Oct. 15: The Owl and the Phoenix /The Obstacle Course Begins

Got a fairly early start. Left out around sunrise.

After a few miles, I arrived at the Eagle Creek junction and someone was there. Phoenix introduced herself and soon Owl appeared also. I wasn’t completely surprised to see them because Phoenix had posted their intention to do the section on Facebook, but I had thought they were farther ahead.

Owl directed my attention to a ramshackle outhouse before leaving. I definitely took advantage.

I took lunch beside Wahtum Lake, beset by a chill wind.

At some point later, I passed them cooking lunch, which for Owl looks a lot like Snape making potions. I let them know I intended to make it to Lolo Pass.

Soon after that, I entered a section with a lot of downed trees. Frequently, they were such that they couldn’t be surmounted or crawled under, so the only route was to go way off trail up the ridge. In this area was a lot of a thorn covered tree I didn’t see much of anywhere before just off the trail, so those also had to be avoided. Fortunately, these trees only came in ones and twos.

The deadfalls started getting more frequent once the area around the trail leveled off, which meant I ended up spending more time near the trail than on it for the next few miles.

The obstacle course was finished by the time I began to descend toward the pass. The sun disappeared around this time as well. But I made it to the pass only about three hours delayed from when I had expected to arrive. By the time I had my tent set up in the nice campsite there, there was truck riding around the pass. It turned out to be a tow truck driver called there by some mystery men I hadn’t seen to pick up a mystery car I hadn’t seen and having GPS issues thanks to the lack of cell service.

Phoenix and Owl never arrived.

A bit of historical trivia: Lolo Pass was the pass used by Lewis and Clark to reach the west coast.

Total distance: 21 miles