Day 51 : Diamond Lake

Start – Diamond Lake (1580 m)
Finish – Thielsen Creek Meadows (2115 m)
Daily Distance – ~9 km
Ascent – ~550 m
Descent – ? m

It has rather crept up on me, as if the realisation had been hiding behind the sofa awaiting the perfect opportunity to shout “boo”, that my adventure in Oregon is almost complete. Crater lake is only days away, and while not the official end of the trail in Oregon, the word is that the route from there to the border really isn’t anything special. So it would make a fitting end point. After all, it’s not every day that one has the opportunity to swim in the deepest lake in the USA, which also happens to be the caldera of an extinct volcano.

Honestly, the last few chaotic days and unplanned skip forward on the trail have left me rather unprepared with regards what to do if I don’t hike every day. My flight home isn’t until the 19th Sept, so even with travel time to San Francisco, I have plenty of time for further walking or road/rail tripping.

The current, rather vague plan is to summit Mt Thielsen tomorrow, which is adjacent to the PCT and ‘has character’, if you like craggy looking mountains, and then walk onwards towards Crater lake. The day after will be a full day of hiking along the caldera rim to Mazama village, where I plan to pause for a few days and come up with a more definite plan. I would like to do a boat tour and swim before leaving, but otherwise don’t have any concrete plans.

After the chaos of yesterday, today has seen some much needed relaxation. A slow start saw Deets, Two Phone, Deschautes and I drinking coffee with Elaine, who allowed us to camp next to her RV last night, and cuddling her dog Walker. Two Phones started hiking while the rest of us retired to the lake resort for 2nd breakfast. After several trips to the breakfast buffet, or a breakfast burrito in my case, we pootled up a trail to rejoin the PCT route, before finding a wonderful camp spot underneath Mt Thielsen and taking an early finish. To better enjoy the views and also to fit in one occurrence this trip, tonight I will sleep under the stars without a tent (cowboy camping). It always surprises me the warm microclimate created by a tent, so in anticipation of cold temperatures overnight I am wearing almost all of my clothing for bed tonight. As I write this, it is almost 20:30, already mostly dark, and my fingers are beginning to chill.

While loitering by Thielsen creek earlier, we were reunited with Nate (now sporting a moustache worthy of the sheriff of an ol’ west frontier town) and Birdy, who had walked the smoky route from Shelter Cove. Happily, the wind direction broadly held, so in the event they didn’t encounter any smoke, which was too bad. The rest of us have no regrets though. Yesterday was a fun, unexpected day, and we have no idea the long-term impact, if any, of constantly inhaling smoke for several days. It was good to see them, even if schedules/stubbornness to walk as much of the trail as possible before having to skip forward to beat the winter snow, dictate that they had to push on.

It is now becoming too cold to type. Another late night of 20:30 beckons. It is peaceful here though. Only the soft racing of the creek below and the chirping of the cicadas are to hear. Hopefully, I will adjust to sleeping inside again. In a truly 1st world problem, the fridge in my motel room at Bend was too loud and kept me awake.