Robert Francisco

Rock pile lake to past Russel Creek
18.8 Miles

If all goes well tomorrow, I will have walked an unbroken line between Mexico and Canada. I like that- as I never liked the asterisk of having thru-hiked “but” missed 63 miles due to fire closure. I wanted to hike every mile of this trail and it “may” happen but we know how hubris has bit me before.

The navigation was tough today and equal to our 06 Sierra experience. There are no tracks and the route we are taking has seen very few hikers thus far in 07. We made one small error that we all quickly recognized when we observed “boy is that steep”. We doubled back but with 100% snow coverage all we could do was take an educated guess as to where the trail was. After bushwhacking for quite a while and after we cleared the snow area I was volunteered to go down slope to see if I could find the trail. It was so steep that all the trees grew straight out the slope, then realized the sun was a 90 degree angle to that, and thus turned upwards to reach the light. This was good for me because these sharp angles made for perfect tree steps down the hill; without them it would have been sketchy. Fortunately our guess was correct and I found the trail below us about 100 meters. Sunny who shoe skied down an adjacent snow bowl also found it.

This section of Oregon should not be missed as it is truly beautiful. Mt. Jefferson is really impressive and the early season snow makes it more so.

I received instructions on “dating” from the Filthy Five (subset of the Dirty Dozen). Boy did we laugh. Thunder contributed that you should never date someone you have not “first googled” and “googled imaged”. And he also offered that you must be 100% responsible and get STD test with any potential partner. Ok, but what is STD? That is when the team noted that they needed to start at the beginning and let me know that a LOT has changed in 16 years. I now that that SDT or Sexually Transmitted Disease is alive and well in the over 40 heterosexual community. So much for keeping the romance restricted to romance! Tadpole the Hippo suggested that the new norm was not dating but hanging out, typically with groups, and if something clicks with someone in the group you then hook up, and Sunny offered some very sincere advice when he said “just totally be yourself – that is who your are anyway so anything else is just acting and this is not a play”. I like that. Mike Unger was too wise to comment. I think my plan of NOT dating is still a good one….for now.