Day 123 – 126

Day 123-126: August 3rd – 6th
Mile 1762.8 to Mile 1829.3 (Mazama Village)

Technical difficulties that have prevented blog updating for the past few days. I ordered a new Suntastics battery for my iPhone thinking it would work well with the excellent Suntastics solar charger, but it was defective so I was not able to keep the iphone charged enough for blogging. Here is a a multi-day post to catch up.

Recently I have been hiking around the same 30 or so hikers. I usually only see 10 or 12 of them each day because we are all moving at more or less the same pace and are spread out along the trail. The fires around Etna have changed this some as hikers have had to skip closed sections of the Pacific Crest Trail and are now suddenly further along the trail than they normally would be. So, I have been meeting some new folks.

We also have encountered more Oregon section hikers than I was expecting and most of them started at the Oregon border or Ashland — probably a dozen so far. Many have been inspired to hike the Oregon PCT by Bob Welch’s book Cascade Summer.

On August 4th I passed by Highway 140 near Fish Lake and a sign there declared the PCT closed due to a fire ahead. After a phone call to the ranger station we found out the PCT was not closed so we continued on.

Heavy rain from a thunderstorm pelted my new one person tent during the night. The tent performed well and kept me dry.

I reached Mazama Village on August 6th where Deb was waiting with my resupply. She had traveled from Ashland to San Diego and back to Crater Lake in only four days. Wow.