Total Miles This Hike: 194.1
PCT Miles Covered: 1895.7
What a day. Wow. Just WOW!!!! You can look at pictures of Crater Lake or see it on TV, but nothing can do it justice. By far one of the top 5 most beautiful places I have seen.
There were a couple things I misjudged today about the actual hiking though. The first was that even though I had been to the highest point of the PCT two days ago, the rim trail alternate was not technically the PCT and the Rim Trail went about 200ft. Higher than the highpoint. I didn’t have an elevation profile for it, and didn’t realize I had to climb almost 1500ft vertical just to get up there this morning. Once I did though here is a taste of what I saw:
Crystal Clean skies this morning. I had worried the smoke from the last couple days would ruin the view. Near the end of the walk around the rim, I did see a fire off in the distance which must be the cause of all the smoke.
The second thing I misjudged was the actual trail around the rim. For some reason I imagined a paved walkway with lots of pullouts for cars and scenic overlooks for people to take pictures and take a walk. There were some of those but the rim trail itself just went up and down over and over again leading into Rim Village which is where there is a store and cafe and visitors center.
After a quick snack and soda from there, I now had to come down off the rim, reconnect onto the PCT and hike another 4+ miles into Mazama Village which is the official campground of Crater Lake. It was a big national park campground with a campstore, showers, laundry and $5 tentsites for PCT hikers.
There were about 10-15 hikers by my count there, and I got to spend some more time chatting with northbounders. Got all the essentials done including picking up my second resupply box. The smoke started to come back with a vengeance into the valley tonight. A couple northbounders also heard there was yet another smaller fire southwest which was sending us all this smoke and that they heard rangers were closing off trails. I kept seeing hikers come in though and asked all of them if the PCT was safe or in any danger of being closed and they said that they didn’t see or hear anything. I figure I will just stop by the ranger station kiosk on my way out tomorrow just to make sure.
Tomorrow will be my longest day yet, as I know there is no water for 20 miles south of here and I will have to at least make it that far through apparently another long burn area as well. My hope is to be out as soon as the ranger kiosk opens and I get the ok. What an outstanding day today was. Last couple days were kinda blah and ho-hum but today completely changed all that.
Keep on keeping on
Patch
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