Day 119: Mile 1812.7 - 1820.9

So the original plan had been to do a brief stop at Crater Lake to resupply, then get on with hiking for the rest of the day. But I looked at the map in more detail and--assuming I did the Crater Lake Rim Trail rather than the PCT proper (the Rim Trail allows you to see the lake, the PCT proper does not, and so pretty much everyone takes the Rim Trail)--it turns out you're not allowed to camp on the Rim Trail until Grouse Campground, which is about 13 miles in. And with an 8-mile hike in the morning to get to Mazama Village, then resupply, then do 13-miles out? Yeah, I wasn't going to make that.

So today ended up being a nero at Crater Lake, in particular at Mazama Village. And honestly, my body was appreciate: these longer days and bigger miles have indeed been taking their toll and I've been feeling it. Primarily just in how tired I am at the end of the day, but also in how I feel in the morning: the recovery and bounce back is not as strong as it was, say, back in the desert. Like my iliac crests have gotten bruised up again, and in the desert resting for a day pretty much recovered that. Well, a day off in Ashland didn't do much, and I've started tightening my hip belt at different parts of my waist to compensate and now just bruising other parts. But, I keep telling myself, sustainability is only so valuable now: need to make it to Canada, everything else is negotiable.

Today I did end up hiking with Double Snacks all the way from the campsite in to Mazama Village. Which was nice: I only caught up to her a couple days ago, then we hiked on our own schedules and just happened to end up camping in the same spot. But today it was nice to hike with someone for a change. Hiking alone on the PCT is still not fully alone--you always know there are people around and that you'll see them (especially the southbounders nowadays), and actually I've felt much more alone and isolated on my Saturday day hikes (where I'd sometimes go for 9 hours without seeing another soul) (although I did see a deer that time--do deer have souls?)--but still, hiking by yourself and hiking with someone are still different enough that I can appreciate each in their own right. And we talked, mostly about what we were seeing, mostly speculating about trees and their life cycles. Neither of know any of the answers to our queries, but it's fun to think about it and try to come up with rational reasons for stuf!

Mazama Village itself was pretty chill--lots of hikers, though! We got in mid-morning, promptly went to the store and bought ice creams and cold drinks (the high was 95 in the Village today), picked up packages (there's a story about that), then went to the restaurant to eat lunch with Spielberg and Oh-Man, who had arrived earlier (Oh-Man actually arrived yesterday, I think). After lunch we wandered over to the PCT campsite area, set up our tents, sorted out our resupplies, went to the RV area where they have spigots with hoses and backwashed our Sawyers and also hosed off our legs and feet (which mine certainly needed!), then went back to the restaurant for dinner. Overall a very relaxed and chill day, nothing really urgent, nothing really pressing, always moving but never feeling busy. And that was good: it was as good of a nero as you could hope for, honestly.

Except for the packages. So it turns out there isn't much resupply available in the Mazama Village store, so I had asked Terry to send a full resupply--enough food for 6 full days. And he did, spread over two boxes. And one arrived. And the other said it arrived, but they didn't have it at the store. I'm too busy right now, the lady at the counter said, but I can look for it after hours if you like. Or maybe it's still at the post office, so I can call them up at 9am to see if it's there. Well, I want to get headed out at 6:30am tomorrow morning, so I decided to forego the other package entirely and just buy the remaining resupply at the store as best I could. And luckily of the two boxes, it was the smaller that got misplaced, so it was easier to rectify. But yeah: this was the shipment that I had asked Terry to rush ship to make sure it got to Mazama in time, so we paid a "pretty penny" (Terry's words) to get it here in time, and then one doesn't show even though the tracking says it's here. Well, what can you do. You can be frustrated, as I was, but then that doesn't buy me anything in the long run: it's not like being frustrated will make my package suddenly appear. And while it may make me feel good to vent, in reality it doesn't because I don't have time to: I need to fix the problem and the store was closing soon so I did as quickly as I could, and then it was fixed and there was nothing to be frustrated about anymore. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere, but I'm also sure I'm too tired to figure it out.

But other than that, it was nice to hang out and take it easy. I'm hoping my feet and body appreciate it and are happier in the morning for it but you never know. I know I didn't sleep well last night--evidently nobody at that campsite did--and they think it's because of the smoke, but I think it's because of the dead trees--I never sleep well around dead trees, and indeed I remember camping in a vale of dead trees after Mission Creek and having nightmares--in particular, because I forgot to talk to the trees before going to bed. Gotta talk to the dead trees--sometimes the live ones too!--ask them to please not fall on you and not feel resentful about you camping there. Hey, sometimes it works! But anyway, here in Mazama, the smoke is back--it seems to clear some in the morning but comes back at night around 5pm and it becomes noticably harder for me to breathe--but the trees around here are alive, so I have higher hopes!

 

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Some notes:

-- Campsite > Highway 62 > Mazama Village

-- So the big news at Crater Lake was the COVID--and delta-COVID at that--outbreak in Ashland. The first night I had stayed, there had been a big hiker party held at an AirBnB which I did not attend--partially because I'm not on that social mailing list, and partially because I'm absolutely terrible at parties, but it was a big affair, and very thru-hiker (you had to "wear anything but clothes" to get in, for example). But it turns out there was a COVID outbreak at the party, so some people were getting sick now. Enough so that the PCTA issued an email talking about the outbreak (basically just letting people know, and advising people to be careful). I will say that I haven't worried about COVID really since Julian: at Scissors, I had to hitch in to get to Julian, and none of the cars I hitched with really seemed to care. And it seemed an urban-rural sort of thing: the urban folk cared more, the rural less. And I get the rural side, not just because they don't see it much (which they don't), but because their livelihoods are not something that can be worked on from home. They're proprietors at shops that are rest stops for people passing through--how do you do that from home? They don't work at a desk, in fact a lot of them are out here in a large way exactly because that's what they wanted to avoid. So when we say, stay at home, work from home, we're basically telling them quit your job, stop making money. And even if we say, hey, we'll compensate you: I mean, we're Americans, right? We're not here to survive off a handout. So there's a divide here--they're already on the outside, sometimes intentionally so, and when we impose restrictions seemingly without consideration of their lifestyle, is it any wonder they bristle and chafe? (Although, to be fair, the danger of COVID, especially delta-COVID, is very real, to both urban and rural alike--it doesn't care about politics or insider-outsider or urban-rural, it's truly equal opportunity that way.) But yeah, COVID is back on people's minds and even here at Crater Lake, hikers were starting to mask up again, getting paranoid about catching it, just because it'll take you off the trail for a while.

-- Actually, come to think of it, even in Ashland at the ReMix Coffee Bar, all the staff wore masks. And when I asked if I should do so as well, they said, no, it's fine, but that there had been an outbreak "downtown" a couple weeks ago, so they were told to institute precautionary measures. But we should be fine down here--that was a downtown thing. Well, Ashland isn't that big: downtown is a 5-minute drive that way, and that's on the bus!

--Speaking of COVID, that's the reason the showers were closed at Crater Lake. Which is odd: isn't keeping clean and scrubbed a way to *prevent* COVID? But yeah, technically you have to clean the showers between uses, and there's liability if you don't, so it makes sense that they close it. But in the evening when I headed over to the bathrooms to hit the head before hitting my bunk (to extend the slang), I met a guy in the bathroom doing the hiker shower: wetting his arms in the sink, soaping them up, then rinsing them off in the sink. We got to talking some: he had broken his leg and was finally trying to get in some active stuff before going back to school (I didn't ask for what, but he's 44, so I imagine for something more professionally oriented). But he had a bunch of questions about the PCT, which I answered as we walked back in the dark towards his official campsite. I have found that I don't mind answering questions about the PCT: the people asking them are asking from honest curiosity, so even if I've heard that one a hundred and one times, it only seems fitting that I provide an honest and uncynical answer!

-- Charging is a non-trivial thing at Mazama Village. They do provide a wall with a power bar that we can plug into, but for most of the day it's in the sun so lots of lithium-ion battery powered devices just won't charge. So luckily we did manage to find outlets in the store itself--which was cooler--and plugged in to just a random wall outlet near the entrance, close to the floor. And just left both my battery *and* my cell phone charging there, on the floor, and walked away for a few hours while I worked on other things. And when you can do that and not be concerned at all, well, then you know you've started to become a thru-hiker!

-- I did meet Beans in the PCT hiker area, and did talk to him a bit. He's feeling better: after finishing his full round of antibiotics, his stomach felt much better. (He didn't wait to finish his full round, mind you, headed out from Etna early, but evidently it was manageable even then.) He had gone to the rodeo and liked it, especially the local events like the wild cow milking, and some riding races, but did note that there were a lot of hikers attending, and they were quite different than the regulars. More rowdy--for example, the hikers tried starting the wave, but the regulars were having none of it!

-- So at the store (the second time I was there, finding my second package never arrived), I bumped into Almost Famous and Moonbeam outside. Are you guys staying here tonight, I asked, because it was pretty late, past 5pm. No, we're going to keep going, they said. Isn't it like 11 miles before the first campsite, though, I asked, that's a long way. And Moonbeam just looked at me with a face that said, this isn't my idea. And Almost Famous said, well, we're trying to get to McKenzie Pass by a certain time (and they were--they want to go to Trail Days which starts on the 20th, so I know their plan is to get to McKenzie Pass, hitch into Bend, rent a car, and drive up to Cascade Locks--if they want to get there by the 20th, they need to be at McKenzie by the 19th). And Moonbeam just continued to not say a word.

-- I will add that, when I was sorting out my missing second package, I tried to message Terry to ask about tracking information and whatnot, but didn't have cell signal, only the store-provided WiFi that would come in and out. So instead I ended up messaging with Ian via Whatsapp on the WiFi to ask Terry about the shipment via text message on his cellular link. Eh, when it rain it pours, especially when things go wrong!

-- So a quick update on the plan. There are two fire closures up ahead: the new Washington Ponds fire that closes from just north of McKenzie Pass through Santiam Pass, then the old Lionshead fire that closes from Pamelia Lake to Olallie Lake. There's a little bit of trail in the middle that's open, but it's really hard to get to logistically, so the plan right now is to get to McKenzie Pass (Mile 1984), use that to get into Bend, then skip up to Olallie Lake (or more specifically, to get a ride of Olallie Lake, then take a forest road about 2 miles north and cross over to the PCT at Triangle Lake to avoid the Lionshead closure) (at Mile 2048). Another skip, and a goodly one, but them's the breaks.