Crater Lake of Do-Overs

July 14th 2019
Miles 18
Crater Lake Alternate to PCT Mile 1848.5
On Klamath, Grand Ronde and Molalla lands

Last night’s late train finally arrived in the full dark hours after 11pm, but still I wake early, anxious and excited to get hiking. My hotel room is clean and cozy, except for a persistent stale BO smell, which I soon trace with some embarrassment to my very own backpack straps (Yes, it’s been years. Yes, I’ve tried everything. No, it doesn’t work). I wander around near the Klamath Falls train station until I locate the bus that drives me and a few families from the train up into the park. At the Rim Village gift shop, where I fill my extra water containers, there are a few PCT hikers lounging about. In an average year, this would be too early to see many thru hikers so far North, but a well-above-average Sierra snowfall and extra caution spurred by last year’s tragic drowning deaths has scattered the herd from NorCal all the way up to the Canadian border.

Crater lake is still radiating blueness from its depths, as if illuminated from below. At least I have a good habit of leaving the trail in spectacular places. Who wouldn’t want an excuse to return here? The crowds seem to agree, though if you walk the rim trail even a short distance away from parking areas and you have huge views seemingly to yourself. At that’s exactly where I’m headed. There’s still a small segment of trail closed from winter over watchman peak, but me and my microspikes are not at all convinced the snow patches are more dangerous than road walking a narrow shoulder with steep drop-offs as massive RVs speed past in both directions.

Slowly, I make my way up and around the lake, over lingering snow patches and sandy soil squishy with melt. My pack weighs on my aching shoulder and I pause often to sit and absorb as much of the magical blue as possible, hoping its energy will help me through the day. Aiming for 18 miles with a noon start was perhaps a bit ambitious for the first day? But there’s a water cache there at the park boundary, and I don’t have a backcountry permit so exit I must.

The trail has veered away from the lake into a dusty, scraggly forest where I meet a speedy thruhiker now knocking out 40 mile days, one of the rare few who made it through the Sierra. We chatter for a few of the less interesting miles before I need to fall back on my own noob pace. The hours of walking with a heavy pack are revealing new bodily limits: stinging thighs alert me to the double indignity of a leaking bladder and thigh chafe. Oh the glory!

At the road, I find a very small and very empty water cache. But my anxiety dissipates just down the trail when I locate the real and plentiful water cache AND so many tiny hiker tents it must be a party. I hesitate for barely a moment before I am invited over with a whole hearted “come join us!” I add my shelter to the line of tiny tents, laughing in surprise when the large rock I grab to secure a stake in the sandy soil turns out to be pumice, as light and as useful as a styrofoam movie prop.

The group is joyful, but the meeting, they lament, is temporary with all the many variations on snow-induced skips and flips sending thru hikers every which way up and down the trail. Everyone is surprised to learn I have started just that afternoon, asking repeatedly where I camped last night. Between the stinky worn backpack, faded hiking skirt and a convincing patina of dust courtesy of a wee tumble I took over a root, I look properly filthy enough to fit right in.