Over the next several days I rode Shyla and kept Takoda once again at the Diamond Lake Corrals, with Wayne Watson, while I was out overnight on the PCT. The trail remained snow-free, and I continued to Odell Lake (staying at the Whitefish horse camp by Crescent Lake) and finally as far north as Elk Lake, at the southern edge of the Three Sisters Wilderness where Takoda and I had our difficulty. Then Mom and I made a mad dash late on the evening of the the 10th all the way up to Cascade Locks, where we camped overnight at the trailhead and where I would start riding southbound again on Friday morning. But of course, before we managed to get our act on the road, we had to deal with another problem, when somehow the trailer popped off the hitch as we were leaving the trailhead at Elk Lake. Thank goodness we were going very slowly through a rutted portion of the trailhead access road, and we were going downhill, so the trailer just slid under the camper and came to a stop. We had to off-load the horses and chock the trailer and separate the vehicles and re-hitch and re-load (and then double and triple check everything to be sure it was secure!), but it was a lot less traumatic an event than I would have ever imagined. In fact, my mom and I had a good laugh about how the trail has beaten us up so much that something like this becomes a rather minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things (something that once upon a time I would have seen as a near disaster!).

#2014PCT