Day 138 Marker 2000 and Paso Santiam

7.26 miles
From Big Lake Youth Camp (mile 1996.6, elevation 4729)
To camp near the pond north of Santiam Pass (mile 2004, elev 5176)
Upload 719
Descend 262

I have said that everyone should improve the PCT however they want. Discussing a couple of ways to do this – either traversing each step of the PCT or maintaining a continuous path along the PCT – I had a different idea.

Clearly, navigating every step of the PCT is difficult. What happens if you go off the path to walk around a fallen tree? While a continuous path is clearly much more achievable, it also didn’t seem to really describe my goals. If I got to a town and then headed back to the trail, I didn’t see much value in crossing the street just to set foot at the pick-up spot.

I also didn’t see any problems getting a ride on some of the sections of road. My goal was to experience the trail, as well as the people and towns along it. So I revised my thinking and said my trip was a long backpacking trip based on the PCT. While I rarely skipped sections of the PCT, thinking about it gave me flexibility in how I approached things.

It didn’t rain last night, but it did have fog. So Firefly and I were a little damp when we woke up. We returned to the PCT hiker building at Big Lake Youth Camp (BLYC) around 9 a.m.

photo 2 – beach in cove

Looking away from the lake over a small pond

PCT hiker building photo

Big Lake Youth Camp PCT Hiker Building

Tasks in Big Lake

I took advantage of the warm, dry space to finish equipment maintenance and other “city” tasks:

• I brushed and lubricated my tent zippers.
• I sewed three holes closed in my sunshine hoodie
• dried a couple of things in the dryer
• I taped the hole in the (no longer) dry bag containing my camera.
• I taped the hole in my tent bag
• cleaned 6 GB of space on my phone (raw images that had been backed up)
• I charged all my devices
• published some blog posts
• I bandaged my feet again

While I was there, Firefly’s friends AKA and Mirthful arrived, so I met them. A friend had sent them stuffed animals as travel companions. They weren’t heavy but they weren’t small either. His friend didn’t seem to understand the challenges of hiking as much as Ron did when he gave me my camp turtle (Peppermint) as a trail companion. Seeing the size of their stuffed animals made me very grateful for Peppermint, the camping turtle that Ron (another adult scout group leader) gave me before the trip. Peppermint is very small and clips to the outside of my backpack.

The PCT hiker building at BLYC was so comfortable that I wasn’t in a hurry to leave. So I went about all my tasks at a very relaxed pace. I actually didn’t get out of there until 3:00 p.m.

After leaving BLYC, I was looking for sticks I could use to build a 2000 mile marker along the trail. I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for exactly, but my idea was to use my jute twine to tie sticks together and make two and three zeros to hang over the trail. This would be completely biodegradable.

Doing the numbers

The zeros were pretty simple. I found some dead branches near the trail that were still green enough to be flexible. He could tie them, and the little branches that grew from them, into circles. That kept the zeros stable and also thick enough to see. for “2” I wanted to find a similar green stick, but naturally curved with a branch coming out of the curve. In other words, something that was already close to the number 2. I ended up having to tie the end of the stick (end of the curved part of the “2”) to the diagonal part. It wasn’t ideal, but I couldn’t spend too much time on this.

I tied these numbers to my pack around mile 1998. Around 1999, I found a fairly thin, straight pole (Lodgepole pine) that I thought could be used as a horizontal pole that I could hang from trees on opposite sides of the trail and from which I could hang my numbers.

Make rope with thread

When I reached mile 2000, I couldn’t find anywhere where there were trees close enough to each other on opposite sides of the trail that I could tie my pole to. So I set about temporarily hanging it a few feet off the ground while I suspended the numbers. I then took several hundred feet of thread (which was very weak) and folded it back on itself. Then I twisted it and twisted it, finally folding it in half so that the twisted rope wound around itself. This gave me a much shorter piece of rope that contained 4 strands of twine. That would be strong enough to hold the pole and the numbers.

Make rope with thread

Building the sign

Hanging the numbers from the post. I had to keep them from twisting.

All the numbers hanging from the pole.

Hanging the sign

I then tied the rope to the ends of the pole and pulled the ends of the pole toward the tree branches to suspend the sign over the trail.

2000 mile completed sign

When I arrived at Santiam Pass, it was almost dusk. I just walked a little further to a small pond where I found a place for my tent.

Sunset near Santiam Pass

My campsite near Santiam Pass

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