After we located Shrek’s house by going to the local bar and asking for his number, we found everyone hanging out on the back porch. We had caught up again to Tickled Pink and Last on the Bus which was nice to see them; we met the younger Magellan and his girlfriend Pebbles, and then we found none other than Scooter sitting there with a small plastic bottle of good ol’ Canadian Mist – mostly finished.
“Let’s play this game!” Hop-a-long said putting her giant plastic handle of Canadian Mist on the table next to his fifth.
“Oh shiiiiiit!” he said and the shenanigans began from there.
I somehow managed to wake up at the planned early time in the morning and went and found Hop-a-long who didn’t look so pleased to be awake and we put all our stuff in the car and set off for a 30 mile slackpack to the next road that looked decent enough for Dead to get his car there and meet us.
The slackpack began by crossing the Bridge of the Gods over the Columbia River. I found myself intensely holding onto my phone and camera while taking pictures because most of the bridge did not have a solid ground — it had a metal grid-like thing and we could see the deep river flowing underneath us. Really glad that I wasn’t afraid of heights; we took our time crossing it and getting in the way of the traffic since no pedestrian path existed.
After the fun and games, we began the long climb out of the Columbia River Gorge, up, up, up! And chuck full of poison oak mixed into the blackberries. Eventually, we extricated ourselves from blackberry thickets, trying not to get poison oak, and continued climbing for what seemed like an eternity.
Hop-a-long and I never saw anyone else that had been at Shrek’s the night before despite our slow pace. We made it over 3,500 feet up with many, many bumps to the top of the ridge and got a brief respite from climbing. We could see where we had dropped down into the gorge and the long winding way back out of it. The ridge bumped along through some burn areas until dropping about 2,000 feet of what we had just climbed into a valley behind it.
Desperate for a snack, I stopped at a water source about 20 miles into our planned 30 mile day. Washington was officially already kicking our asses and we had just under 500 miles to go! Luckily, we had brought our headlamps and enough food to go another 10 miles.
Then, as we crossed a stream .3 away from a road, we saw the letters “DA” written in sticks on the bridge with an arrow pointing forward. YAY! No more miles! We found him at the first road and he handed us each a nice, cold beer. Exactly what we needed after the climb that wouldn’t end.
“I thought you guys had passed here already,” Dead said while we swigged down large gulps of PBR. “Then I ran into Lush and Man Party and they said they had not gone off trail and had not seen you two or knew who you were. They seemed reluctant to talk to me until I gave them beer.” The true language of thru-hikers!
As the sun was already on it’s way over the hills, we decided to stop there and camp in a semi flat spot just up the road. We set up camp and Dead made his Colman stove specialty of soy chorizo, onion, and pepper burritos.
We went to bed decently early that evening since we planned on doing another 30 miler the next day to make up for only doing 20 miles that day.
2 a.m. WHHHHHHHOOOOEEEERRRRROOOO!
“Guys…….what the hell was that?” Hop-a-long said.
“I don’t know, where’s the headlamp?” Dead said.
He shown the slight directly toward the sound and we listened and listened for moving animal noises. Nothing. It had all woken us up out of deep sleep and sounded like an old woman screaming as far as we heard from the depths of dreams, which usually means mountain lion.
WHHHHHHHOOOOOEERRRROOOO! It came again. Then again from a different direction, except it sounded different, almost familiar and I immediately thought of the AT knowing that I’d heard it back east as well but couldn’t place it.
“Ohhhh it’s a damn owl!” Hop-a-long said. “Listen, it’s the ‘who cooks for you owl,’” she said. It came again and we all heard it that time.
In the morning, Hop-a-long and I left by headlamp to go climb another 1,000 feet up and then plunge back down. We saw the road that Dead Animal said he couldn’t get his car up and we could see exactly why. It appeared as though the road had large culverts in it at some point, but they had been ripped out and only a jeep could get over them as they were now.
We found the next road attached to a pretty cool campsite 10 miles into the day and sat down for a snack. Hop-a-long noticed that she had some kind of a reaction on one of her shins that looked something like a little poison oak. Since we didn’t have any bleach, we dumped some aquamira on it to dry it out. In the meantime, Dead Animal drove up and we cracked a beer. Slackpacking is hard work!
After some good old PB and Js, tortilla chips, and beer, we walked six miles to the next road and found him again for more snacks and beer. We allotted ourselves a half an hour break in order to make our destination by dark o’clock. Almost at the end of our time, Indiana Toad and Chocolate Chipmunk walked up from the road and told us how they found a great blue blaze that skipped the last 35 miles of trail that kicked our asses on the road and it passed three breweries! We couldn’t complain too much since we slackpacked the whole chunk, but Hop, Dead, and I looked at each other and then began devising ways to get brewery beer later.
From there, we had another gnarly climb that went up another 3,000 feet and hit the 2,200 mile mark on top. I threw the old iPod on and plugged through it with Hop-a-long right behind me. Almost at the top, I ran into Lush and Man Party and chatted with them for a bit, and then again at the big 2-2-0-0 mark. We all joked, “If this was the AT, we’d be done!”
After our legs decided to work again, we finished off the last six miles or so of the slackpack ridge walking over to the Crest Horse Camp where we would meet Dead Animal again. Right at the tail end, around 8pm, we skirted a bit of lava and out of nowhere I saw a huge lightening bolt. Then I thought my mind made it up since I did not hear any thunder.
Hop-a-long and I walked up and found Dead Animal who began frying pasta for us as we drank some beer with Jubel and Shadow for the evening.