Planning to get an early start in order to meet up with my friend Jason near Mount Hood, I scarfed down a quick continental breakfast at the motel and walked to the highway junction to try to hitch a ride back to the trail. I stuck my thumb out and several cars passed, but none of them stopped or even slowed down for the scruffy-looking hiker on the side of the road. I called some numbers that had been posted in the motel lobby advertising rides for PCT hikers, to no avail. An older man walked past and told me about a group of trail angels at a local church who help out hikers. After an hour or so of waiting and becoming increasingly frustrated, I decided to take the man’s advice and walk the mile down the highway to try my luck at the church. Thankfully one of the trail angels happened to be there for a knitting group session, and after a few minutes we were in her SUV on the road up to Mackenzie Pass, to my great relief.
A bike race was going on over the highway and hundreds of cyclists and support people crowded the top of the pass. I took a quick peek at the view from the nearby observatory, scouting the path ahead. Two long miles of lava rocks awaited me, and once again I wished I had real hiking boots to protect my feet from their sharp cutting edges. After carefully making my way through the lava field I barely had time to catch my breath before the sky opened up. In just a few minutes all of the gear I had carefully dried out in Sisters got completely soaked. The small umbrella I had carried all the way from Lake Tahoe did little to help against the deluge. I trudged onward, my shoes increasingly covered in mud while the rain ran down the trail in little rivers.
When I came to the turn off toward Big Lake Youth Camp I immediately took it, hoping to find some shelter from the unceasing downpour. The camp was closed for the season but to my eternal gratitude the hosts had left a cabin open for PCT hikers to use. I ran inside and was greeted by a dozen other thru-hikers taking shelter from the rain. Most were planning to sleep there; alas I had a timeline to keep so I ate a quick meal, enjoyed some hot tea and hit the trail again as soon as the weather let up. I crossed another highway at Santiam Pass and entered a gloomy burn zone where I made a hasty camp, wisps of fog drifting eerily among the dead and blackened trees.