Episode 68 - PCT Update #16

Shelter Cove —> Timberline Lodge

Hey hey hey, back again for blog #3 on this lovely afternoon! I’m still sitting in front of this Trout Lake General Store, and I’ve seen the entire town come and go the last 4 hours: high schoolers on their lunch break, old timers to sit on the front porch, hunters, little kids on their bikes. It’s honestly been so nice seeing the comings and going of small town America. 🇺🇸

As always, please feel free to mail letters, postcards, mail, business cards, or care packages to me on trail! Really, mail me anything, I’ll be so happy. I always get so excited heading to the post office, and the next one will be in Snoqualmie Pass! There are only two more post office stops left on the trail (😢), so I’m listing both addresses so that y’all can prepare your mail. If you’ve ever wanted to send something to a REAL LIFE PCT HIKER STRAIGHT TO THE TRAIL, these are your last two chances!!

Thank you so much to everyone who’s sent me packages, post cards, and letters so far; going to the post office is like Christmas, each and every time! It’s honestly so crazy that we’re reaching the end already, the very last post office! So sad :(

Here are the last two post office addresses on trail, along with my ETA to them. In case you’re wondering what to send, Brooke and I love Trader Joe’s baby food pouches, Walking Tamales (picture of these below, red ones are the BEST), and colored Goldfish (elite flavor). They’re the most delicious snacks ever!

Dennis Gavrilenko, PCT Hiker, 9/14/2025

Chevron Station

521 WA-906

Snoqualmie Pass, WA 98068

(Yes I know this one’s to a Chevron Station, but it has a post office inside!)

Dennis Gavrilenko, PCT Hiker, 9/20/2025

c/o General Delivery

31 Defacto Lane

Stehekin, WA 98852

Yummy in my tummy 😋

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Day 108, 8/26/2025:

23 miles today with 2600 feet of climbing.

Another great day on trail! Slept in and had a slow morning after getting up super early the day before, and took a nice long break at the first lake we encountered. There, I blew up my pad and floated on it in the water to find the tiny hole near the valve I then patched, had a coffee with Brooke, chatted with some grandma day hikers, and carried on uphill. Later, I rizzed up those same grandmas (light work), then played some Durak with brooke in a cozy snowshoeing lodge we found on trail.

Spent the rest of the day cruising over chill terrain, finding geocaches, and generally planning my world domination… life is good.

Day 109, 8/27:

24 miles today with 1800 feet of climbing.

Unfortunately, I had poor sleep again last night; despite my many attempts to patch the hole near the inflation valve, my Thermarest pad keeps on slowly deflating, so I wake up in the middle of the night on cold, hard ground. Not good. I have a new pad arriving in the mail once I get to Cascade Locks, but I still need to hold out until then and fix this damn hole. I thought I’d patched it at the lake with the grandmas I’d rizzed up the day before, but it seems that there’s still a small hole somewhere. ☹️

Anyway, after a slow morning and a groggy wake up period, Brooke made me a delightful trail mocha and headed on up trail; I stayed behind to chill in the tent a bit more, then packed up myself and was on the trail by 9:25 am. The next few miles were nice and cruisy, with rolling hills and lots of green forests. I was feeling quite good, passing lots of NoBos and clocking in 3.7 miles in the first hour… not bad!

Eventually, I caught up with Brooke, and together we walked until we met another hiker, Drizzle, who proceeded to tell us all about her sheewee, a funnel contraption women use to pee while standing up. Honestly really cool, and such a great conversation and laughter starter there.

We hiked on a bit after that, and decided at lunch to push on to Elk Lake Resort that night; I’d read that they made really delicious pizzas at the restaurant there, and I was more than happy to speed hike the 11 miles there before the pizza oven closed. So off I went! It took just under 4 hours to make it to Elk Lake, during which I listened to Acquired’s new Alphabet episode (tremendous) and managed to stay dry despite crazy thunderstorms. Once at the lake, I straight away got a cold drink, put things to charge, and waited until the last second to order pizza to guarantee a warm pie upon Brooke’s arrival.

Elk Lake was a lovely place, well worth the detour, and I spent the time chatting with a SoBo hiker called Deschutes, who despite being SoBo was quite a wonderful person; he’s taking a semester off school to go thru-hike, and honestly we had a lot of relatable things to talk about. Brooke eventually arrived, we ate our DELICIOUS pizza, and got a ride into Bend from the lady who’d sold me the cold drinks; Brooke’s cousin Cassidy lives in Bend and offered to post us up for the night, so we asked around for a ride and got one from the second car we asked :)

Our driver was lovely, and regaled us with grand tales of her hitchhiking adventures around China when she was 20 and the ugly man hitting on her at the RV Park she was staying at; we arrived in Bend in no time at all, spent hours chatting with Cassidy and her fun roommate Ella, and went to bed on a warm, cozy couch. What a life :)

Day 110, 8/28:

15 miles today with 2400 feet of climbing.

Another day, another tiring morning; I tried to sleep on my pad last night to check if my patch worked, yet it still deflated in the middle of the night… this poor sleep is really starting to get to me, not good!

But, I was determined to make it a great day. After quickly packing up our things, Brooke, Cassidy, and I ventured out to get some breakfast burritos at Lucy’s, grabbed a coffee at Looney Bean (BEST mocha I’ve ever had), and got dropped off on the edge of town to hitchhike back to trail. I spent a long while at the coffee shop chatting with Cassidy (I’d finally met her last night after months of hearing stories about her from Brooke), and was seriously struggling with the fact we needed to get back on trail; eventually, I got my shit together mentally, and we were off to try hitching.

Which was an immediate success! Juan picked us up with his friendly dog, and dropped us off right at the trailhead to get back onto the LCT. Juan himself was an awesome dude: ex-marine, future commercial pilot, and overall chill dude. We chatted about Marine Corps and Japanese life (he was stationed there as a a plane mechanic), and the 45 minutes flew by in the car.

And from there, it was smooth sailing. Brooke and I hiked 4 miles to get back onto the PCT through beautiful volcanic planes and between tall cinder cones, before taking a long break in the shade to wait out the smoke from a large fire near the town of Sisters. My lower back was killing me from my broken backpack too (which had been hurting me for a while, so much so that I’m getting a new one in Cascade Locks), which combined with the smoke made the conditions perfect for a nap.

The nap was more a slumber, and I finally left that site 3 hours later to catch up to Brooke. We flew over the rolling hills for the next few hours, during which we (1) diverted a stream that was flowing down the trail, saving the trail was damaging erosion, (2) found and sealed another hole in my pad (I’m really hoping this is the last one), and (3) ran into and subsequently hiked with Freestyle, a Czech hiker WHO REMEMBERED ME FROM MY GEOCACHING ADVENTURES IN SOCAL! I mentioned to him that there a geocaching trail magic event happening tomorrow, after which he mentioned that he saw someone geocaching in SoCal and was concerned that they’d just left their bag on trail, and that someone just so happened to be me. Mega lol. We chatted about chimney men too (my go-to conversation with Czech people), then Brooke and I carried on ahead before it got completely dark; we eventually set up camp in a gorgeous field of obsidian rocks (SO cool), and are off for an early wake up tomorrow!

Day 111, 8/29:

26 miles today with 3200 feet of climbing.

Wow, what an amazing day of PCT adventure! It started off nice and early: the much-anticipated geocaching event was happening today from 10 am - 1 pm, and I couldn’t wait to make it there! We only had ~12 miles of relatively flat hiking to make it there, and boy did we fly over it (despite the quite smoky conditions).

The landscape was very volcanic; most of the trail was through ancient lava flows on crushed lava rock, and one section even had obsidian everywhere! Obsidian! Amazing! It was all over the ground as if it grew there, with even a beautiful waterfall creatively named Obsidian Falls right on trail. 30 feet of gushing water, right into a pit of obsidian boulders. Amazing!

Eventually, we made it to McKenzie Pass Highway, where the geocaching event was happening nearby. Brooke went ahead to the GZ, while I took a quick detour to find all local geocaches (I knew that once I sat down in the camp chair at the geocaching event, there’d be no getting up; one geocache actually had some other geocachers there, who were extremely impressed by my ability to quickly traverse over the sharp terrain) and check out the nearby Dee Wright Observatory, which was DELIGHTFUL. It was a large building completely built from the local lava rock, with holes in the wall pointing to different prominent mountains. So cool!

And finally! Finally! I made it to the geocaching event! Boy, was it even better than I expected: dozens of geocachers, all of our hikers friends, and too many hot dogs and cold drinks to finish. Brooke and I spent a good 2 hours there, regaling other cachers with our PCT (and my geocaching) stories, and we even found a new geocache that was hidden that day for that event. There were some kids there too, who lived on a ranch nearby and told us all about their steer (castrated male cows) that they sold for many thousands of dollars.

They were pre-teens. Unbelievable stuff 🐄

After the amazing geocaching event, Brooke and I decided we needed a break from our break, and promptly took a 2-hour nap. The rest of the day proceeded quite smoothly; energized and feeling relatively alert, brooke and I quickly ascended over the next few volcanic buttes before camping right outside of Big Lake Youth Camp. Town day tomorrow!

Body pain update: my lower back and right leg hurt really badly; the back from my broken backpack, the leg for no reason (probs overuse). Let’s hope this gets better soon!

Day 112, 8/30:

17 miles today with 2200 feet of climbing.

Update: my back and leg got better soon. Yay!

This morning was the much-anticipated morning of entering Big Lake Youth Camp, almost as anticipated as the geocaching event! People have been commenting that the summer camp facilities offer free for hikers, so brooke and I hurried into camp for the breakfast scheduled at 8 am!

And found a complete ghost town. Turns out that the summer camp ended last week, all the counselors had left yesterday, and now there was no one really there. Mega bruh. We went over to the camp director’s cabin and hoped someone would be there, with no luck, of course.

Eventually, we saw a car drive by, and chased it down to ask for help. The Australian guy was a counselor who was just finishing up packing up his stuff and put us in touch with the camp director, who quickly pulled up in his golf cart to help us out.

First off, he opened the PCT Center, an entire building dedicated for PCT hikers and all our needs. It had everything: showers, laundry, charging, kitchen, chairs, it was unbelievable! Brooke and I planned to quickly get our package picked up, shower, and head out back to trail by ~10ish am…

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand then our package was nowhere to be found, and FedEx was unreachable, and the camp director invited us to his cabin and made us two mochas EACH (thank you Les!!!!), and we decided that the box was a goner and we needed to scrounge the hiker box for food so we wouldn’t have to detour into Sisters to buy food, and the camp director gave us food, and we showered…

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand then Flo and Pablo finally caught up to us at the PCT Center hut, so naturally we had to catch up with them and share all the lore from the last two weeks, and call our entire families, aaaaaaand by that time it was 1:45 pm and we’d hiked 0.6 miles for the day. The story of our PCT lives, right there.

Eventually, we did leave the youth camp (it was so amazing to be there, wow, one of the best stops on trail), with two other hikers in tow, and hiked with them for the next few miles until we reached… THE 2000 MILE MARKER! Wowoowowowowow! In the hectic mess of the the action-packed morning we had, I forgot all about that and it really did sneak up on us, but hey that’s pretty crazy, huh? 2000 miles done!

We continued on in high spirits, crossed the major highway into Sisters, and arrived in the trailhead parking lot expecting trail magic due to the sign on the south side of the road declaring so. Unfortunately, it seemed that that trail magic had ended and the magicians forgot to take down their sign, but on the bright side, Brooke and I did acquire a postcard! Our dear friend Will (hey!) visited this trailhead back in July and hid a postcard for us in a stump, sent us a video of where to find it, and today we finally got it. Thank you Will!

After basking in the glory of the postcard, Brooke and I joined three other hikers in relaxing in the grassy area near the parking lot, sprawled everywhere. We PCT hikers no longer have any shame, so any time any day hikers or weekend backpackers would return to the parking lot, we’d right away ask if they had any cold drinks to spare. Most said no, but fortunately, we did get some cold fruit from a van-life couple (hey and thanks!) and a cold Bubbly from another car, which we happily shared among us 5 hikers. Sometimes, you gotta create your own trail magic.

The rest of the day passed smoothly, until we learned that the lake resort we’d planned to top up our food stores on only took cash, and Brooke and I only had $17 between us in good ol hard currency. We panicked a little bit, but two weekend mountaineers from central Oregon (hey as well, hope your ascent up Three Fingered Jack went well!) shared an extra granola bar that’ll hopefully set us up for success; brooke and I barely have any food, and we basically need to hike 100ish miles to Mt. Hood with that. Call me Chris McCandless 🙃

The rest of the day was spent hiking along steep mountains (where we saw a family of 11 mountain goats!) and camping with Flo and Pablo, despite the fact that we left two hours before them and thought we were way ahead off. Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug 🐛

EXCITING NEWS! Flo and Pablo gave us $60 in cash on loan with zero interest (I hope), so now we can buy more food at Ollalie Lake! We won’t starve!

Favorite Brooke quotes from today:

“We have enough food… and we have $17.”

— Brooke, when we were treacherously low on food on our push to Mount Hood (before we saw Flo and Pablo), 8/30/2025

“I don’t know where our box is, but honestly, I’m not that pressed.” at Big Lake Youth Camp

Our granola bar heroes

Day 113, 8/31:

27 miles today with 5100 feet of climbing.

In The Lord of the Rings, Smegul finds the One Ring at the bottom of a river in The Shire, becomes corrupted, and transforms into Gollum. Well Smegul, today I’ve one-upped you!

Yesterday I read the following comment on FarOut on the Highway 24 pin: “This is a loooong shot buuuut one of the lenses in my prescription sunglasses just popped out yesterday while they were around my neck somewhere between here and 18mi from here. At this point I can't afford to order a new pair of prescription sunnies. If anyone finds a single lens, please text me & l'll buy you a beer.”

And guess what I found half buried in the dirt right by the pond where we camped with Flo and Pablo? THE LENS OMG!!! as soon as I got service, I texted the hiker who left the comment, Ratatouille, who was so extremely excited that her beloved lens was lost that she happily took me up on that free beer immediately. I sent her a photo of my excitement and the lens in question, and promptly received her own excitement in return:

After that exciting morning, brooke and I packed up camp quickly and headed uphill for the first climb of the day, stopping occasionally to pick an entire Talenti jar full of huckleberries so that brooke wouldn’t “look so longingly at them when we’re hiking by the plump bushes.” It seems that the prime huckleberry season is right upon us, and we spent many minutes bent over the bushes, picking berries straight into our mouths; it turns out that my childhood training of picking blueberries in Правдински wasn’t useless after all!

Over the next few hours, Brooke and I meandered over various ridges, all with tremendous views of Mt. Jefferson, which we were walking around today (they say the shortest distance between two points is a straight line… the shortest, but not the fastest! Had we gone in a straight line, that ascent over the peak of Jefferson would’ve taken ages). We eventually reached an intersection for an alternate route for a few miles, for which I successfully convinced Flo and Pablo to join us after winning our bet: the deal was that if I rolled a Yahtzee within five rolls, they’d join us. That Yahtzee 6s took only four attempts, and brooke and I were filled with the purest joy and excitement.

The alternate was an amazing decision; countless huckleberry bushes caused many, many stops (with Flo even sitting down to further shorten the bush-to-mouth berry pipeline), with a delightful lunch near Hank’s Lake and a beautiful descent through an old growth forest filled with mossy trees and countless mushrooms. We eventually made it to Milk Creek, and spent the next 9 miles climbing straight uphill with even more epic views of Mt. Jefferson’s northern glaciers. Brooke and I had dinner in the dark, and hiked the last few miles under the stars before setting up camp on an exposed ridge.   :)

Day 114, 9/1:

20 miles today with 1700 feet of climbing.

Happy September! Wow! They say that time flies, and boy does it… I feel like we just started the trail, and that was all the way back in May!

Today was an absolutely fantastic day. We decided we earned a slower morning today, and left camp by 8:30 after eating all the huckleberries Brooke had picked the night before. AMAZING

The goal today was to reach the camp store at Olallie Lake, then try and hitch somewhere closer to Mt. Hood; we had reserved a room in the Timberline Lodge (a beautiful hotel right on the slopes of the mountain) weeks ago, and got quite behind after too many huckleberry-eating and camp-director-mocha stops. But no matter. I have Brooke The Ride Bride, who can get me a hitch anywhere I need to go!

I anticipated that the hitchhiking would be the exciting part of the day, but it came even earlier than expected after Pablo, Flo, and I encountered an elk hunter on the descent into town. I, being curious of course, proceeded to ask too many questions about his gear, and promptly received an elk-bugling-demonstration after asking about his bugling-horn-that-looked-like-a-baseball-bat. It was unbelievable, and the contrast between him and Pablo warranted many a good chuckle.

Brooke and I eventually made it to the forest road, and blue blazed all the way to the camp store, where we stocked up on snacks and critically, got a hot cup of coffee. Hunger crisis, averted! All the worrying and despair a few days ago, for naught! We will live! We spent a good while relaxing and got some intel from the locals about hitching, who recommended hiking down the only forest road that left the lake and hitchhiking from there. We did just that, with TREMENDOUS success; we were quickly picked up by Chuck and Kelly, who drove us ALL THE WAY TO LITTLE CRATER LAKE, EXACTLY WHERE WE WANTED TO GO HALLELUJAH!!!!!!

We had a fantastic time in the car, drinking beers and chatting about anything and everything: the PCT, forestry practices, Oregon life, Kelly’s adventures in Switzerland; we even stopped to give another car directions, and it turned out that they were trying to get to the PCT to feed their son, who we hiked with 3 days before!

Chuck and Kelly dropped us off ~35 up the trail, we celebrated with sandwiches, and bade them a sad farewell. The trail really provides, and we were so grateful for the unbelievable hitch. Brooke and I spent a few hours relaxing at Little Crater Lake before hiking another 10ish miles toward Timberline. I can’t wait to make it there tomorrow!

Update: we got some free coffee grounds from our amazing hitchhike drivers, and I’m committed to figure out how to do a pour over coffee on trail. My first attempt this afternoon was so bad though, that Brooke called my concoction “bean juice”. Yikes

Day 115, 9/2:

11 miles today with 2900 feet of climbing.

We’ve arrived to Mt. Hood! Hallelujah! At long last!

Following our hitchhiking adventure yesterday morning, brooke and I were finally within hiking range of Timberline Lodge, the location of a much-anticipated hotel-room stay. The lodge is on the slopes of Mt. Hood, which meant that the entire morning was spent walking straight uphill to reach civilization.

And reach it, we did! Grand views accompanied us on the ascent, and we were inside by 2 pm. Check in was at 4, but the lady at the front desk kindly let us check in early. The rest of the afternoon was spent taking hot showers, eating yummy food, and laying down in an all-too-cozy bed. Air conditioning wasn’t invented when this lodge was built, so we were roasting in there. My goodness!