Summer weekends are quickly becoming scarce, so when Crumbs (yes, another 2011 PCT friend who lives in Portland) asked me if I wanted to go backpacking for the weekend, I was thrilled!  This is my first real hike since letting my stress fracture heal, so we decided to take it easy – relatively speaking, of course.  We eventually settled on a ~22 mile loop around Broken Top. We drove down late Friday afternoon and car camped on a Forest Service road near the Tam McArthur Trailhead where we’d start our hike the next morning.  And when I say car camp, I mean sleeping in the Crumbs’s car.  I will never knock a Honda Element again!

We got a leisurely start in the morning and hit the trail around 9:30am.  It was a good climb up to the Tam McArthur rim, where we had lovely views of the mountains: Bachelor, Broken Top, the Sisters, Washington, Jefferson, Hood and even Adams.  Smoke from fires got thicker midmorning and we lost views of Hood and Adams, but thankfully the air quality never got too bad.

 

After the “end of trail” sign, we continued on a path that was just as good as the real trail all the way to Broken Hand, a little nub east of Broken Top.  Based on information from a mid-July trip report we’d read, it sounded like following the trail on the north side of Broken Hand would involve a steep and potentially dangerous traverse.  So we opted to drop off the use-trail and cross country it south around Broken Hand before cutting west to the lake at the base of Broken Top.

 

When we got to the lake, it was obvious the use path we’d been on would’ve taken us safely to the rim on the north side and down an easy path to the lake: there were tons of people there! The lake was still mostly frozen over, but the eastern end was thawed to a beautiful turquoise.  Naturally, I jumped in.  I also took a quick trip up to the rim on the north to check out the views from that angle – gorgeous all around.

 

We headed south from the lake on a use trail to meet up with the Broken Top Trail and moseyed along through the high desert, dotted with wildflowers.   We passed the lovely Green Lakes, which would’ve been excellent camping – not nearly as crowded as we’d imagined it would be, but decided to press on to Golden Lake.  For only doing ~15 miles for day, we were exhausted.  I was worried the mosquitoes would be horrible, but they were almost nonexistent!  We had a lovely time in camp with our canned wine and Crumbs’ homemade version of the game Lost Cities under the super moon!

 

On Sunday, we had another leisurely morning, not leaving camp until after 9am – very difficult to retrain myself from thru-hiker style.   After a couple of nice miles in the trees, we entered the Pole Creek burn area, which lasted for the remainder of the hike.  Pretty in its own way, but hot and dusty.  We also didn’t find a several turnoffs for trails that would’ve taken us more directly back to our starting point, and ended up having to walk the road about 1.5 mi at the end.  A bit of an anticlimactic finish to an otherwise great hike!