Day 21 (September 6)

Very cold night, but our many layers are up to the task. (Thanks, Rick!) Ice on the fly. Rosary lakes are still and crisp as we march down to Willamette Pass.

A half dozen northbound through hikers pass in a staggered clump. They were all camped at the Willamette Pass ski resort last night, feasting on pizza and beer. Must confess that this is a little frustrating for me. Hiking the Štefánikova Magistrála and SNP trails in Slovakia last year, we had the delicious convenience of hot meals right along the trail a lot of the time. Food got a little trickier on the less popular trails, but still available every few days. Here, there's exactly one place to get a meal on our Oregon route: the cafe at Crater Lake, which is rumored to be lousy since Xanterra downgraded it from nice fresh burgers to minimal prepackaged sandwiches. Expanding our range to a quarter mile offtrail, we add 3 more sites: the fancy restaurant at Crater Lake Lodge, the bar and restaurant at Timberline Lodge, and this supposedly delightful little pizza joint.

It was a long shot to begin with, since it's only open weekends during the summer, but somehow I couldn't quite quell my optimism. As it happens, we missed it by just a couple of hours (lost, no doubt, to our hitchhiking debacle.) These folks passing us had a little bit of fun that I can't help envying. Deb, on the other hand, much prefers camping chilly and alone by Upper Rosary Lake to being in the valley with the clump. I can see the wisdom in that. Still: pizza.

Further expanding our offtrail range to 2 miles, there are several lakeside campgrounds that will hold resupply packages for hikers. Today we pick up our last package at Shelter Cove, a lovely fishing-oriented resort on Odell Lake, just south of Willamette Pass. They also have a hiker box here, which the passing northbounders had described as pretty flush but is in fact a sad wreck -- trash, empty bottles, and leaky ziplocks mired in a half-inch layer of miscellaneous ooze along the bottom. Deborah does her best to save the food but we cannot face the task of rebeautifying the box properly, which would take about 2 hours and a high-pressure hose.

Still, it's so pleasant here that we decide to check into cabin B for an afternoon of R&R. Shelter Cove has no restaurant, but Deb whips up a dinner from rescued pasta bits and a few pricy purchases from the resort store. I can highly recommend cabin B -- clean and warm, good lake view, convenient to the store and laundry, a nice porch for airing out the airables, a decent kitchen. Also a very cool window blind on the front door, contained between the glass panes and operated by little sliders. Check it out: