From Crater Lake, the trail continued once again, as it does. Further up in Oregon, the forest got thicker. It felt older, had more personality. Or as I like to call it, more forestality.

The old PCT marker being eaten.

Before getting to the Shelter Cove Resort, there is an alternate trail that I took. The Oregon skyline trail. Sounds cool right? No. It’s not. I ended up walking 8 miles in the wrong direction. I guess I can’t really blame the trail for that though… Anyway I hitched from a road close to where I had gotten to, came to a small nowhere town, hitched with a semi truck to the Shelter Cove road, and ended up walking down there.

Look at all those knobs and buttons.

Shelter Cove is a nice little fishing resort by Odell lake. They welcome hikers gladly and are very friendly. Here I got to know a lot of new faces.

After this, oh boy. The good stuff started. Like the Three Sisters Wilderness. Walking through wildflower-ridden meadows, by the feet of glacier covered mountains. That’s just hard to beat.

One of the Three Sisters.

The PCT was made with both hikers and riders in mind. Hikers far outweigh riders in numbers though. That’s why it’s nice when you see horses on the trail.

Obsidian falls, a natural hiker shower.

High on good views from the Three Sisters, the walk into Big Lake Youth Camp was a breeze. Now the Youth Camp, what a place. It’s a Seventh Day Adventist camp. I don’t want to call it a cult, but it’s cultish. In a good way. They eat vegetarian food and feed hikers for free! Randomly they’ll start singing like in a Disney movie. It’s an all around good time.

Dinner at the Youth Camp.

From there, we hitched into Bend, where I met up with Simba again.

Hitch into Bend with Queso and Ollie.

Oregon is on fire. Or parts of it at least. Sadly this means that we have to skip around the trail that is closed. So me and Simba got a ride around the 40 burning miles, to Olallie Lake.

The workings of a forest fire.