We hiked an early 5 miles to Crater Lake Lodge for breakfast (worth it!) then hiked 6 miles along the crater rim trail. It was a bit smoky but we still got amazing views. Our concerns at this point about where the wildfires were were pretty constant. The lightening storms were expected to continue for days, including today. But we still decided to risk hiking the remaining miles to the actual closure (around 16 more). We made it 8 of those miles before 2 pm, then the clouds started to roll in. With 8 miles to go, we hike-sprinted the rest of the trail through dead trees as dry lightening and thunder cracked overhead. Luckily the trail was flat. By 4:30 pm, we were exhausted, scared, and happy to be alive as we arrived at the road where we planned to hitch with Breaking Bad, Mimosa and Ranger. Little did we know that trail magic and angels were going to be there waiting for us with beers and hot dogs!

The rest of our crew rolled in and we all hung around eating, drinking and being merry at the closure of the next section. Half of us decided to go in to Chemult (a tiny podunk lil town just outside of the next section we wanted to start at) and half decided to go into Bend (much further, likely forcing a bigger skip past hikeable trail).

We then got a hitch from one of the angels there who took us straight to Chemult for us to figure out what our next step is and see where wildfires are popping up.