Today marked the much awaited event of this section of trail: the Timberline Lodge breakfast buffet! Some call this the best breakfast of the entire trail, and I have to say, it did not disappoint. We woke up around 7 and packed up our tent quickly so we could get to the lodge right when the buffet opened at 7:30AM. We were not the only ones with this idea–there must have been at least 40 other hikers here for the breakfast too! We by far outnumbered the ‘normal’ guests. It was comical looking at the long line of packs leaning against the wall outside of the resort.
We all lined up outside the dining room and they started letting us smelly people in group by group. Tofu, Wolf Bird, Gentleman, and I sat together and proceeded to pig out for an hour and a half (disappointing, I know.. I thought we would last the entire three hours that the buffet was open). I could write in great detail about every food we ate but I will simply write a quick overview as I imagine most people don’t care as much about food as we do… Anyway, there were eggs, potatoes, bacon, sausage, french toast, a belgian waffle bar, fresh fruit, smoothies, many different types of pastries, yogurt and toppings, as well as unlimited coffee. It was quite tasty and we were all pretty full by the end.
We proceeded to spend the next couple hours sitting around in the lodge digesting and looking at our phones, since we haven’t had phone service in many days now. Timberline Lodge is a really interesting and beautiful place and felt so welcoming and homey. I would love to come back here sometime–I feel like any time of year would be amazing… it is cozy in the summer and I imagine even cozier in the winter with warm fires going amidst the cold snows outside.
Tofu set out a couple hours before Wolf Bird and I. We eventually mustered up our strength and headed out at quarter of 1. We planned to do about 21 miles so we had to walk for about 7 hours straight in order to get to camp before dark. We succeeded in doing so and were helped by the fact there was a long downhill that helped us go faster. Oh, I forgot to mention! We saw White Spot and No Steps at breakfast! We somehow got ahead of them with all of the fire closures and didn’t even know it. They are the two German guys who also started our day (May 2nd) and have been way ahead for a while. It was great to chat with them and we even hiked with them briefly today.
Not much else to report about the actual hiking today, except that it was beautiful walking with a view of Mt Hood for much of the day. We had to camp 0.2 miles before the water source we had wanted to stop at… I guess there was a huge group of boy scouts taking up all the spots at the spring so us PCTers were left to camp without water. I offered to set up the tent while Wolf Bird walked up the trail 0.2 miles to get water at the spring and then walked 0.2 back to where we were camped. We chit chatted with Tofu and a sobo hiker for a bit before bed then hit the hay.