Breakfast in the tent is the norm for us on the PCT. We rarely, if ever, did this on the AT. The biggest reason was because we hung bear bags every night on the AT. On the PCT, I use our food as a pillow. It’s not good for breakable items like chips, crackers, or pop tarts; so Bunny carries those items and places them on my side of the tent. She still has a strong sense of self preservation.
With breakfast in the tent, we are able to get ready faster (in theory). We regularly started hiking on the AT by 8. We haven’t quite gotten back into the rhythm, yet, on the PCT. Today, we hit the trail at 8:09. It was our second best start yet. We are trending in right direction.
All in all, the trail bed of the PCT is lot easier to walk on than the AT and even side trails out here. The grade is rarely greater than 500’/mile and if it is, it’s just for a short distance. Contrast that to the AT where the grade was rarely less than 400’/mile and if it was, it was just for short distances. In the Whites in NH, we encountered grades in excess of 2000’/mile for stretches well over a half mile in length. That’s so steep that we’d have to put away our hiking poles and use trees to pull ourselves up. The steepness, alone, makes the PCT easier to walk on. I haven’t even mentioned the trail beds, which the PCT wins, hands down, for ease of walking.
I mention all this because we ran into 2 thru-hikers, Marmalade and Ryan (no trail name) coming off of the rim just before we were climbing up to it. Ryan came back early from spending a couple in Spain teaching English (like our friend Kat from the Camino is doing now). She’s only 23. Marmalade is retired, but used to be a professional golfer. He did confirm one aspect of golfing for us—never trust what a golfer says as they are liars. He told us we had an easy 8 miles of downhill once we made it past the high point on the rim of the lake. Liar!
Granted, we were going slow along the rim because of the sheer beauty of Crater Lake. We stopped and took lots of pictures. However, we had momentary flashbacks to the Whites. The Rim Trail is definitely steeper than the main PCT but we had been warned that the main route isn’t well maintained and it has a cougar issue. Personally, I’m not afraid of cougars having been with one for well over a decade. Bunny and Sassy make it a point to always have their backs to trees when they drop their drawers.
Crater Lake IS amazing. Mt Mazama was/is the volcano where Crater Lake exists. In geologic terms, this is all a very recent. The lake was formed about 7,800 years ago when the volcano collapsed on itself. The most recent eruption happened a mere 4,800 years ago…that’s about the time the pyramids were being built in Egypt. That eruption was underwater. The lake itself is slightly more than 1950 feet deep. For the outdoor sportsman, fishing is allowed without a license, but there is no catch and release. The species of fish are invasive and the NPS wants them gone. Mt Mazama is not dormant, but it is inactive (at the moment). The Cascades are due…last eruption was Mt St Helens in 1980.
After struggling along the rim for a few hours, we decided to opt for a late lunch at rim cafe. Non-dehydrated $6 hot dogs and $3 sodas, even though way overpriced, make for a nice change to the standard trail diet. Sassy was having a low sugar period so she was a bit on the hangry side (despite her kicking episodes, she really normally happy and pleasant to be around—don’t let her know I wrote that).
With only 5 miles to go, we were pretty tired. Sassy told the group at a break spot that she’s not angry at anyone. I got very worried. All married men understand a statement like that from your wife means “she’s not mad at anyone other than her husband (Bear), and possibly any member of species in proximity with an X and Y chromosome pairing. When Bunny chimed in and said she was happy they were hiking with us, I knew Bear and I were in serious trouble of remaining alive.
Let it be known that if the content of this blog noticeably changes from sarcastic in tone to all happy and full of bunnies, rainbows, and unicorns, that Bunny has finally carried out her threat to remove me. If an entire week goes by without any reference to poop, someone, please, call the police. Tell them to look for freshly dug gravesites less than 0.1 miles from the trail. Bunny is vindictive, but lazy. She won’t drag my body much further than that.
We finished the day with a 1 mile road walk to Mazama Village. We, being honest, stopped at the General Store to pay for camping even though it’s not enforced. They told us there were only 4 other PCT hikers in the camping area assigned to thru-hikers, but when we went in, it was obvious that homeless people had taken up residence in the camping area. There were large tents that no thru-hiker would ever carry stuffed full of gear and provisions.
We went to Annie’s for supper, which was surprisingly good. The wait staff was doing their best to make light of the bad situThe ation (Covid). After supper, we stopped for sponge baths in the bathroom sink since some Einstein in the NPS has decided showers are too dangerous to open (same goes for laundry), but it’s ok to fill every campsite in the campground and have communal campfire programs. There is no consistency or sense in dealing with the virus. I wish we had some national leadership. We tried to go to sleep with all campground noise associated with about a thousand people maintaining social distancing guidelines NPS style.
EFG