Day 142

Campsite to white pass to pipe lake to sand lake lol - 17.6 miles

Total - skewed but 2305.4 miles

Lots going on today. Woke up to smoke and the sun being bright red because of it. We booked it down to white pass for all the treats. Marc had gotten up early and got to white pass before us. Pulled up to white pass to everyone we had been seeing the past couple of days in the huge bubble we have been in. Smitty greeted us and then we went straight for some treats. I got ice cream, Arizona iced tea, and some chips. The chip bag was open so they gave it to me for free and grabbed a second one. So clutch. I would make that trip into the store two more times, one for another drink and two for a corn dog. That corn dog tasted sooooooo goooooddd. I had to keep the guys in schedule as they don’t have trail legs so they can’t hike as fast or as long without breaks so we decided to leave within an hour and a half. People were unsure about the fire that was about a couple miles off trail, 20 miles ahead of us. I felt fine with it as it was only slowly growing according to watch duty and the PCTA hadn’t closed the trail. So we left leaving Marc and rocklicker behind. It was a cruisey 7 miles within the forest and passing by lots of lakes. Some looking a lil nasty but at least there were no mosquitos. We reached the edge of pipe lake before looking up and seeing a huge plume of white clouds. Thinking it was thunder clouds at first but quickly realized there were no other clouds in the sky indicating that it was a smoke plume. It was huge and growing. Initially again I wasn’t nervous but the huge smoke plume changed that along with the knowledge the wind was going to shift west pushing the fire and smoke closer to trail. I didn’t know what to do. Trevor and I talked about it while I texted dad. Nathan, love the kid, was not helping with the decision making. We decided to wait an hour to see if there were any updates. Marc had been texting me some but after 30 minutes of waiting he had informed me that the fire grew from 100 acres to 1000 very quickly which made up my mind that we would turn around back to white pass. We knew some people were ahead of us but with the guys there I didn’t want to risk it. We turned back and then when I got service I called dad and gave him the plan. The new plan was to hike back 4 miles and then camp and finish the last 2.8 in the morning to white pass where they could pick us up and hitch us past the fire to WA 410 chinook pass. They were planning on coming up anyway to pick the guys up after their weekend. We got moving to the campsite which was easy and quick. Probably for the best to turn around as the blisters were ding the guys in a lil. We got to sand lake and did the regular chores of setting up. We were in a dried up part of the lake outlet which I knew probably wasn’t the smartest but there weren’t a lot of options. We all ate dinner before heading to bed early to scroll lol. Lots of service at camp. Very eventful day. I was a lil torn up about the turn around as we passed more pct hikers but apparently it was a 50/50 split if people were hitching around or going through. If anything I can always come back to finish the 20 mile section since we are so close.