Days 113
Start: Grouse Hill Camp
Finish: Maidu Lake
Daily Mileage: 27.9
PCT Mile: 1866.9
The late night last night with only 6 hours to sleep brought morning way too quickly. I have been accumulating a sleep deficit every night for the past week with not sleeping well or enough, and I was pretty tired when I got up this morning. But there is nothing to do but keep hiking.
We started the morning off right with a wrong turn which had us miss the water cache we needed to hit, but we quickly realized the error and retraced our steps to fill up. There’s a good stretch of trail without water today, especially if you include the section of rim we walked, so the cache helps, though we could have gotten by without it.
We finished out Crater Lake National Park which was nothing but perfectly flat dense forest. Nothing to see, and nothing too interesting, but very flat and easy trail to fly down.
It was nicely overcast for most of today which made the hiking that much easier and more pleasant.
We cruised to our first break at a second unnecessary water cache and continued in flat forest that gradually climbed into the Mount Thielsen Wilderness Area. I had never heard of this one, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
The first few miles continued with uninterrupted forest with nothing for views, but as we were getting higher on Mount Thielsen, the trees started thinning and the mountain jumped out at us. It was a sharp volcanic spire covered in pumice an broken lava. Quite an impressive sight, and apparent why this area is protected. The views were mostly fleeting, but we enjoyed them when we could. We crossed many fields of pumice which is always one of my favorite rocks since it is light enough to float.
The snow did eventually disappear and we had second lunch at Thielsen Creek which was incredibly scenic with some falls over rough volcanic rock, and our first nice stream in a while. There was even a complete snow bridge across the stream, the first one we have seen in a long time. I’m really surprised it has lasted this long.
We resumed with a nice easy climb to the highest point of the trail in Oregon and Washington. It was a measly 7,600 feet which is nothing in comparison to the mountains in and around the Sierra. In the Sierra we probably did not drop below this elevation, and our highest point was almost double the elevation. Oh how the mountains have changed.
A long downhill to finish out the day. We had been talking about how today would be a “short” day that we could use to rest up and relax from recent pushes, but it was still 27 miles to our planned stopping point. We keep calling these less than 30 mile days short, but need to keep in mind it can still be a full hiking day. With my tiredness, it was still an exhausting day, and I need some better recovery overnight.
We hiked down a mile to Maidu Lake with visions of a dip and water source. No sooner did we arrive than it started raining. We quickly set up camp and dove into our tents. The squall was short and we were able to have dinner outside with moderate mosquito attack. With it being wet and overcast, it was not really swimming weather, and I just used the lake to wash my black legs.
Some thunder heads rolled through north and south of us, I hope they don’t spark more fires.
Some hikers arrived at nearly 9 hooting and hollering before they realized we were here already getting towards bed. The streak of rude hikers at night continues. Hopefully they stay quieter now, I really need to catch up on sleep.
