Pacific Crest Trail - Day 145 - Crater Lake

We woke up to a soggy forest following a pretty hard rainstorm.

It’s hard to find words for how much I love this tent.

Freshly showered trees showing off their new growth.

A large part of why California’s burn scare were so emotionally devastating to traverse was that there was very little evidence the forests were actually growing back - even after decades.

Some of that is by choice (letting nature in wilderness areas run its course), some of that is by policy (the US Forest Service stopping replanting efforts following wildfire as a budgetary/resource choice), and the most concerning - much of it seemingly by a rapidly changing climate that no longer facilitates forests gaining a foothold in environments much warmer and more arid than they were decades ago.

Seeing new growth occurring within burned forests in Oregon has been a refreshing and welcome change, although it is hard to be optimistic that it will still look precipitously (no pun intended) different to Northern California in a decade or two.

Kristin bought a rain poncho in Etna, CA ahead of the next thousand miles in the presumably wet and rainy Pacific Northwest.

She opted for a subtle camouflage colorway.

After a few more minutes of rain, I joined her putting on my rain poncho which is essentially a garbage can liner.

Crater Lake is behind those clouds somewhere.

No shooting? No mushrooms? This is like Black Rock Desert Opposite Day.

A corridor through old growth forest as far as the eye can see. A sight to behold.

Old and new growth thriving.

We shipped a resupply package to Mazama Village and were excited about the prospects of snacks and a warm meal at the general store and restaurant, only to find that their power was out.

Apparently it happens on a monthly basis, and despite the park hosting hundreds of thousands of paying visitors monthly this is apparently an acceptable state of affairs for public infrastructure in our National Parks. They emptying the contents of the restaurant’s freezers into trucks while we were there.

This is fine.

🤦🏻‍♂️

We got a hitch to the lodge at the rim to figure out our resupply situation.

These are Stickley Bow Arm Morris chairs - now we know why they can’t afford a generator or a functioning power grid for those peons down at Mazama Village.

Just kidding - someone at the lodge has great taste and public spaces should have very high quality fixtures.

We ordered garlic Parmesan French fries, a crème brûlée, and a couple beers on the patio at the lodge and forgot all about Mazama Village.

We snagged some cereal bars, chips, nuts, and a couple terrible wraps from the gift shop before heading around the rim to find a place to camp.

Footprints betray so much information. You won’t see any footprints from Chuck Taylors or On Clouds in the backcountry.

I see some combination of Sebulba and Predator, but maybe it has just been a long day.

Snow!

Looking south towards Mt McLoughlin.

The sky from our campsite at Lightning Spring about halfway along the rim. Unreal.