Day 20 – 9/13/19

24.2 miles / 389.4 total

I had to say goodbye to Dan this morning. He was only able to take 3 weeks off work, and his time is up. Conveniently, our friends Allgood and Swept Away were doing volunteer trail work in the Steens this week and heading out today, providing a direct ride all the way back home in Portland.

I have to be at the ALDHA-West Gathering in Nevada City on September 27, so I’m on a very tight timeline to finish the remaining ~350 miles. I should’ve been up at dawn and hiking, but I lingered until our friends showed up at 9am. Both Allgood and Swept Away hiked the ODT last fall, so we had lots to chat about. We said our final goodbyes and they headed off around 10am.

Just as I started walking out of the road from the campground, a truck pulled up. She-ra! For those who don’t know, She-ra is the ODT trail coordinator and all around badass. We only chatted a couple minutes but it was great to see her. It was great to get the energy of all these hiker friends who all had the attitude of “350 miles in 13 days, yeah, you got this no problem!” instead of the horrified “you’re going to be alone??” I’ve been getting from everyone else. So, thank you friends.

Confession time: I’ve never thru-hiked solo. I did a few smaller trips prior to thru-hiking, and I’ve done a couple overnights since solo, but the biggest gift that thru-hiking has given me is the community. I just have so many great friends, and now a partner, always down for adventures that I love sharing the experiences with, that solo has never had much pull for me. This trip I expected to hike with Bubbles. Unfortunately, she made the difficult decision that trying to hop back on mid-thru hike, especially with my tight schedule, was just not in her best interest this time.

So off I went at 10am. I stopped by the hotel in Frenchglen 3 miles in and tanked up on 5L water for the next 22 miles. Ugh. Back to that again.

The day was nice enough walking, but nothing too interesting scenically. Lots and lots of cows.

One of the hardest parts going solo now will be opening/closing the fence gates. Dan and I usually did the gates together, one person holding/pushing the fence post, the other slipping the loop over wire on/off the post. Some are super tight and hard to get. After the first one today, I just decided to crawl under or climb over all the rest.

I also found myself getting nervous around the cows. Sometimes they just stand there and look at you instead of moving, and today one herd even started moving towards me for while.

I ended up still having 2L of water when I got to the reliable source, a cattle tank. I couldn’t get the electric pump to turn on, and had to just scoop out of the tire trough. Oh, and the next reliable water is 41 miles away, so I tanked up to 8L total.

Yep, still the ODT.