September 4 - Timberline Lodge/Beginning of the Dollar Lake Fire Detour

End: parkdale work station. Yup.
Daily: someone figured 29?
Total: who knows?

Timberline 

One of many creek crossings on the detour

lowering ourselves down about 15 feet by rope. not PCT grade.

Nighthiking 35

What a day. I don't even know where to start. Its gotta be short too cuz its late. Okay we woke up, slogged up Mt Hood to Timberline Lodge and found a sign saying the PCT was closed, a detour would be posted on September 4, but no posted detour. Walked down to the lodge where our friends Goodness and Zm, Pepe, and Marmot and Roo were all chowing down on the breakfast buffet. They say a ranger will be there in an hour with more news.

Forest Service rep comes, tells us the detour is on trails around the other side of the mountain to Parkdale, Dee, then back to Rainy Lake to get back on the trail. Adds 15 miles, approximately. Okay. We're not skipping, and we still really want to get to town mañana, so we set off.

The first part of the detour was the Timberline Trail, the one that circles Hood. Holy crap, this trail has some steep ups and downs, into washed our river canyons and then straight back up the other side. In one, we literally lowered ourselves down a washed out cliff on a rope about 15 feet.

Made it to the end of that, then literally ran down the Elk Meadows trail to Hwy 35.

These trails were all really gorgeous. For having to do a reroute, we were all really happy with the trails they chose, even though they were steep and in some places disappeared over a washed out cliff.

At 35, we met another FS person who helped us out and gave us great maps with mileage and everything. The FS has been do helpful.

So while she's talking all the people I mentioned earlier show up and we all leave together, but not til Pepe grabs some beers from town (he hitched in and out while we cooked dinner). So we did the road walk as a big party and it was tons of fun.

Almost in Parkdale, the Hood River Ranger District Northwest Service Academy Americorps Volunteer (I had the same position one district to the east last year) hops out of his car and says he got permission for us to stay on the work station property. Awesome!

So now we're here, hoping to make it to town tomorrow but with no clue how many miles it will be. We'll see!