Oregon! It's on fire.

I made it to Oregon! In fact, I am currently at Crater Lake National Park at mile 1818. It feels good to be in my second state even though it is shaping up to be a logistical nightmare. At the moment there are four forest fires that are impacting the PCT in Oregon. Two of them have closed the PCT around Crater Lake. My method to get around this closure was to hike out to a trailhead at mile 1801. From there it looked like I was going to have to do an annoying road walk following a dubiously drawn map but roughly 2 miles into that road walk I found someone who was willing to give me a ride into the park!

Once in the park, I will be walking the West Rim trail instead of the PCT and exiting the park via another road walk. The main thing with all of this is the rim trail opened a few days ago, which is awesome. It is supposed to be the high point of Oregon and I had been really bummed when it looked like it was going to be closed. Hopefully it lives up to my expectations.

The other fires are further north. There is a fire closing miles 1950-1980 on the PCT and another one closing miles 2008-2036. I think my strategy for these is going to do a single jump to avoid both of them. It seems like too much logistical work to hitch back onto trail for a single day just to get the 28 open miles in between the fires. It is a bit of a bummer to be skipping around 100 miles but I'm certainly not doing an enormous road walk so there isn't much I can do about it. The last fire affecting the trail is near Cascade Locks (northern border of Oregon). It has closed a side trail that is supposedly really cool but the PCT itself is still open.

Besides all the fires Oregon has started fairly pleasantly. The trail is pretty easy so doing quite a few miles just sort of happens. The views are a little less impressive than the stunning ones of California but I can appreciate the beauty of being among the trees again. In a little more than a week I will probably be in Washington so I am trying to enjoy Oregon while I am here.

Here are the kind of directions I have to follow when doing some of the fire reroutes...