Some bad news on the trail today. We heard that Asabat, who was hiking sections of Oregon this summer, passed away from natural causes at his campsite near Charlton Lake a couple days ago. We had run into him several times over the past two weeks and had lunch with him on a couple of those days. We first met him at the PCT kickoff party when he gave the water report. He was only 54.
Much of today’s hiking was with helicopters and airplanes circling above us. Apparently a day hiker out with a couple friends in the Jefferson Wilderness ( on the 8th or 9th ) stopped to take photos and never caught back up to his friends. He is diabetic and the search and rescue team that was on foot were quite concerned that he may have went into diabetic shock. At one point a chopper was following so close to me that I thought they wanted to communicate. Blew my hat off and was spraying pine needles off the trees. This happened before I knew about the search and rescue effort, and had thought they may try to clear the area for a nearby fire.
Mid morning we crossed Russell Creek, which was a crossing where we went over on a snow bridge. This will collapse at any time and is supposedly a fairly dangerous crossing if the timing is off when one goes to cross it. For us, there was very thick snow still.
Mid afternoon we got down to Olallie Lake where there is a tiny store and some cabins. A couple of us went swimming in another lake nearby and then we all had dinner and relaxed at one of the picnic tables.
Hiked the last four miles to our campsite on Jude Lake in the evening. There are the four of us, Udi, Fairway, Moonshine and Tortuga.
Daily Distance: 28
Trip Distance: 2,049.2
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