Day 112 (10 September)

Miles 2040.2 to 2064.9. Meadow camp to spring camp.

It’s 05.30am. It’s still dark outside. And I believe there’s a light drizzle. It’s reeeeally hard to leave the comfort of our sleeping bags today, but we need to get going. We really want to reach the Timberline Lodge in two days, for their legendary breakfast buffet and in order to time it correctly, we need to hike 25 miles today. So grudgingly we get going.

It’s cold, it's foggy and it’s wet indeed, but by hiking fast we quickly feel warm and luckily we have good rain gear that keeps us dry. The sky is now turning into all shades of red and pink. We know what that means. Red sky at dawn = bad weather. Oh no! There is a resort coming up though, the Olallie Lake Resort. We didn’t plan on stopping there, but by 9am we are quite wet and crave a warm place where we can dry and drink a hot coffee. When we reach the resort we can’t believe our luck. There is a sign there saying “TRAIL MAGIC”!!! Yay! We are a little worried that somebody left the sign here by mistake and it doesn’t apply anymore. We quickly make our way down to the lake and indeed, there is a guy there asking us if we wanted banana pancakes. Well, sure we do! It turns out his name is Nate and he’s been out here a couple of weekends this summer just to provide trail magic to PCT hikers. He’s staying in a van with a friend of his who is still asleep and has this whole area prepared for hikers who might turn up. He quickly gets started on the pancakes while we sit down and sip some hot coffee he’s handed us. It stopped raining, which is awesome. How lucky are we!!! The banana pancakes are delicious and we each eat 4 of them. Then Nate makes us some quesadillas followed by bananas filled with chocolate. We eat everything! Oh this hiker hunger! It’s crazy! We feel like we should get going, but Nate is so hospitable and offers to make us hot dogs next. We would love to eat some more, but at this stage we are so stuffed and feel that we should get going. We sign his trail register where we discover the names of other hikers we know who have been here. Speedy! Ben & Sai! BigBro! When we are about to leave another hiker called Flow rocks up and we tell him about the great treatment Nate has got in store for him. He then informs us that he’s doing a 40 mile day today and doesn’t have the time to eat it all. We will see about that… :-)

We leave Olallie Lake but not without taking a picture with Nate first, with the PCT sign saying that we are 607 miles away from Canada. Nate made this sign and he is very touched when we tell him that I have seen the sign on social media before and we’ve been wanting to take a picture with it for a while now. So here we are. Technically you would be able to see Mt. Jefferson in the back. Today, not so much (see below).

After this unexpected and delicious breakfast we are energized and take on the trail with fresh motivation. 607 miles. We can do it! The only other people we see today are Flow and another hiker called Starburst. But since they will both be attempting to do 40 miles today it’s unlikely that we will see them again today. And indeed, we don’t bump into anyone else all day today. The rain also lets up and gives us a break. We are both listening to the fourth Harry Potter audiobook which is always a great diversion and keeps us occupied and moving forward.

We take our lunch break quite late (yes, we are finally hungry again) as the sun comes out briefly and we decide to seize this opportunity. For the remainder of the day we keep hiking up and down. The PCT is just never flat. Never. We still have another 10 miles to do after 4pm and only reach our campsite by 7.15pm. We chose our campsite in the woods these days to have some protection from potential downpour and consequently the campsite looks very dark and creepy even though night hasn’t fallen yet. We hurriedly set up camp and crawl inside our sleeping bags to eat our dinner with our nightly episode of “The Great British Bake-off”. It’s just so homey. I recommend you try it!