Saturday, August 04, 2018 – 13.30 miles
Forest walking in the morning with views of Mt. Hood and two other snowcapped volcanoes that I tentatively identified as Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier.
Through a conversation with E., I had started thinking that the Eagle Creek alternate was open after the 2017 fire closure, but I arrived at the Indian Spring Campground to find the trailhead blocked off. The campground itself is an odd place. It’s listed as abandoned on the paper maps, but there’s still a trash can and I also found a dilapidated outhouse (one could call it the Grider Canyon of outhouses) from which the door and much of the siding had fallen.
The trail to Indian Spring was blocked off as part of the fire closure, but I saw running water only a few metres past the closure sign, so I crossed and collected water and returned to a picnic table to cook potatoes.
Later in the day, the trail passed into a burn area.
I started to worry about finding somewhere to camp, but around 6:30 PM I reached an area that hadn’t been burned beneath the trail. Locating a flattish piece of ground, I pitched my tent. There are mosquitoes, but they’re different from the mosquitoes I’ve encountered so far, having a sense of self-preservation and therefore the tendency to fly away as soon as you make any movement. They’re almost impossible to kill, but I haven’t gotten any bites either.
I’m still writing this journal on my phone despite losing all those entries, since I figured out that I can lock notes so that deletion requires a password. Reclaiming power from my leg.
