12 Sep 2025 4 min read

Pacific Crest Trail - Day 146 - Mt Thielsen Wilderness

Start: Mile 4.6 of Crater Lake Rim Alternate - Lightning Spring
End: Mile 1857.6 - Thielsen Creek

I’m pretty sure this is looking south from the Crater Lake Rim at a relatively unremarkable volcanic rock formation, but it could also be Mt. Thielsen, which is apparently a very difficult mountain to get a clear photograph of.

The fire lookout atop “the Watchman” on the rim of Crater Lake.

We ditched our packs and hiked up. The hiking equivalent of ditching the on deck bat weight donut before going to bat. We had a literal bounce in our steps.

This is basically a map of the Pacific Crest Trail - it weaves in and out of all of these peaks (at least the ones that aren’t in 🇨🇦).

Mazama must have been a sight to behold. Shasta was an absolute unit - you have to figure Mazama was bigger.

Views from the Watchman fire lookout.

This feels like one of those situations where it would have been just as easy to address the problem than to “raise awareness” about it.

The trail just off the rim was pretty unremarkable.

But a few hundred feet up and it’s a mind blowingly beautiful scene.

The Rim trail was basically empty. We saw hundreds of cars driving up and around to various lookout, but very few people getting out and hiking even a few hundred feet beyond their cars. This is typical American behavior in National Parks … you “do” them by driving to small parking lots with views and moving along.