Twin Lakes: Interrupted; or How I Nearly Became a Darwin-Award Nominee

Yeah. The scoreboard of Saturday's trail run would read: Trails 1, Becca 0 (although I didn't actually die, so maybe it would be a tie instead). Basically, through my own stupidity I almost got in real trouble. And I didn't even get to see a single lake, let alone Twins! Here's what happened:
Good friend and running buddy Tina got to my house around 7:45. We took off south toward Bull of the Woods wilderness area in Mt. Hood National Forest. I will definitely be heading back there this summer – the drive from my house to the ranger station was easy and gorgeous. Classic Oregon brochure scenery: the rushing, rocky Clackamas river surrounded by steep, green mountain walls; and every time we crested a ridge there were views of dozens of green foothills fading into the horizon. And that was just the drive! I was excited.

Trying to find the Whetstone Mountain trailhead (above) was an adventure. We got on unpaved FR 7020 and drove….and drove…and drove. At one point we saw relatively fresh horse manure and figured we must be close to the trail, only to turn a corner and see a wild horse – seriously! It was a bit creepy really, and I kept expecting it to crash out of the brush in front of my car. Mount Hood isn't know for its wild horses, so we asked the rangers on the way out what the scoop was. Apparently, horses escape from local towns every now and then and make their way up into the mountains. They were very interested in our report and had us locate on the map approximately where we saw it.

Rhododendrons

Eventually we found the trailhead, about half an hour later than planned. Tina is a bit slower than I am, and she was only planning on 12 miles while I wanted to make 16, so I got started before her. At first I tried to jog up at least part of the uphills, knowing full well I wouldn't be running up all of them at 4500'-6000' of elevation. I ran all the flats and downhills unless the footing was uncertain. I'd guesstimate that I ran about 75% of the length of the trail, which translated to about 60% of the time I spent on the trail, as the lengths I had to walk obviously took a lot longer to get through.

The trail was overgrown in parts

The weather was perfect, although I was surprised how hot it was given our elevation. High seventies or 80 degrees, I'd guess. I was drinking water responsibly, and was thirstier than I'd expected. That, unfortunately, was the problem. Normally when I'm running 16 miles I would fill all four bottles of my fuel belt, totaling 32 ounces, and that would be sufficient. But if I was planning to hike 16 miles, I would have brought at least 64 ounces of water. I don't know why I thought the lesser amount would suffice, but I left the car with only about 40 ounces of water. And I didn't pay close attention to how much water I had left until I turned around and realized that I had to run all the way back with about 12 ounces of water. I immediately realized what a stupid decision I had made and hurried to try and catch up with Tina, who had turned around earlier than me.

Lots of nice views of the lumpy, slightly homlier side of Mt. Hood

Well, long story short(er), I managed to crawl back to the car, but only because I swallowed my pride (or it evaporated out of me) and begged water off another lady on the trail. If I hadn't passed her, I am sure that I would have either given in and drunk from the next stream I passed (in which case I'd probably still be huddled close to a toilet somewhere) or lost my mind and done something dangerous.

The sky was so blue it seemed almost purple - the camera didn't get it

Could I have died? Hiking or trail running always carries risks, of course. Probably not of dehydration in this case, as Tina would have come to find me eventually. But I had gotten to the point that I wasn't thinking clearly, increasing the likelihood that I would do something terminally dumb. Plus, I spent the entire second half of the run preoccupied with how dehydrated I was getting, rather than enjoying being out in nature. I'm just very angry at myself – I like to think I'm a pretty smart cookie but you wouldn't know it from this. Anyway, I made it back to the car, slowly drank a ton of water, and went to bed at 7:30. I could not make myself eat that night, so I was famished the next morning and promptly ate everything in site, washed down with about 100 ounces of Propel. After that I felt pretty much fine. I consider it a lesson very well learned.

Dirty and scratched up and happy to be alive!

Oh, and why didn't I see the Twin Lakes? I missed the marker. Tina did too, so I don't feel bad about it. :-)