Day 24 (13 Miles)

I woke up to find that Little Crater Spring, that spring whose purity was the stuff of legends, was infested by a large number of cows. The elaborate fencing system that was also the stuff of legends was obviously a failure of legendary proportions. Those were some happy cows drinking that water!!!

My hike was cut short today by my arrival at Highway 35, where I was able to score a hitch into the resupply town of Government Camp, at the base of Mt. Hood. The town was sweltering hot and I immediately ducked into diner to grab a burger and milkshake. On the television I saw that northern Oregon was under a record-breaking heat wave. Even though I had been relatively cool in the high-altitude forest covered mountain, I could see that things were going to be different in the low country. I opted to rent a room for the night, only to discover after I rented the room that it had no air-conditioning!

The town of Government Camp is infested with a plague of pests. These pests are not the locusts of which are spoken in the Bible. No, these pests are the severely over-priviledged children of wealthy families who send them here for snowboard camp during the summer. Since Mt. Hood is able to sustain skiable snowpack year round, this is where kids come to "train" during the offseason. Imagine if you will a town full of visiting kids who have styled themselves completely in the over-marketed image of the X-Games, MTV, Mountain Dew commercials etc. Although unlike normal kids who at some point are forced to get job flipping burgers, thereby getting a little face time with reality, these kids are given mommy and daddy's credit card to enable their own delusion of becoming the next Tony Hawk. I made Molly promise that if, God forbid, I should ever been forced by aliens to choose one community in America that had to be liquidated, that I should be reminded to choose this place for termination.


For dinner I ate a fanastic salad and pizza and the Ice Axe Cafe in town. Since the outside patio was packed I asked two people, Bob and his wife Scottie, if I could share a table with them and they graciously accepted. I learned over the course of dinner that they were visiting from North Carolina on vacation and had a big list of things to see in Oregon during their trip. I wished them well on journey and we said farewell to each other.