A day of lounging around the Timberline Lodge was not enough to restore my ankle and knee to full health. But they were better. My ankle hurt only when extended. I just had to walk more slowly and not push off on it. My knee was sore but not that sore. Liberal doses of diclofenac and ibuprofen were enough to enable me to walk without too much discomfort.
I hung out around the lodge until 11, then started easing down the trail. The “down” part is literal–Timberline Lodge is at 6500 feet on the side of Mt. Hood. The surrounding ridges are all in the 3000-4000 foot range. The trail will leave those ridges to drop down to the Columbia River, 50 miles away. The river is just a hundred feet or so above sea level.
The PCT skirts around the flanks of Mt. Hood, just as it does with the other volcanic peaks in Oregon. The skirting was relatively straightforward on Mt Washington, Three-Finger Jack, Mt Jefferson. But the geology and geography of Mt Hood are different.
The loose volcanic sand that plagued me on the climb up surrounds the core peak. The vegetation is mostly sparse. Oregon is famously rainy. The consequence of these factors is that the skirt slopes are heavily eroded. I am not quite sure what to call these fissures. They are way too big to be classed as gullies, far too steep to be considered valleys, too tilted to qualify as canyons. This video I hope gives a sense of the terrain:
As you can imagine, the trail winds around quite a bit in order to negotiate these chasms. But this was the only really big one, which I believe is the Sandy River. Here’s what it looked like at the bottom
There was only a modest climb from there. The trail mostly worked its way through forested terrain on the western ridges. There is an alternate route leading to Ramona Falls that is no longer or steeper than the official PCT, so I took that and had a nice break at the falls
My knee and ankle were feeling better than at the start of the day, so I passed the campsites along the aptly-named Muddy River and climbed 1500 feet to the ridge leading north from Mt Hood, stopping at a beautiful little spring along the way to water up.
There were no campsites until I got the the Top Spur trail junction. To my surprise, there were mostly occupied, maybe half a dozen groups. It’s Friday night and I think there is a trailhead not far away and this is apparently a good base camp for peak bagging. But I found a small spot to roll out my groundcloth and cowboy camp, that is plenty good for me tonight.
NSAIDs damaged my kidneys over a long period of time. Consider checking with your primary care doctor on what pain medication is right for you. I only take Tylenol or equivalent now. It doesn’t work as well though.