After almost 3 months, I think I’m finally faster at packing up in the morning. It only took me about half an hour today, instead of the normal hour. This early start led to one of the easiest long days I’ve had. First though, your daily dose of nature. (WARNING: Dead Animal)
It’s a little tiny snake eating a mouse. I don’t know how it was gonna fit, but the snake was doing its best. When one of my friends passed it later, it was still working on swallowing it.
We had a lot of flat trail today, and most of the trail has been really nice. We made great time, doing over 20 miles before our lunch break. We were actually on pace to do a 40 today if we really tried.
There were a couple things stopping us though. First were the lava rocks. The lava fields are really cool and a very welcome change in scenery. The generic forests of Oregon are fine, but a little boring.
Those rocks hurt your feet… bad. They’re uneven, sharp, and everywhere. Luckily they didn’t last too long and the trail maintainers actually did a great job of building a trail through them with crushed cinders.
The biggest reason we stopped at 33 was the Fish Lake Resort. Typically, we get a real dinner after a half day of hiking. We might roll into town for lunch or show up for an early dinner. Today we had 33 miles before the resort, so when we got to the road, the two mile hitch was an easy decision. We loaded up on food and missed a rainstorm before heading back to the trail. By the time we finished with dinner, it was 8 pm and we decided to camp near the trailhead.
We got some interesting news about our next big stop, Crater Lake. There are a couple fires burning in the park and they have closed the PCT and the west part of the rim road. Our plan is to go to the boundary of the park and walk the park entrance road up to the lake (that road is still open) then walk the east rim road around the lake and out of the park. One of my brother’s friends was supposed to run a marathon this weekend and he feared it would be canceled. But today he posted Facebook that the race was on. That could mean anything from the road being open (West rim is much shorter), to the race being rerouted. It might even mean the fires are a bit more under control.
It’ll be an adventure no matter what.