PCT Section 2: Fish Lake Resort To Crater Lake
Fish Lake is where I took my first zero day on trail, a day where you don’t hike any miles on the PCT. This was great to rest, eat lots of good food, and do my laundry in a sink (what would become a common occurrence on the trail for me). After the zero at Fish Lake Resort, I hiked out into the Sky Lakes Wilderness with Topper and Pablo! Our first day was a cloudy and rainy day, with hardly any breaks in the cloud cover all day.
Topper looking thrilled in the rain.
I was excited to finally get some of the moody and rainy weather conditions I had heard all about in Oregon, but this day I struggled photographically! One thing I found on trail was that a lot of times the rain and fog happens when you’re at higher elevation, and the trees aren’t as impressive up there. That was certainly the case on this day, and I didn’t get a shot that I really loved until we were at camp for the night, when I noticed this single drop of water hanging from a branch.
We also started encountering some of the famous Oregon mosquitoes in this section! They never got too terrible in the Sky Lakes Wilderness, but I did have to pull my headnet out a few times. The second day of this stretch was pretty scenic, in the afternoon we got up to higher elevations and had some really nice views of the whole area!
Mount McLoughlin poking through the clouds.
This day was also when I hit the 100 mile mark of my hike! This was a pretty big accomplishment for me, and I was really happy that my knee injury hadn’t prevented me from making it this far. On the second night we camped at this small pond, which had beautiful reflections even as the clouds descended!
Day 3 started out beautifully, with some awesome low hanging clouds all around us that made for great pictures! We kept climbing and had great views of the Sky Lakes Wilderness in all directions. As we approached Devil’s Peak, we ran into a number of snowfields lingering on the trail. On the north side of Devil’s Peak the trail was completely snow covered, so we decided to do a 300 foot glissade down (glissading is a fancy word for sliding on your butt)!
Crossing snowfields
The afternoon of the third day was a little less exciting as we entered a large burn area. This would become a common occurrence on trail, but it was still hard to see the destruction of what had once been a beautiful forest. I felt a sense of mourning for the land and trees.
At camp on our third night, we didn’t really have any good water because the stretch leading into Crater Lake National Park is very dry. Thankfully Topper and Pablo both had a lot of experience in the backcountry, and we were able to collect melting water off of a snowfield near our camp using a trowel to funnel the water into a steady trickle! It required multiple filters to clear out all of the sediment still, we used a pack towel to get the big pieces of sediment out, then ran it through a normal water filter to get good clean water. This was a good lesson for me in water management, that snow can be a good source of water depending on your situation.
The morning of the fourth day was beautiful, with some really cool clouds and dappled light happening in the valley that I was hiking up towards Crater Lake. This day I mainly hiked by myself, and I kept stopping to take pictures of everything happening around me! The views of Union Peak were also impressive on this day. I had never heard of it before, but it’s a prominent feature in the landscape south of Crater Lake. By the afternoon we made it to the road crossing leading to Mazama Village, which would be our resupply stop after this stretch of trail. We ended up getting a hitch into the village that saved us having to walk an extra mile on the road, which was a great way to finish off this section!
Union Peak in Crater Lake National Park