on walking (third mistake) while I pulled out the phone to see how far we were from camp. Only 0.7 miles to go. Bunny finished up and we started after DD. We were moving pretty fast but couldn’t catch up. The trail was starting to steadily drop so it shouldn’t be much longer before we were to camp. We came to a trail junction of Paradise Loop and Zigzag Mountain. I was confused…no mention of the PCT.
I pulled the phone out to check our position. The stupid app wouldn’t update and it showed our position off of the map. I cursed, shut the app down, and restarted it. It wouldn’t update. I switched displays and the stupid app showed our position almost a mile off trail. I started getting a sinking feeling. What if the app was right and we had strayed the wrong way down the mountain? We had to figure out where we were. We couldn’t safely go forward on either trail so we had to backtrack to determine our position. We had no idea which trail DD had taken.
We retraced a mile back to the junction of Paradise Trail and the PCT. Bunny had taken a right when she should have gone straight and we just blindly followed. Ok, we knew what happened and where we needed to be, but where was DD. I had already been panicking when we turned around, now I was in full melt down. Bunny’s medical training kicked in and she got me to calm down. All we had todo was get a message to DD to turn around. She has an InReach, we could send a message. We don’t have the number, but we know her husband does, we could call him. We don’t have his number. We checked to see if we had any phone numbers of DD’s friends. We had one. We tried, no answer. How about email? DD and her husband share an email account. We sent a message telling him to send a message to her inReach to turn around.
After the email attempt, we sent text messages to Bear and Sassy to let them know what was happening. Trust me, we weren’t as calm as this recounting sounds. This is real wilderness and DD was potentially lost near dark in the middle of a huge unknown area. I left the phone with Bunny to try to contact people. I dropped my pack, grabbed a flashlight, and ran back down the wrong trail to try to find DD. With any luck, she’ll realize we haven’t caught up with her and turn around. I was running and screaming her name.
The only thing I could do is wait at the junction screaming her name until dark. If she hadn’t shown up by then, I’d return to Bunny and camp at the trail junction for the night. We would get up at first light and resume our efforts. I hadn’t been at the junction for 5 minutes screaming DD’s name when I heard her call back. I could have cried with relief. I yelled “Go Back.” She yelled back “Which way?” I know her mind well enough by now. When I yelled “go back” she had already turned around and was coming back our way. She thought I was telling her to go back down the trail in the wrong direction. I yelled “Come to me”. About 5 minutes later, she was in my sight.
I told her we were fighting approaching darkness and we had to go as fast as possible. On the way back to Bunny, she explained her choice in trail selection. She knew we were going to camp at Zigzag River so she went down Zigzag Mountain Trail. It makes sense, but it was wrong. She made it to the river and yelled for Bear and Sassy but got no answer. She got out her whistle and blew, but still no answer. She figured Bunny and I should have caught up by then, so she turned back. She’d probably gone a mile past the junction.
Bunny met us before we made it back. She had gotten hold of Sassy and found out Bear had fallen but he was OK. DD called her husband with our phone (now we have the number) and left him a message. We texted Sassy that we were going to still come down. We only had a mile to go and it was all downhill. Our adrenaline was high. We flew down the mountain.
We stopped to fill our water bags because we figured we wouldn’t have usable water at camp. Zigzag River is a glacial river so it will be flowing fast and have lots of sediment in it. When we made it to the river, Bear came out of his tent on the opposite shore. There weren’t any flat spots on our side and there wasn’t an easy route across. We had to ford the river to get to Bear and Sassy. We switched into water shoes and rolled up our pants. I went first and gave Bear my pack then came back to grab the other packs. The water was fast but only about knee deep. DD doesn’t have much water crossing experience. Bunny carried her own across. I followed DD with her pack.
It was almost dark. By the time we had our tents set up, it was well past hiker midnight. I cooked in the vestibule while Bunny set up everything inside of the tent. My feet were blue from crossing the glacial river 3 times. Bear and Sassy went in their tent to eat while we were setting ours up and eating. It was past 10 before we had supper.
What was supposed to be an easy day turned out to be pretty scary. Bunny got sick, Bear fell off a river bank, and Dancing Dog was nearly lost in the Mt Hood wilderness. Fortunately, everything worked out fine, no one was hurt, and we have reservations for a hotel tomorrow night. It would have been tough to enjoy the hotel if someone had gotten hurt, but we’d have given it the ole PCT try.
EFG