Day 13 – 9/6/19

27* miles / 237.7 total

*includes 2 bonus miles to tag Oregon Canyon Mountains Peak

Finally a day of nice weather! It was still dark and gloomy this morning, with some rumbles of thunder and a few drips of water, and it was fabulous. The clouds lingered on our long climb up to the ridge of the Oregon Canyon Mountains, slow with all the damn water weight we’re carrying.

Once on top, we dropped packs and headed ~1 mile east to tag the highest point of these mountains, which happens to be on the list of Oregon’s 100 highest peaks which I’m slowing working on streaking. I’m now at 43! There are a few others I’d like to pick up while on this ODT hike, but I’m also on a tight schedule to finish, so I may have to let some go.

The rest of the day was pretty smooth sailing on dirt road. We found several questionable water sources to be running with great water. We stopped at Beaver Log spring for lunch and yard saled to dry out all our wet gear from last night. I was so confident the next spring in 4 miles would be running, and so annoyed at all the extra weight is hauled up the mountain that I dumped 4 of the liters I’d been schlepping.

The next spring indeed has water and we did fill up there for the next 20 miles, not feeling confident the remaining questionable sources would be running. Still, I only took 4L. Back when it was 98deg, I would’ve taken 6-7L.

When we stopped to camp, I actually had to put on my puffy while cooking dinner. The novelty!