Mark’s Photo’s- 29

The year was 2020. It was August, and I should have been finishing up the last 400 miles of the Continental Divide Trail. In the spring, plans had been made and tickets bought. I was training hard. And then the COVID-19 restrictions were implemented on March 11th. Despite assurances from the science-phobic president that it would all magically disappear in a month or three, it was obvious to those of us with a medical background that these were pipe dreams. Add in the administration’s lack of a plan, the non-endorsement of masks by the president, and no vaccine in sight, and it was apparent we would be in this “lockdown“ for a while. So I pivoted. Can’t do the CDT? Ok, do something closer to home.

I had been eyeing a route from Eugene, where I live, over to Bend, OR 120 miles east across the Cascade Mountains. It’s almost all National Forest land, and there are dozens of trails and logging roads to travel on. I sat down with a topo map and roughed out a route across the mountains. A lot of this route was on old logging roads, but most of those were not active or would have minimal traffic. I figured six days, and The Professor could pick me up in Bend at the end. The best part was that I could start by just walking out my front door and heading east.

Today’s picture was taken midway through that hike. I had just come over a ridge on an abandoned logging road crisscrossed with blowdowns. Climbing over each tree for miles had taken its toll on me, so I camped early. I found an old horse camp with a handy table someone had cobbled together at the base of this big tree. What a luxury!