Harts Pass

Cold again this morning. My morning routine is to get as much done in my sleeping bag as possible, and only get out when I am packing up. From the time I start deflating my sleeping pad, to the time I am standing with my pack on, is usually twenty minutes. Everyone else was up and taking down their tents and laughing at me for not having appeared to do anything, but then they all sat down to eat breakfast and filter water, and I still made it out of camp before some people.

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As I was heading uphill to the next pass, I came across an older Swedish woman with a too-big pack, and another bag in each hand. She claimed to have done lots of mountain climbing on Everest and Kilimanjaro and in the Himalayas, but she always had a porter before to carry her things. I’d like to know who dropped her off at a trailhead looking like that. She also didn’t seem to know where water or camping was, and she was looking for a pass she had already gone through over a mile before. I tried to help her adjust her pack to fit a little better, and then I took one of her extra bags onto the top of my pack to carry a few miles to the next water source for her.

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When I got down to a ranger station, the ranger there said there was nothing they could do, and people can hike unprepared and carry too much stuff if they want to, and it will hopefully be a learning experience. I was just trying to get someone to keep an eye out for her later that night, or at least know where she was if someone mentioned a Swedish lady was missing later, but the ranger was brusque and didn’t want to hear it. I was very surprised.

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I went over several passes today: Grasshopper, Harts, Buffalo, Windy, Foggy, and Jim. When hikers get to the Canadian border, to get to a road, they can either hike 8 more miles into Canada, or turn around and hike 30 miles back to Harts Pass. We started seeing hikers returning from the border after Harts and it was great to congratulate friends who’d finished and say goodbye one last time.

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I did 20.9 miles to camp and One Step got a campfire going again for everyone to hang out for a while.

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  1. Having fun reading your updates. We met the Sweedish lady at Hart Pass so she made it there. She seemed confused and was waiting for the bus. We told her where to go to a trailhead and then hopefully hitch to Mazama. Enjoy the rest of your journey. Heading to wyoming in the morning.

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