For the first time we had to hitch around a closure today. The Windigo fire still raged a 1000 acres big, too close to the trail for comfort. So the next 60 mile section was closed sadly. The next step was to go to Shelter Cove and start the following 4.5 day stretch there, after which we would have to go around the second (and hopefully final) closure.
We made a quick stop in Chemult, charmingly described by someone on FarOut as ‘the armpit of Oregon’, but was actually a lot better than that. It was here that IPA left us. He had scored a permit to hike the Wonderland trail in Washington, around Mt Rainier and was headed there. He’d link back up with us on trail days (the annual PCT hiker festival in Cascade Locks) once he was finished.
From Chemult, the road led us northwestwards, to Shelter Cove. I’d heard worrying reports of smoke from a nearby fire covering the lake and the Shelter Cove Resort. As I should have guessed however, we were met by a clear sky and a nice breeze.
Barely had I left the van we hitched in, when Disaster appeared out of nowhere and handed me an ice cream sandwich. Way back in Red’s Meadow, in the Sierra’s, I treated him to a beer and he’d remembered.
Out from Shelter Cove, we finally made good on a promise we made long ago: to have a silent disco on trail. We all put in our earphones, started our shared playlist and vibed. Apart from a few synchronicity hiccups, it was a good time.
We set up camp in between two lakes. It was slightly smoky from the fires, but that kept the mosquitoes away. A more than worthwhile trade-off.
Everyone took a gummy, since we got to camp early and it felt appropriate. Lavalamp became even more Lavalamp, as he always does when high, and we enjoyed what we nicknamed ‘The Lava Show’.
I went down to the lake to take a photo, but stayed there, sitting on a log. I spaced out and couldn’t get enough of the lake, the setting sun and the rising moon, reflected on the water surface. The others appeared beside me eventually. I couldn’t really talk to them, my mind on a track I could impossibly convey through words. In the smoky clouds, rising from the nearby fire, I could see divine beasts. Turtle, leopard, dragon, they roared deeply at me, uttering more meaning than anything spoken ever could.
