Day 135

Cascade Locks to Mile 2163, 19.5 miles

Cost: Cowboy camped with KC, Ladiesman and Zigzag by Rock creek, free

I was awake at 6am and checked the PCTA trail closures page, no new news. 

We went for breakfast over at Eastwind drive-in again and I got a message from Shepherd saying that he and a few other hikers had worked out a road detour and they were going to start it today. I hope it works out for him. 

The owner of the hotel saw us coming back to the room after breakfast and told us that check-out was at 12pm but we could stay until 1pm… If only we could’ve taken advantage of this… But we had a trail to hike. 

We headed over the Bridge of the Gods for a 5th (and hopefully final) time! 

And ran into Bushwhacker with his platypus full of Kahlua! He told us Smokey was just ahead of us which was great news as I hadn’t seen him since Etna. 

  

There were heaps of bridges today and a 9 mile, 3000 foot climb!

  
  
    
     

  

  

  

The last 2 miles of the climb were really steep and I had to take my pack off twice to stretch my back, welcome to Washington!

  
We pushed on to try to get to a water source near a campsite and it got dark at 8pm rather than the usual 9pm because of the dense tree cover. We walked in the dark for an hour before arriving at Rock creek and found Zigzag and Ladiesman finishing dinner. Ladiesman moved over to allow KC and I to fit in next to them and the 4 of us cowboy camped.