For several days, I’m unusually tired and feel like I’m hiking through a fog. I suspect something is wrong, and after I take my first ever dirtnap beside the trail, I figure it out: in switching supplements to try helping my knees, I’ve gotten mixed up and haven’t been taking iron for 2.5 weeks so anemia is hitting hard again.
I run into Flyboy for the first time in weeks, so I cut my mileage short for the day to camp with him. We leapfrog for a couple of weeks and it’s a delight. I roll into Mazama Village and have a hectic nero, attempting to get all my chores done while spending time with the couple dozen friends that have caught up.
It’s a steep hike out of Mazama Village up to Crater Lake, but the reward far outweighs the effort. The six miles of blue blazing along Crater Rim is stunning and my jaw is dropped to all the volcanic features the entire time. I meet Pack Rat, who tells me about the Pacific Coast Bike Route and now there’s yet another big adventure on my long-term radar.
At the end of Crater National Park, I miss trail magic by just a few hours again but Boomerang saves the day by popping out of the woods and declaring that she has “pizza around the corner.” A few of us enjoy leftover pizza and get to welcome Chicken Joe back to trail.
As I hike past Mount Thielsen, this popular blue blaze is busy with fellow thruhikers and day hikers going up for the scramble. This one hurts more than I expected, and I cannot properly describe how deeply gutted I am to skip yet another side quest because of my knees. As I mull over this disappointment all morning, I realize how crushed I am that the PCT hasn’t unfolded the way I’d hoped, and I start wondering about doing the whole trail over again another year.
To end the week, I take a popular alternate, cruising 24 miles and feeling like my knees are finally recovering (spoiler: they’re not), and make it to Shelter Cover minutes before the kitchen closes, and sort out laundry and a shower before the store shuts. It feels like a second round of Kennedy Meadows, with everyone on the porch cheering me in.