Fun weekend

This last weekend Molly, Josh Y and Linze and I went out to Crater Lake for some camping and to see the meteor shower.

We drove down early on Friday morning and missed most of the traffic down (it is nearly a 5 hour drive from Portland) so that was good. When we finally arrived, the smoke from the California forest fires was so thick you could barely see the lake. I feel bad for those people who would only see the lake like this, and not see the amazing blue color that the lake normally has.

Friday we went on a nice hike up Garfield Peak which affords (normally) a beautiful view of the lake from the top. The peak is 8054 ft above sea level. The air was thin enough that we had kind of a difficult time breathing. We made it to the top and it was almost clear enough by then to get a decent (but not great) view of the lake. Friday early-evening we walked up The Watchmen which is a peak at around 8013 ft and watched the sunset. It was BALLS cold up there from the wind. I am betting that it was around 40 degrees with the windchill, and we were up there for over an hour. The warm fire was very, very welcome once we got back to the campsite.

Saturday was quite a day. We decided that we were going to climb the tallest peak in the park: Mt. Scott at 8929 ft above sea level. We decided to get an early start to avoid the crowds but were blocked by a marathon that happend to be that day, but not
posted like ANYWHERE... so we wasted a good 2 hours (and gas) driving around the lake trying to get to the mountain. When we finally got through at around noon, we found the hike to be fairly easy, but again, the air was thin so we had to go fairly slow. The view from the top was breathtaking. We ate lunch up there and headed back down. Afterward we did 3 other smallish hikes, none of them longer than a mile, but all were amazing in terms of what you got to see.

On Sunday we wanted to do a smaller hike, but our attempts were thwarted by construction and logs (don't ask). So we went wine tasting in the Umqua Valley. We got back into Portland at around 8pm last night.

I'll post the pictures later tonight!