Matt B turned 50 this week! He had a crazy idea that it would be fun to backpack 50 miles for his 50th. We originally planned to hike the Timberline trail around Mt. Hood but because of wildfires this fall, portions of the trail were closed. A few weeks ago we decided to do the Three Sisters Wilderness Loop instead. This trail is only 40 minutes from home! Matt’s brother Mitch came down the night before and the three of us hit the trail the morning of Matt a big day! We started at The Devils Lake trail head and hikes 17 miles!
Day 2, after making it over Opie Dilldock pass, we were able to meet up with Dawson 5 miles into our hike. He parked at a trailhead on the north end of the loop and hiked in 3.5 miles to us near S. Matheia lake. Was great to have his fun energy along. Much of day two was hot and dry through an old burn area. Water was scarce and most of the streams shown on the map were dried up. We were so happy to find Soap creek flowing with lots of cold fresh water! We camped a few miles further up the trail near wyches creek. We wanted to be close to water To have plenty for dinner and start the next day full.
We went to sleep under a clear, quiet sky. Around midnight we were woken up by crazy wind shaking our tents. The wind was swirling in every direction and sounded like a freight train coming off the mountain! Dawson & Mitch got up to secure their tents. Tying them to anything they could find. We were on sandy ground and were concerned the tents wouldn’t make it through the night. Around 2am the rain started and the crazy wind continued. We heard a few trees falling around us. It was pretty wild. I felt total peace as I prayed we’d make it through without any harm. I initially prayed for the storm to be tempered but felt pretty clearly that that wasn’t going to happen but was given peace knowing the Lord was in control. I felt completely safe as I imagined Angels holding the trees up near us. The words from the Hymn “Master the tempest is raging” kept going through my mind “the winds and rain shall obey thy voice, peace be still” it was pretty neat to feel total peace in the midst of a wild storm and I actually slept most of the night! Dawson was a trooper in his own tiny tent. Our tents were mostly made of mesh (w/a rain cover) The wind blew so much sand into our tents! Around 5am Mitch came to our tent with the news that he was able to get a forecast on his phone and it was only going to get worse with snow coming later that afternoon. We still had 16 miles to go that day so he suggested, rather than find ourselves stranded in a storm, it would be best to back-track 5 miles to a trailhead we had passed earlier the day before. We used our emergency gps to text our friend Joey Light to see if he could pick us up at the trailhead later that morning. You can’t see it in the pictures but it continued to rain sideways all morning. The streams that were dry the day before were now raging rivers. It was a really fun adventure!
We were so grateful to Joey for helping us get off the mountain and so thankful to the Lord that we were kept safe! In total we went 39.3 miles in 2.3 days. Guess we’re going to have to try the loop again next summer to get Matt his 50 miles! God is Good!
Us waiting in the outhouse at the trailhead to get out of the wind/rain!
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