Oregon

From Tuolumne we headed north to finally do some climbing in Oregon. Despite driving through the state on numerous occasions we had yet to actually climb in it. We were in need of a couple of rest days on the way though. Our first stop was at Lava Beds National Monument, which boasts the highest concentration of lava tubes in the United States. It was really cool to be able to hike through a few of these awesome cave systems.

The ones we hiked were pretty large, and we could walk upright most of the way (well, at least Kristal could), but there were a few fun constrictions we had to pass.

Our next stop was Crater Lake National Park, which is an amazing lake in the caldera of a dormant volcano.  At 1,934 feet deep, it is the deepest lake in the United States, and the ninth deepest in the world.  It is also remarkably blue, and the surrounding scenery is breathtaking.  It also gets a ridiculous amount of snow (533 inches a year!), and as a result there were still massive amounts of snow on the ground.

We finally stopped to go climbing at Smith Rock State Park, a hugely popular climbing and hiking destination. The place was a zoo of people, and we could only tolerate it for a couple of days, but it is quite pretty and we did get on some fun climbs. We kept forgetting the camera though, so no pictures.

Our next stop was Trout Creek, which has been on our list for quite a while. Despite only spending one day there we climbed a full day of amazing splitter cracks. It almost felt like being at Indian Creek again! We would have stayed longer, but we could barely move the next day, so decided to move on. It has definitely been added to the list of destinations we'd return to though.