Rachel's Trip #4

Aug. 12 & 13, 2009 So we woke up about 6:30 to eat and finish some last minute packing and took off about 7:30. We hit the trail for Crater lake about 8:00. It was another perfect day to be outside. We also heard that there was going to be a meteor shower that night so we were excited to be up at this lake w/no city lights. So we hiked, and hiked, and hiked up hill some more and then we’d stop to catch our breath and hike up hill some more. Dad & David were in the lead at one point and David stopped short and say’s ‘Dad, there’s a bear’ and then David points in a different direction and say’s ‘I see it’. There were two adult black bears and a cub, one of them right on our trail. Unfortunately we scared them so Jess was not able to get a picture but Caleb got a video of the mom & baby so that was really exciting. I’ve never seen a bear while hiking before so that was a first for me. So then back on the trail we went and hiked, and hiked, and hiked some more. At one point it just seemed like we should have reached the lake by then and we started to question whether we somehow got on the wrong trail, but a ½ mile later we found a sign that confirmed that we were still on the right trail. We saw some really cool falls and would use Chad’s purifier to refill our water bottles every couple of streams. Miles later we finally reached the lake and it was truly beautiful, 6 hard hiking hours & 8.1 miles beautiful?....the jury is still out on that, but it really was pretty w/huge peaks surrounding it. We then hiked around the right side of the lake until we found a nice campsite by the lake. Across the lake from us to our right was a tall water fall that we could hear. It kind of sounded like the noise you hear when the wind blows through the pine trees but it was constant. As far as we could see it looks like there was only one other couple camping and they were at the beginning of the lake. Once we set up camp Jessica took her shoes off to find her socks all bloody. She had blisters from the hike. Poor girl, she never even said her feet were hurting!!! She brought along some flip flops so she put those on and they all began fishing right away. The fish were biting well so we had 8 fresh trout for dinner and also some hot dogs. The fish was delicious! We all were so tired but we really wanted to watch the meteor shower so we decided to try to go to sleep at about 9:00 and set Caleb’s alarm on his phone for 12:30. I don’t know if we ever got to sleep in our tent. David & I had Logan and Luke w/us and they were cold and we were cold. Our sleeping bags are not rated for anything under 50 degrees and I think it was probably in the high 40s. It was cold. We got up to watch the meteor shower and David built the fire back up and we laid by it and watched. It was really pretty but I was so tired and it was the warmest I’d been since I went to bed earlier that night so I kept falling asleep. We were worried about our sleeping bags being so close to the fire so we went back into our tents after about an hour and tried to get some sleep. I stress the word tried. I think I did fall asleep right when it was getting light out but then woke up for good about 7:00 and started a fire. Caleb was up fishing already. He too had a cold night. We made some hot chocolate and oatmeal and that hit the spot. Later on when everyone else woke up we had bacon and eggs. All morning we had a doe hanging around our campsite. She was pretty little thing and wasn’t afraid of us at all. After breakfast we all headed farther around the lake and up very high to the waterfall we could see and hear from our campsite. It was a pretty far hike to get up to it and we found more snow up there. The older kids and David hiked way up the falls. I was a nervous wreck making sure Luke didn’t fall. He’s in his clumsy stage so what do we do, we hike way up on a bunch of loose boulders. Yikes! We all made it back down to our campsite and had some lunch while our doe continued to graze around us. Some of the kids went fishing at that point and the rest took a nap in the sun. We woke up about 1:10 and decided to break camp. We had our packs on and ready to head back down by 2:00 and hoped that we could make it back down by 4:30. We kept a very good pace and only had one stop to refill water and it still took us almost 4 hours of fast hiking. We did see a cow moose w/her calf on the way down at about the same place we saw the bears on the way up. It was so nice to climb into our van and head back to the condo. The kids were troopers!!! I watched them help each other and myself out so many times. I was really proud of them. We got home and cooked some pork chops for supper and then headed to the much needed hot tub. Tomorrow is our last full day here and we have no hikes planned at this point. I think we will do some laundry and just take it easy...at least that’s the plan right now.