Day 18 – 9/11/19

19 miles / 345.7 total

Oh what a good night’s sleep! I could go for a hot springs soak before bed every night while thru hiking.

It looked like we were the first ones up this morning. Another soak was tempting but we knew we had a big day ahead of us, with a steep climb of 5500’ up and over the Steens, a good chunk of it a bushwhack, which Allgood warned us was the worst part of the whole ODT.

Even the maps made it sound pretty bad with notes like, “do your best” and “let us know if you find a good way through”.

I didn’t actually think it was all that bad. The bushwhacking was almost all waist deep or lower, so we could actually see where we were heading and pick out the best lines of travel. The brush thinned out as we climbed higher, leading us ever closer to Wildhorse Lake and our beacon of cell service hope: the towers on the summit of Steens.

When we got to the lake, a whole bunch of ODT first happened for us. We saw other hikers. And there was trail. Not cow trail, but actual developed for humans single track trail. It only took 300 some miles!

We passed the day hikers on our climb up from the lake to the road at the top, where half a dozen cars were parked, sightseeing along the Steens Loop road. We made the quick side trip to the Steens summit, which is rather ugly, crowded with radio and cell towers and such. It was so cold up there at 9700’, I had to put on my puffy on top of the rain jacket I was already wearing (and had been most of the day). Another ODT first!

We followed the road for a bit before dropping down into Big Indian Gorge. This steep descent was marked as cross country travel on our maps but we were delighted to find pretty decent trail the whole way. We followed good trail the rest of the day through the gorge. We’re getting so spoiled!