Days 115
Start: Diamond Peak
Finish: Bobby Lake
Daily Mileage: 22.6
PCT Mile: 1918.6
I didn’t sleep well last night. It could have been the constant drone of the mosquito horde outside my tent, the intermittent smell of smoke, or the unconscious worry about the proximity of wildfires. Either way, the result was the same.
I did everything I could packing up in the morning inside my tent. I made the mistake last night of using the bathroom before bed and breaching the tent door for a couple seconds upon exit and entry, and that resulted in 50 mosquitoes entering that I had to kill one by one. There were even some greedy ones that sucked so much blood they couldn’t fly. Next time I will just use the lazy guy trick.
When Honeybun was at about the same point in packing up, I rushed out of my tent, and another 50 mosquitoes went right in, I wrapped up the tent with them inside since why not?
We hurriedly left camp and headed down the mountain. Moving it is generally ok, but we definitely used our headnets and spray. We crossed a couple more snowfields which didn’t keep them at bay before we descended more out of the snow and they gradually disappeared.
We learned that the PCTA had just closed the section of trail we finished at around the same time, due to the proximity of the fire I reported and several others. There were two other closures behind us due to new fires, along the Crater Lake rim and Mount Thielsen that we were ahead of by a day. We got through all of these sections of trail just on time, and just ahead of the fires. It was probably the difference of us deciding to do the afternoon Crater Lake traverse on a whim that saved us. Hikers a couple hours behind us were diverted off trail yesterday by rangers. We were among the last through.
However, the good news was we were on the northern edge of where the storm passed through, and there were no more fires north that were caused by that storm at least. Many due to other reasons, though it didn’t look like any of them would presently affect our route.
The hikers kept pouring in, hitching in from down the trail as they got to the fire closures. We had broken out ahead of the first hiker bubble, but it apparently caught back up to us as hikers were forced to skip ahead. It is slightly frustrating that we did all the work and distance on the trail to get out ahead of the hiker rush, to have it skip up to catch us, but it is part of the trail and closures that happen every year on the PCT.
We grabbed lunch and a beer and finished recharging before we headed on down the trail. We passed a couple big lakes, and are beginning to see the stereotype of the multitude of lakes in Oregon.
We ended up camping next to Bobby Lake with many other hikers. Lots of flat area next to the lake, and the water was relatively warm allowing for a swim and the first scrub down in a week or so. Definitely refreshing, though back into the same dirty clothes I’ve been wearing.
Today was another day of dynamic changes on the trail. It is always difficult to adjust, but all you can do is accept the differences and continue hiking. At least nothing is stopping our route presently.
