At Fish Lake, mile 1770

I dragged myself out of the (very comfy) motel bed, far too soon. But I had to finish sorting and loading, plus I had a breakfast to eat! Around ten, I turned in my key, and sat down to a lingering French toast breakfast. I like this “spoiling myself” deal!

Ginger and her husband Bill showed up at noon, with their behemoth truck (yes, I have truck envy). They took a day off from their family reunion, just to schlep me around the fires. They totally rock! We spent a couple of hours driving east and south around Crater Lake. The smoke was pretty obvious, and I was glad to not be breathing it!

It was really weird, skipping over an entire section. In this case, it’s 75 trail miles. I was mighty disappointed to miss Crater Lake, although from the pictures there wasn’t much to see (nor much to breathe). Hopefully next year.

Once we got to Fish Lake, I claimed my resupply box, plus ice cream all around. Yum! And then we opened up the box, plus my Diamond Lake resupply, on the tailgate of the truck.

At Ginger’s request, I walked through my resupply process. Basically, food is divided into four types: breakfast, dinner, midday, and beverages. I plan for n anticipated days, based on terrain, mileage, and current hiking speed. Then I add ½ day, just in case. I then put n breakfasts into the breakfast bag, n dinners into the dinner bag, and n+1 sets of midday snacks into their own bag. For midday, I’ll have a protein bar, a meal bar (I like ProBar), banana chips, Snickers and/or peanut M&Ms, and maybe something else. For my beverages, I have a Starbucks Via, plus a variety of electrolyte drinks.

Because I wasn’t doing Section C, I had a full resupply box that needed a new home. Ginger was heading out to do a six day section, the following week, so this was perfect. She cherrypicked, and then we took the leftovers to the hiker box inside. A hiker box is a place for hikers to leave extras. It could be extra food, like I was doing, or maps for somebody heading in the opposite direction, or a bottle of bug repellent, etc. I put my stuff in there, including a few items from PackIt Gourmet (a backpacking food company with really tasty, non-chemically food). The vultures descended, and I had a satisfied grin.

Ginger and Bill had to head back to the reunion, so we hugged goodbye. What a blessing, to have good, selfless friends.

Fish Lake is a much smaller, more hiker friendly resort than Diamond Lake. They have a small restaurant, with a limited but excellent menu. There are lots of tables and other places for hikers to hang out, sort boxes, etc. And there’s a PCT hiker area, maybe a tenth of a mile around the lake. I had a big cheeseburger for dinner, and talked with Steve for awhile. Then I got my pack situated, loaded up with five liters of water, for tonight and tomorrow, and headed to the campsite.

The only other hiker in the site was a guy named Randy, of about my age, from my neck of the woods. He had been hiking with his wife, but she had to get off the trail with severe foot pain. He was continuing on. We talked for awhile, while setting up camp, and I hit the rack early. Tomorrow, Section B.