Miles hiked: 24.6
Mile marker: 1845.2
It’s cold. The foot of my sleeping bag is wet. The walls of my tent are dotted in water.
We’re packing up when I hear a slow breaking, then a crunch, then a CRASH!
A tree just fell.
We walk into the woods. It’s a soft ground and it seems as if the worst of the blowdowns are behind us. The trees are calm and peaceful in the morning blue. Time passes and soon the birds are chirping more vibrantly. The squirrels are cackling at one another, sounding like they come from a cartoon sci-fi for kids.
The trail goes on and on through the woods. After we reach the water, I hike on to use the restroom. I have to go so badly that I walk right through a junction, which we’ve hit a lot of today, not wanting to use the bathroom with so much opportunity for eyes to be on me.
Then I cross a creek.
Welp. Can’t go 100 feet within water.
So I walk on.
As I finish, I look down the empty path. Where are the others? I would have heard or seen them coming by. Surely they aren’t still at the water.
The trees border the soft dirt path. No one is coming. No sound of footsteps.
I wait a moment.
Birds chirp. Squirrels cackle.
Oh my gosh.
I missed the blue blaze to Crater Lake! It’s not on the redline, and there is a blue line that goes through Crater!
I’m mad at myself for missing this again! Fortunately, I’m only a tenth of a mile down the wrong trail.
I pass the creek, get to the junction and swing a left.
Soon it turns uphill.
Then it turns into more uphill.
I hope Rafiki and Voyager are on this path. What if I missed the trail? What if the path I’m going on is taking me somewhere else?
I begin to pick up the pace up the hill. I’m breathing heavily, grunting with effort as I listen to my book.
Finally, I spot Rafiki in his white hat! Yay!
We find Voyager at the cafe. It’s a stone and wood lodge with a view of the largest lake I’ve ever seen in an old volcano! Crater lake is at most 2,000 feet deep! It was a Volcano that erupted years ago and filled with snow melt and rain water. It has a bright but deep blue water sitting in it, no outlet to anywhere!
We charge our things and grab some lunch. I get several cokes and lay out my wet sleeping bag.
Back on trail, we get some amazing views of the lake. We hike up Watchman’s Tower, the view overlooking the lake. Several people are so impressed by us hiking the PCT. One lady even offers to ship us some goodies! She and her husband live in Portland.
We take her up on the offer.
We hike on several miles to a water cache. We lay out tents and rest our sore feet before continuing on.
I feel like my legs are going to fall off. It’s been a beautiful day today. Perfectly coolish but warmish weather. I even got to match my ice pop blue H2O peak drink to the water in crater lake, saying,
“I swam out to Wizard Island to get this water.”
Rafiki really wanted to go to Wizard Island, a pointy hat of a structure that is closed for another two years.
At last, we find a camping spot! We walked almost four and a half miles after the water cache to get here because we couldn’t camp one mile within a road (national park rules) and this was pretty much the best spot in order to obey that rule.
We go into Diamond Lake tomorrow. We get to sleep in a bit!
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