Pass-to-Pass 2014: Day 6

Though most of the lakes and ponds in this area are somewhat stagnant, they are usually clean enough to filter for drinking. This little pond was the only exception really. I wasn’t about to gum up my filter with that muck. Yikes!

Just north of Charlton Lake the PCT crossed a road. I was near Waldo Lake, and it is a popular recreation area, so there are a lot of roads. The trail continues over there where the sign is:

And for once the trail was clearly marked. If only they had done this at every trail junction for the past 60 miles…

It was just after noon when I rolled into Charlton Lake. I had been hiking for 4 hours, but I had taken a number of breaks and only actually walked for 3 of those hours. Despite that I had managed to cover 8.3 miles already, which was a bit of a shock. I was moving a lot faster than on any previous day, and yet it felt like I had only covered a couple miles. My legs had suddenly become machines.

I looked around a bit at Charlton Lake. Unfortunately, it has road access, and there were a lot of trucks, coolers, and blaring stereos, and people were milling about everywhere. I was beginning to think that this was not where I wanted to spend the night after all.

I did find a group that was celebrating a 30th birthday, and as part of the fun they had strung up this long slackline across about 70′ of shallow inlet. I took a break and watched them attempt to cross it. Only the birthday girl managed it:

By the time I got done watching the slackliners and filtering some water I had decided I was going to move on. My legs felt great, the day was young, and it seemed like the best idea was to continue on down the trail. The only problem with this is that I would arrive at the end of my trek a day earlier than expected, which meant I either needed to call my wife to request an earlier extraction or I would spend an extra day camping at the Willamette Pass trail head. I wanted to call, but I had foolishly left home with an almost dead phone battery. The text messages I had sent to reassure my family had now killed that battery off entirely.

So I got my McGyver on and started working toward a solution. I had spare batteries for my camera which were the right voltage, but they were a different form factor and would not just snap into my phone. So I decided to try to make some jumpers. I dumped my entire pack contents on the ground and examined everything I had, looking for something to use as a conductor. I struck out.

Next, since there were plenty of car campers around, I started asking for tin foil scraps. Amazingly, no one seemed to have any tin foil. I suspect it may have had something to do with the fact that I looked a bit like a homeless person. I was grungy and my hair was a bit wild. I tried to clean up some, but it didn’t help.

Then I had an epiphany. I had TWIST TIES! They are like little insulated jumper wires. I’m sure I was a sight when I suddenly leapt to my feet and yelled “Twist ties! I have twist ties!”. Those poor campers.

So I dug out my cache of duct tape and a couple twist ties, and fashioned jumpers. I taped the camera battery to the phone battery, taped one end of each jumper over a contact on the camera battery and inserted the phone battery into the back of my phone:

It worked. I could jam the free ends down between the phone battery and the battery contacts in the phone to complete the circuit, wiring the two batteries in parallel. I had to hold the wire ends tightly against the camera battery contacts, but after a little while the phone battery perked up and my phone turned on. I headed down the trail in triumph, holding everything together in my hand as the camera battery transferred charge to the phone battery. After about 45 minutes I had 2 out of 4 power bars. I kept my eyes peeled for a westward-facing cliff. Once I found one, I walked out to the edge and was able to get a signal. I called home and successfully arranged to be picked up a day early. It felt like the most incredible triumph.

With my ride issue resolved and my legs feeling like a million bucks, I poured on the power and started cruising. Before I knew it, I was at the next night’s campsite at Bobby Lake. I could have gone even farther, but it was getting late and I didn’t want to set up camp in the dark. So I stayed at Bobby Lake, leaving me with about 10 miles to cover the next day.

I spotted another flower I can’t identify. Anyone?

After setting up, I went out to a log that lies partially in the lake and relaxed. The mosquitoes were almost non-existent, but there were plenty of other insects. I tried to capture some in this video. The parts where I’m panning around and you can’t really see much as a result are when I was trying to film dragonflies. Those little suckers move so fast:

It was a serene end to a huge day. If you count trail miles, I did 16.2. If you count every step, including trips into the bushes to relieve myself, etc., it was more like 18.8 miles. Either way you look at it, I had a banner day:

Here is my KMZ file with my route for the day and all the picture locations. Please feel free to download the file and view it in Google Earth.