The first week on the PCT in Oregon wasn’t the most memorable part of the walk. The trail meandered through forests without much ascent or descent and without many views. This was multiple-use forest and there was much clear-cutting which gave an unnatural patchwork look to the forest with contrasting squares of regenerating forest, cleared forest and mature forest. On the first day from Grouse Gap the dramatic volcanic rock tower called Pilot Knob dominated the landscape. Further away I could see Mount Shasta dipping in and out of drifting clouds and again there were glimpses of Mount McLoughlin. This was my first full day with the new pack and after 20 miles I decided I liked it though the rattle of the split-rings that attached the pack to the frame was a little irritating.
There was much wildlife in the forest though – deer, squirrels, kestrels, grouse, ravens, hawks, humming birds – and where untouched the trees were marvellous. I identified two more – grand fir and noble fir – and reckoned the tiny booklet called Pacific Coast Tree Finder one of my best purchases. Twenty-eight years later I was to take the exact same booklet on the Pacific Northwest Trail and find it just as useful. From it I’d already identified nine pines, six firs, four cedars, two spruces, two hemlocks and Douglas fir, which isn’t actually a true fir at all. The richness of the forest continued to astound me.
Dotted through the forest in Southern Oregon are many large lakes, some with an attendant fishing resort prepared to hold parcels and mail for PCT hikers. Two days into Oregon I reached the first of these, Hyatt Lake Resort. There was a good café but the store was the poorest I’d yet seen for hiking food. With anglers as its main market all it sold was beer, soft drinks, crisps and candy bars. I had evening meals in my supply box but not much else so for breakfasts and day snacks I bought fifteen candy bars, which I reckoned should get me to the next resort in a couple of days and, hopefully, a better store for hikers. I did eat dinner and breakfast in the Hyatt Lake café, which saved me some food for later on.
Lake of the Woods Resort, reached two days later, did have a slightly better store, in that it had cheese, sugar and trail mix as well as candy bars, plus a good café where I had a lunch that was far better than a handful of those bars. On my shopping list I ticked off three items out of ten. At Hyatt Lake I’d ticked just one.
That evening it rained slightly for the first time in a few weeks and there was a cool breeze off Fourmile Lake by which I was camped. I noticed that it was already dark at 9 p.m. It was closer now to the autumn equinox than the summer solstice.
North of Fourmile Lake (actually a reservoir) the country was wilder and unspoilt. It’s now protected in the Sky Lakes Wilderness. The PCT ran right through this wilderness-to-be but didn’t visit any of the lakes. I soon passed Mount McLoughlin as the landscape grew more mountainous. The dominant peak was still Mount Shasta though, now far away to the south. Ahead I could see the jagged peaks around Crater Lake and beyond them the spire of Mount Thielsen. In places there were still a few snow patches to cross. I had one camp in the future Sky Lakes Wilderness beside Honeymoon Creek. In the evening rain began to fall and I could hear long slow rolls of thunder in the distance. Suddenly the storm reached me and from all around came echoing, rolling thunder and flashes of lightning. I was glad to be in the woods and not on an exposed site on a mountainside. The storm passed on as quickly as it arrived leaving a clear starry sky though I heard distant rumbles of thunder for hours afterwards.
A mostly viewless day in thick mountain hemlock forest led to roadside Mazama Campground and Crater Lake National Park, the only national park in Oregon. Just once, on a traverse called Watershed Divide, was there a view of the rock fang called Union Peak and the peaks ringing the south end of Crater Lake. I needed a permit to hike and camp in the backcountry in the park but these were self-issuing and there was a box of them where the PCT entered the park (today all thru-hikers need to do is sign the register at the same spot).
Mazama Campground offered an outdoor slide lecture on the Cascade volcanoes which I found useful and informative. A knowledge of geology always adds to the appreciation of a landscape and this volcanic area was one I didn’t know much about. Wanting to learn more the next day I bought a copy of Stephen Harris’s Fire and Ice: The Story of the Cascade Volcanoes (the updated current version is called Fire Mountains of the West). From this excellent book, which I carried for the rest of the walk, I learnt that Crater Lake is not really in a crater but in a caldera, which is the hole left when a volcano blows its top and then collapses in on itself.
At the time of my walk the PCT didn’t actually visit Crater Lake itself but stayed in the forest out of sight of the lake. I couldn’t imagine though that any hikers didn’t walk the short distance to the lake. It’s the most impressive sight on the PCT in Southern Oregon. Today the PCT has been divided into two here – equestrians are still directed down the old forested trail, hikers up to Crater Lake.
At the Crater Lake post office I collected a big food box – it was around nine days to the next supply point – and then topped up my supplies at the grocery store, which was far better than those at the fishing resorts. I noticed that my estimated date of collection was July 28th. Today was August 10th. The High Sierra was the reason of course. At Weldon I’d been two days behind schedule. By Echo Lakes this had risen to twelve days. I hadn’t yet made up any time. In the PCT Register there were no entries from Larry or Susie and both had mail waiting for them here. I couldn’t imagine Larry was behind me but did wonder if he’d stuck to the PCT and not come here.
Supplies sorted I walked on to magnificent Crater Lake, one of the great sights of the PCT. Despite having seen many pictures it was still breath-taking. With a depth of 1,932 feet it’s the deepest lake in the USA and the seventh deepest in the world. The basin it lies in is nearly 4,000 feet deep and the lake is five to six miles across. In geological terms it’s a very new lake, formed around 7,000 years ago when a 12,000 foot volcano, now named Mazama, erupted and disintegrated leaving behind a caldera that slowly filled with rain and snow to become Crater Lake. When Mazama erupted an estimated 12 cubic miles of volcanic material was blasted into the sky, traces of which have been found as far afield as British Columbia and Alberta, far to the north in Canada. The water in Crater Lake is very pure as there are few sediments and very little surface water runs into it. None runs out. This purity accounts for the brilliant ultramarine colour that greets you as you reach the rim and gaze 900 feet down to this fairy tale lake. Rarely have I been so moved on seeing a view as on first seeing Crater Lake and I spent hours walking along the rim and staring across it, fascinated by the circular shape, the deep blue colour, the volcanic cone of Wizard Island rising out of the water, and the coloured rock strata of the unbroken cliffs stretching in a great curve round it.
At Crater Lake I also had my first sighting of a bald eagle, one of the birds I most wanted to see on the walk. These magnificent white-headed eagles were once endangered but have made a good recovery due to conservation measures. PCT hikers today are far more likely to see bald eagles than in 1982. Slightly smaller than the golden eagle, which I was familiar with from the Scottish Highlands, bald eagles are fish eaters that frequent large bodies of water. Whilst I saw other large raptors that may have been bald or golden eagles they were usually too far away for certain identification. It was not until I reached Lake Chelan near the end of the walk that I was to see another bald eagle. I love seeing eagles, both because they are impressive in themselves but also because they signify wilderness. I did have a tiny pair of 8x20 binoculars with me that helped with bird and animal watching and identification and I watched the bald eagle soaring over Crater Lake through these.
Unsurprisingly Crater Lake is popular and this being the height of the summer season there were many other people around. Access is easy too as a road runs right round the rim. Eventually I tore myself away from the lake and dropped back down into the forest to camp. I don’t know if this was legal or not. Today wild camping is allowed in the park’s ba
ckcountry as long as you’re a mile from a road – the PCTA publishes a map showing the areas this includes. That night it rained heavily and I woke to thick clouds and a cold, wet wind. Unable to resist another look I returned to Crater Lake the next day. With sunshine gone the scene was very different. Grey threads of cloud raced over the rough dull water and round the tops of the volcanic cones of the islands, mist wreaths that gave an other-worldly air to the scene.
I couldn’t stay long though as the next water lay 25 miles away across the strange Oregon Desert. This is a flat area of sand made of pumice and ash from the Mazama eruption through which all water drains and which is dotted with widely spaced, stunted lodgepole pines whose roots just stretch down far enough to reach the streams that run underground below the pumice. I was hoping there might be some snow patches left but I couldn’t rely on this. Ironically, it was raining heavily when I left Crater Lake for this long waterless section.
The walking was easy though and the 25 miles were soon done. Sometimes I forgot just how fit I now was. The trail took me over the Oregon Desert then around Mount Thielsen, a 9178 foot high volcanic remnant that forms a splendid jagged spire of twisted yellow and red rock strata. Being the central plug of a volcano, the rest of the mountain having been eroded away, Mount Thielsen is the geological opposite of Crater Lake and also the visual opposite – a soaring rock pinnacle rather than water-filled deep hole. Volcanoes like this in the Cascades are known as Matterhorn Peaks because of their steep pointed shape. I had a superb view of this fine peak from my camp beside Mount Thielsen Creek on a well-used site. Mount Thielsen looked particularly impressive at dawn when the rock shone in the rising sun. In my journal I wrote ‘best camp site and view I’ve had since the Marble Mountains’. The night was frosty for the first time in weeks and in the morning the snow patches on the trail were rock hard and there was ice on puddles. Not long after leaving I met a party of twelve heavily laden boy scouts toiling up to the Mount Thielsen Creek camp site. I was glad they hadn’t arrived the night before. It wasn’t a large site and I’d enjoyed the quiet and the solitude.
Later in the day I met a PCT hiker heading south. He was just doing the Oregon section of the trail. ‘The mosquitoes have been terrible’ he warned me and sure enough they promptly increased in number as I headed for the interestingly named Nip and Tuck Lakes where I camped. These forest lakes lay on the old Oregon Skyline Trail, which ran end-to-end through the State. It was built in the 1930s but was superseded by the PCT which often takes a different route. I planned on following the old trail here though because it had water sources, unlike the PCT, and was nine miles shorter. An extra nine miles of forest walking didn’t seem to have any advantages. During the day I crossed into the Williamette National Forest. On the boundary there was a PCT sign reading 195 miles to California and 219 to Washington. I was almost halfway through Oregon.
A long hot forested mosquito-ridden walk led to Cascade Summit on Odell Lake, my next supply point (nearby Shelter Cove Resort is used by today’s hikers). I barely stopped all day due to the bugs and arrived sweaty, thirsty and tired. The post office was a cupboard in the small store and only open in the summer for PCT hikers and long-stay visitors. In the register I discovered that Larry was five days ahead of me and Scott and Dave nine. The store had the best selection of trail food and hiking accessories I’d seen in anywhere this small so I was able to supplement my dried meals with some good trail mix and granola bars and buy stove fuel, candles, insect repellent and a pot scrub. Just garlic powder, packet soup and socks remained on my shopping list. There was also a café so I’d no need to eat dried food here. Camping and showers were free for PCT hikers too, a very welcome touch. In fact Cascade Summit was a great spot. I was joined here by a southbound hiker called Mark who was just doing the Oregon and Washington PCT (I say ‘just’, it’s a thousand miles!) so I had company in camp for the first time in a couple of weeks.
Mid-August turned out to be Boy Scout season in Oregon as I encountered literally hundreds of them during the next few days including a mass camp at Middle Rosary Lake that filled the woods for hundreds of yards. I passed this by, as I did Wait Here Lake, after hesitating a little, tempted by the name, and finally camped by Bobby Lake. I was still in fairly flat forest but was approaching the Three Sisters Wilderness, the first of a series of wilderness areas the PCT runs through in the northern half of Oregon.
I still had a mostly viewless day in the pond-dotted forest though, but there was one brilliant experience that made the day stand out. Hurrying along towards the peaks that I occasionally glimpsed tantalisingly through the trees, I caught a movement in a small, shallow, lily-dotted pond beside the trail. I stopped and looked and soon saw an otter and three cubs in the water. Slowly and quietly I took off my pack and sat down on it. I then spent half an hour watching the otters swimming and diving in the clear water. They glanced at me occasionally but seemed curious and wary rather than afraid. Often they dived closely in a group, arching their backs together in the air. When they came nearer – just a few feet away - I could see them swimming underwater. They made loud hissing noises and occasionally high-pitched squeaks as they swam. Once, they came out of the water to lie draped over a small rock in the middle of the pond and as I was leaving they all climbed onto a log. Watching the otters was a wonderful experience that took me completely out of myself. It was one of the wildlife highlights of the walk. The following day I saw two more of these beautiful creatures swimming together in Island Lake.
The Three Sisters Wilderness is unusual because here a whole collection of volcanoes are grouped together whereas elsewhere in Oregon they are well spread out with often dozens of miles between them. It’s a popular backpacking area and as I reached it I began to meet other hikers, fourteen in total that first day. Three of these had seen Larry who’d gained another day on me and Scott and Dave who were a day ahead of Larry. Maybe, I thought, I might catch up with Scott and Dave.
Finally leaving the confines of the forest the trail climbed up and around Koosah Mountain from where I could see Diamond Peak not far away and, looking back, the already distant spire of Mount Thielsen. Then came a really special view of glorious rocky mountains – symmetrical Bachelor Butte, ragged Broken Top and red rock capped South Sister with beyond it Middle Sister and North Sister. I wanted to camp with a view of these mountains but the shores of Camelot Lake were already lined with the tents of others with the same intention so I went on to slightly less crowded though still scenic Sisters Mirror Lake. Here I had a surprise. I heard someone approaching and looked up to see Wayne Fuiten, whom I hadn’t seen since Weldon, three months ago. Wayne wasn’t surprised to see me though as he’d been following my entries in the trail registers since Crater Lake. His walk had been a complicated one. He’d taken two weeks off to allow some of the snow to melt and had then walked south from Northern California to Weldon before hitch-hiking north again and continuing towards Canada. I was now to see him most days during my remaining time in Oregon though as before his regulated walking style and my haphazard one didn’t gel so we didn’t walk together often. We tended to use the same camp sites however as these were far and few between. That first evening we spent hours talking about our adventures and the places we’d seen.
I woke to a mist on the lake and dew on the grass. Gray jays were flitting round the camp. It was the start of one of the most memorable days of the walk. In my journal that evening I wrote ‘A superb day! One of the best! Glorious mountain country and fantastic volcanic features. Hiked through meadows, forests and parkland past the Three Sisters; South Sister large rounded and complex, Middle Sister a pure cone and North Sister a jagged rock remnant. Plus glaciers on all of them. And then lava flows, curling rivers of frozen basalt and huge mounds of pyroclastic cinders and a switch-backing path up the flow into the breached wall of Collier Cone’. Ahead further volcanic peaks soared above the dark forest. In a line fading away to the north were Mount Washington, Three-Fingered Jacket, Mount Jefferson
and, barely visible, Mount Hood, beyond which lay the Columbia River and Washington State. As well as the big mountains – the Three Sisters are all over 10,000 feet high – I really liked the sparse almost parkland like tree-scattered volcanic uplands such as Wickiup Plain and the minor volcanic peaks – Broken Top, The Wife, The Husband and Little Brother. In fact there was nothing about this landscape that displeased me. It was all a delight. On the trails I’d seen more hikers than on just about any other day of the walk and that night I camped by another scenic lake, South Mathieu, along with Wayne and a few other people.
This was the start of a succession of fine landscapes that stretched all the way to Canada. Although there would still be days deep in the trees and areas of logged, despoiled forest to cross these would be mere brief interruptions between wilderness areas. Since Echo Lake the PCT had been more low-key and gentle, with rather too many roads and logged areas in the quiet forests. That 850 mile section through Northern California and Southern Oregon, which had taken me 53 days, is the part of the PCT I’d suggest skipping for any hiker without time to do the whole trail. There were high points, especially the Marble Mountains and Crater Lake, but overall the wilderness feel, the beauty of the landscape, and the sense of adventure didn’t compare with the areas to the north and south. I didn’t realise this that first day in the Three Sisters Wilderness of course. I was just pleased to be in such grand country. It was only as the weeks went by that I realised the walk had changed and that the wilder and more exciting mountains were back to being the norm rather the exception.
Rattlesnakes and Bald Eagles Page 12