This post is from October 14, 2020.
The GPS track from this day’s hike can be found at: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/5732153672
Yesterday’s rain persisted until about 8 o’clock in the night. At that point the sky cleared but unfortunately the temperature also dropped to below freezing. I was perfectly warm and comfortable inside my bag but the previous night I had taken all of my completely soaked clothes and just strung them around the tent in desperation to get inside the bag and get warm. Even if I had wanted to spend the energy there was actually no way and no place to dry out any of those things inside my cramped one-person tent. So, I paid the penalty for this in the morning when I had clothes and boots that had been completely soaked the night before now filled with water or ice at about freezing temperature. Thankfully I still had one set of dry clothing that I had reserved for use in camp only and not for hiking which I could wear for hiking today as it was my last day. I even had two pairs of dry socks. The problem was that as soon as I inserted my feet with the dry socks into the soaking wet and ice cold boots those dry socks quickly absorbed all the water and became ice cold and wet themselves. The other problem was since the temperatures plunged to below freezing when I tried to pack up my tent the entire outside of it was covered in ice and it was particularly challenging to undo the frozen clips which were frozen solid with ice water.
Since I knew I was not to meet BILL JOHNSON and Paul Congdon until about 1:15pm and reach the end of the trail today by about 2 PM I delayed starting hiking until 9 AM which helped it to be a little warmer when I actually began the work of packing up the tent and hiking, but it was still very cold. I was on my way by 9:20 AM and I tried to hike very fast to generate warmth. I was wearing every piece of remaining dry clothing that I had. The worst part was the feeling of my hands freezing inside the soaked and ice-cold ski gloves.
That was pretty much the end of the difficult times from yesterday and last night as the hiking went fast and easy today and I put in some 18 minute and 19 minute miles. The sun gradually warmed up the air and eventually I was able to strip off one layer of clothing and then I also eventually switched out to my last pair of dry socks which did not get as wet as the initial pair did. I was actually fairly comfortable by the time I met up with Bill and Paul at about 1:15 PM. We were back in BILL‘s car at about 2 o’clock. It was great to see them!

Interestingly, despite having hiked two days through Crater Lake national Park I had yet to see a single view of the famous lake because of the location of the PCT below and away the crater rim itself. So I had the good fortune that BILL and Paul wanted to go drive around the crater rim and look at the lake from number of perspectives (each stop feted with a new can of beer), and I saw one of the most spectacular scenes of nature I seen anywhere on this earth:




This is my elevation profile for today:

This was my last hike on the PCT in 2020 I look forward to returning in August 2021 to finish the last 530+- miles that remain for me to complete this trail.