Mon. June 20    Miles today: 11.8 PCT miles, plus maybe 6 or so “being lost”     Total miles: 663.3

We had a very comfortable night on our bunks in the “real pioneer cabin” at Crater Lake Resort.  Needless to say, we were up early and tiptoed out past all the canoes and swings.  (Did I mention that they have AWESOME swings here–the kind that are hung from WAY up high in the tree, and when you swing on them you can go so high it’s almost like flying!) 

 We walked the couple of miles back to Fort Klamath, and when we came into the General Store, owner Mark greeted us with a big smile and said, “If you don’t mind a few minutes wait, I’m just making donuts.”  He actually makes his own, from scratch!  I said, “Yes, donuts–and how about coffee and a couple of breakfast sandwiches, too?”  So we ended up with a fantastic fresh-cooked breakfast.  Mark sure can cook!

After that I “went shopping” in the Store, trying to put together enough food for FIVE days, in case we end up thrashing through snow again.  The only bummer was that the litle store was totally out of fresh fruit and veges except for a couple of tomatoes.  So far, what I’ve seen on the PCT is that little resort stores generally are “out of” anything perishable.  Well, I took the couple of tomatoes and a bunch of other stuff, and when I was all done and paid up, Mark offered us a ride partway to the PCT, up to where the trailhead road was closed.  Since the trip would involve going “backwards” in relation to all the walking we did to get to Fort Klamath, we considered that would not be “cheating”, and we could really say we DID walk all the way to Canada, though not always on the PCT.  

While driving us up the mountain, Mark told us a few stories about himself.  What a guy–a real outoorsman with lots of patience, common sense and good humor.  He told us about hunting elk: “You know on Star Trek, those Romulan cloaking devices?  Well, elk all have them.  They can appear and disappear right in front of your eyes.  I hunt ’em every year, but I don’t always get one.”  And then he told us about when he was in 5th grade and his school science class was on on beavers.  He’d been trapping beaver by himself already, but “in the interests of science” he decided on a daring scheme.  He went to the beaver pond, took off his clothes, swam out to the big beaver lodge, took a big breath and dived.  Underwater, he found the entrance to the lodge and swam in!  He popped up inside it, and there was the whole beaver family!  They were totally shocked–began gnashing their teeth and slapping their tails at him– but he calmly looked around to check it all out for his “beaver report” (he said it smelled GROSS in there!), then squiggled out and swam ashore.  I hope the teacher gave him an “A”!

At the Road Closed sign, Mark helped us unload our stuff from the car, and I noticed he had some interesting bumper stickers.  One said, “Sure, you can have my gun–bullets first”  and the other said “Vegetarian is an old Indian word for Bad Hunter”.  Mark asked Bill if we were carrying a gun with us, and when we told him no, he was very concerned.  “You folks outta to be packin’ heat,” he said.  “It’s the TWO-legged predators that are the worst in the woods.  You be real careful.” 

Mark took off, and we hiked up to the Seven Mile Trail, headed for the PCT.  It was nice easy going for awhile, then there were snow patches on the trail, then more and more of them, but we were still able to follow the trail, and we got back to the PCT!  Hooray!  When we stopped to eat lunch, along came a young thru-hiker guy named Tinker.  He came just as we were munching on the two tomatoes, and said, “Hey, that’s not thru-hiker food!   What are you guys doing?”  “Oh, we just got back on the trail from being down in Fort Klamath” we replied as we munched on our juicy red lunch treats!    Tinker headed on, and a little while later, we followed. 

 But less than half an hour later, we had totally lost the PCT in the snow.  No matter how hard we looked for cut logs, snipped branches, etc., we just could not find it.  It was, “Oh no, here we go again–but at least, no worries in the food department this time!”  Looking at our maps, we decided that the best course was to just follow our compass and we would eventually hit an area known as “the Oregon Desert”.  It was big and flat and we figured we’d recognize it when we saw it.  From there, we could locate the PCT.  Well, it took us 3 hours of bushwhacking and postholing through snow before we finally found the “Desert”, and hooray, it had no snow!  We took a rest break there, very, very tired out, before using the compass to walk due west till we hit the PCT again.  Whew!  What was  really frustrating about trying to follow the PCT-in-snow here in Oregon is that you are in forest all the time, completely surrounded by tall trees, with no way to spot landmarks.  And in many places, there are no blazes on the trees to mark trail.

Once the PCT was out of the Oregon Desert, it was back into snow, but this time, we managed to follow it all right, till it reached a junction.  Some helpful person (we found out later that it was Tinker) had made a PCT sign with an arrow, using sticks laid on top of the snow.  Out came the maps again.  Both trails at this point were loaded with snow, but the non-PCT trail went to a lower elevation with pretty waterfalls, so we decided to go that way since it re-connected with the PCT up ahead.  Also, since we were low on water, the words “creek” and “waterfalls” sounded very appealing!  Off we went, but even that trail stayed buried in snow for over an hour.  What a relief when we were finally back on DIRT!  And the creeks were great.  We filled our water bottles and drank and drank. Oregon water tastes so good! 

The only problem is that water in Oregon means mosquitoes, and yes, they were pretty bad.  We had to put on our headnets to hike in peace.  Finally we could hear the roar of Stuart Falls, and there it was, just gorgeous, and with a nice camping area close by, and some snow patches, and CLOUDS of mosquitoes.  But the falls were truly beautiful, and we rigged the net tent so that we could sleep in peace.  I love the sound of waterfalls, and it made a great lullaby for we two REALLY tired hikers!