Like northern California southern Oregon is having a drought. What this means to hikers is there are long gaps between water sources. There was an especially long one of 27 miles from Crater Lake’s Rim Village to Thielsen Creek. So at the village I filled up my 3L Platypus bag with 2 liters and my three bottles with 2.4 liters. This should be enough. Typically you use 1L per 5 miles. I planned to “dry camp” somewhere midway and then the next day fill up at the creek.

At lunch I placed my pack so the solar charger would face the sun. I knew I had plenty of water so I guzzled down 1L of water in one of my bottles. However as I was packing up I noticed a wet spot on the ground next to my pack. Somehow the Platypus’ bite value must have been squeezed and leaked a little water. This has happened before when I’ve accidentally sat on the valve. However because the bag is inside my pack I didn’t check how much had leaked. So off I went hiking the trail.

I stopped 12 miles from the creek for the day. When I opened my pack I saw that the water bag was totally empty instead of having 2L. Yikes! This meant all I had for dinner, breakfast and morning snacks was 1.4L. And that’s less than I need. In other words I was going to run out of water (for the first time) before reaching the creek.

So I decided to push on 3 more miles to get closer to the creek. Also there was a major road crossing in that 3 miles and I hoped that someone had cached some water there since this was the longest waterless interval since the Southern California desert. However there was no cache. That night at camp I conserved my water usage using only one 0.7L bottle for dinner, cleanup and brushing my teeth. The next morning I used the minimum for my breakfast cereal which meant I had about 0.6L for the morning snacks and the hike to the creek. The 8 miles took about 3 1/2 hours and I arrived with 0.3L left. Whew!

Naturally at the creek I immediately chugged the remaining 0.3L of water. Then I filled it up and chugged an entire 0.7L bottle. Then I filled everything to the max of 5.4L. Now I could hike and not worry. Later I felt that I had over compensated, filled too much water and was going to dump 1L from my Platypus bag on the ground. Note: water is very heavy. Instead I chugged 1L at a mid morning non-snack stop with lemonade flavoring. Yum! It felt so good to have that water.