Miles Hiked 342.8
PCT Mile 848.4
Elevation feet 6,175
Miles Hiked Today 15.8
Today, I say goodbye Mazama Village and Crater Lake. Yesterday, was a zero day. I didn’t hike. What I did do was take a shower, rinse off my clothes and relax. I say “rinse off my clothes” because Mazama Village does not have a laundry facility. Years ago, they replaced it with an ice cream shop. I’ll not have a chance to wash clothes until the end of my hike. Right now, everything is dirty. The trail is covered in loose dirt and sand. It’s easy to kick up and cover my clothes.
I slept in again. I was up and packed up by 7:00 a.m. . Then I went down to the Mazama general store for tea and just sat around drinking it. By 8:00 a.m. I was ready to go. There is little water for the next 20 miles, so I decided to fill up and carry four liters. I just got reprovisions yesterday, and now my backpack is heavy with eight days of food and the four liters of water.
The trail started easy and despite the heavy backpack, I was making good time. At mid morning the trail did a series of ups and downs. Then a burn scar appeared along with miles of dead trees. At that point the trail also started a steady climb up. There were a lot of rocks on the trail, too, which along with all the other aforementioned conditions, turned the trail into a hot, stumbling mess. Hot because there were no trees in the burn area. The rocks speak for themselves. I don’t walk on rocks. I stumble.
I didn’t want to go any further than 13 miles today. However, a campsite at that distance was in the burn area with dead trees all around the potential campsite. I skipped it.
The next opportunity to camp was in two miles. This turned out to be a lot better. There were live trees all around and nice flat ground for my tent. I set up the tent and then had dinner. By then it was 7:30 p.m. . It turned out to be a little longer day than I had planned. On the plus side, I’m that much closer to the end of Oregon and my hike.
