Fish Lake, like other lakes in Oregon, is too low for swimming or boating
One of the things I love about hiking the PCT is the people that I meet. Although the majority are young folks who have not yet done much, older generations are also well-represented. Anyone who has a career, yet breaks it off to go hiking in the mountains for weeks or months is someone who is likely to have an interesting perspective.
Breakfast at the Fish Lake Lodge didn’t commence until 9, so there was plenty of time for hikers to gather at the picnic tables outside. I was talking with Ivana, a nuclear physicist from Poland who worked at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, and a young man who worked at Boeing assembling jumbo jets.
Eventually the conversation turned (as conversations so often do) to the problem of quality control in manufacturing. At Boeing, workers have to account for every single screw and rivet. You really can’t have spare parts just rattling around in a plane carrying hundreds of passengers. Any time a screw or clip gets dropped, the worker has to yell out “problem boss!” and the whole assembly line freezes until the situation is resolved.
Ivana oversaw the assembly of ring magnets for the LHC and faced similar problems. These magnets are powerful enough to accelerate subatomic particles to nearly the speed of light. Loose screws would not be accelerated to nearly such speeds, but would still blast a hole in anything or anyone in their path.
Ultimately the problem comes down to culture – how do you create an environment in which people immediately report mistakes – mistakes that can cause millions of dollars of damage? You certainly can’t punish them, as that would create an incentive to cover up mistakes rather than declare them. Everyone makes a mistake sooner or later. But there also has to be some accountability, at least for the repeat offenders who are just not cutting it at their job.
QA systems are good and necessary, but they are not enough. Ultimately you have to build a culture of trust–trust that the occasional inevitable mistake will not cost you your job, and also trust that those not pulling their weight won’t be allowed to free ride. Culture and norms are more powerful than rules and laws.
After downing breakfast, we yogi’d a ride back to the trail, saving us a two-mile walk uphill to the crest.
The day was definitely cooler, and the forests not as droughty as they were farther south. But the smoke started bad and got worse. I was wearing an N95 mask from 3pm on.
There is not much else to report about the day’s hike. It was mostly forested and the smoke blocked out any views I might have had. The map shows a number of lakes on either side of the trail, but they were only faintly visible. I ended the day on a ridge, rolled out my groundcloth and sleeping bag, cooked dinner while swatting mosquitoes and went to sleep.