Another hot and smoky morning, but it was only 5 miles to Mazama Village. I stopped in at the store to pick up my resupply package along with some cold drinks and snacks, and spent most of the day hanging out with the other hikers around the store.
Can’t hike without a charged phone
The general mood was not the usual cheerful lightheartedness. Hikers are generally a pretty optimistic bunch. You have to be, in order to hike hundreds or thousands of miles. You expect plenty of hardships – bad trail, hard climbs, bugs, bad weather. Those are inevitable on any long hike. But the relentless heat and smoke are just grinding away at people’s spirits. More than a few hikers – folks who had walked 1800 miles from Mexico and could hardly be called wimps – were ready to call it quits. Or at least take some time off. Many were planning to skip the rest of Oregon and head up to the Trail Days festival in Cascade Locks along the Columbia River. Washington would be less hot and less smoky. It had to be. That was the hope.
I set up camp in the hiker campground and cleaned up as best I could – the showers were closed due to the returning pandemic. I spent the evening playing my Uke and was joined by Connect, a hiker I had been leapfrogging with since northern California. He is a gentle spirit, soft-spoken with blond dreadlocks cascading down to his chest. He has been carrying a carbon-fiber guitar. It is just about indestructible but must weigh nearly five pounds. However it is a good-sounding instrument, and despite his shy demurrals, he plays it well. We don’t know many songs in common but he is a good listener (much better than me) and I think we sounded fairly good doing some simple 3-chord songs and 2-chord jams. It was a good way to spend an evening and blow off some of the sadness of this hike.
In the morning I decided to hike on to the Rim VIllage as the restaurant at Mazama doesn’t serve breakfast. As usual I did not look closely enough at the map, and what I expected to be an easy two mile stroll was actually a steep climb of 1500 feet over five miles.
The Rim Village restaurant did not open until 10, and even then all it had were pre-made breakfast burritos. They were not bad, but I had been hoping for hash browns and eggs.
The Rim Trail around the lake is not the official PCT. Pretty much everyone takes it because why would you not want to walk around the rim of one of the most spectacularly beautiful lakes in the world?
The drawbacks to this route are (1) no water for 17 miles (the lake is hundreds of feet below down the steep rim of the crater) and (2) a lot of steep up and downs along the rim, at least for the first few miles.
The smoke was not bad in the morning and in fact imparted a bit of hazy mystery to the scene, not unlike a Japanese watercolor. But it got smokier through the day, and by the time I got to the north end of the lake I had my N95 mask on again.
The route north from the lake was flat hiking through a forest that was alternatively scabby and lush. It was also waterless. If not for the Devilfish Cache just north of highway 138, it would be a 30 mile carry to Thielsen Creek. Thank you Devilfish!
After a few hours in the forest I looked up and noticed skies were blue. I pulled off my mask while setting up camp and smelled no smoke for the first time since leaving Ashland. I can only hope this continues.