[gentle music]
[snow crunching]
JAN: You can see it on a map,
but you don't really realize how large Crater Lake is
until you get there and look across it.
KELSEY: The color of the water changes with the seasons.
Ice cold blue.
JESS: It's insane to think the huge mountain
used to be here and now this is what's left.
KELSEY: It just takes your breath away
when you look at it.
JAN: We are going to ski around the rim of Crater Lake.
I'm Jan.
KELSEY: I'm Kelsey.
JESS: I'm Jess and we are team
of abominable snow bunnies.
The three of us, myself, Jess and Kelsey,
none of us are really super girly girls
so the irony of calling ourselves snow bunnies
makes us look all cutesy and whatnot,
but cutesy when we're doing this kind of like
hardcore badass thing.
When you think about skiing around the lake,
you didn't really think going around a lake,
it's gonna be flattish.
We're risking hypothermia and frostbite even.
If it takes longer than our allotted time
and a storm rolls in early, then we're stuck out there.
[icy snow blowing]
[belt swooshing]
We had avalanche probes, beacon, shovels, extra clothes,
food for extra days.
But, no matter how much you prepare for something,
you're not always really prepared
for what the trip can throw at you.
Okay, here goes, like if you forget something,
you forgotten something.
That's just how the trip's gonna go.
I forgot my rain jacket. [all laughing]
[acoustic guitar music]
I have a quote to share to start the day.
I think it's fitting for the scenery.
It's by John Muir.
"Sunshine over all, no breadth of wind
to stir the brooding calm.
Never before had I seen so glorious a landscape,
so boundless and affluence of sublime mountain beauty."
[skis crunching]
Okay, let us have some water to contribute to dinner.
[knife jostling]
You ladies excited for dinner?
JESS: Thank you.
Cheers.
Cheers, cheers.
KELSEY: Up until this week,
most people were getting turned back at The Watchman.
JAN: The Watchmen is a really steep peak
that's right on the rim of Crater Lake.
We could see it from our first night's camp
from a distance and it looked pretty intimidating.
JESS: The closer we got, the scarier it looked.
From far away you could see the line where people had gone
and it looks like, oh yeah, that looks, you know,
it's a straight line across, it doesn't look that hard.
But the closer you get,
you realized how narrow this path was.
My first view of it was this slope
that kind of went off and I couldn't see
the other side of it and then to my left was just,
the snow just dropped off.
Way far down the valley you could see
a few of the tops of trees
that you knew were like 60 feet tall
so you're like this drop-off is unsurvivable.
JAN: You have to focus on the amount of pressure
you're putting on each foot, the shifting of your bag,
the way you're holding your skis.
You have to know immediately if you start to slip,
what can I use to self-arrest?
It was just all snow and then it went into the tree line
so you would have just kept going until you hit a tree.
[wind howling]
I was terrified.
I was happy when that was over.
[acoustic guitar music]
JESS: "Nevermind the mountains are calling.
Run away and let plans and parties
and dragging lowland duties all go.
Up there lies a new heaven and a new Earth.
Let us go upwards," John Muir.
We've been out in the snow and the white.
You know, we see our green trees and the white snow
in front of us and then all of a sudden there's the road.
We are part of the wilderness that's around us,
but also we are part of the civilization and the pavement
that is underneath that wilderness.
KELSEY: When you see a reminder of civilization,
it's almost, you get this feeling like the potential
of being left behind and being forgotten.
You could be alone out there suffering so hard
and in such distress and near death
and you can see on the other side of the lake,
you can see the lodge, or you can see this sign
and you know that in just a month or two,
there are gonna be so many people there,
but here you are in this situation
where you're totally helpless.
JAN: So that's the viewpoint where this work back there.
KELSEY: Okay.
JAN: So we're somewhere-
KELSEY: Back by the Mazama Rock?
Yeah.
KELSEY: Left of Mazama rock?
Going around Mazama Rock
KELSEY: Is that it?
Could be.
It was a big rock.
Wasn't that dark.
It's getting beautiful.
It's definitely getting dark, the moon is out.
[solemn acoustic guitar music]
Winter camping, man, this is what it is.
I have a blister here that I'm trying to
cushion around it.
This is winter camping.
You're just miserable, but you're with your friends,
so it's okay.
You're just miserable together.
JESS: I ran out of tape to put over the moleskin.
We make coffee with tears in the morning.
It's my favorite noise, coffee.
We're almost halfway around the rim,
so which means we have the same miles in front of us
as miles behind us so even if we wanted to turn back.
Okay, we've got to get through this.
There's really no turning around, we've committed now.
Today's quote is for all
those wild-spirited ladies out there.
It's by Roman Payne who wrote a book called "The Wanderess."
"She is free in her wildness.
She is the wanderess, a drop of free water.
She knows nothing of borders
and cares nothing for rules or custom.
Time for her isn't something to fight against.
Her life flows clean with passion like fresh water."
[snow crunching]
Even though it's snowing and you're in the cold,
like you're sweating, your heart rate's up
and it's like going for an eight hour jog.
We were pushing 13 miles.
We were skiing through trees downhill,
through an avalanche detour.
And it starts pouring down rain.
We're getting into camp and I was exhausted.
We're at camp, now we have to set up camp,
which is a whole other ordeal.
You have to really work hard at this point of the trip.
So we'll just keep our noses down, get some dinner set up
and laugh about how [bleep] to do this tomorrow.
[Kelsey laughing]
It's crazy.
So luckily when we got to camp, it was not raining,
so we had the luxury of setting up our tent,
changing into dry layers, setting up a tarp,
but it had just started raining again,
so really hunkered down, boiling some water, food.
Jan carried a pie! [Jess laughing]
She pulled out that pie and I was like,
"You've got to be kidding me."
You brought a homemade baked apple pie.
I was like, "All right, I already knew you were amazing,
but like you just went up a few notches in awesomeness."
[wind gusting]
I woke up at 1:00 AM this morning
soaking wet inside of my soaking wet sleeping bag
and it's gonna be really heavy to pack out because it
weighs about twice its weight in water now.
We're gonna be so happy when it's over,
we're gonna forget about all of this.
We're gonna laugh about it, but right now we're not.
The snow is gonna be wet and sloppy
and really hard to ski on.
Oh, and you know what else?
You know what else?
I forgot my rain jacket!
[all laughing]
I'm gonna cry now.
I think I speak for all of us
when I say we are ready to be done.
[thunder rumbling]
[skis swishing]
[skis swishing continues]
[wind whistling]
[thunder crashing]
Totally busted cable.
Unless I can get this fixed,
it's going to be a really, really long walk out of here.
[solemn music]
That was a huge [bleep] moment.
And it may have led to, you know,
an extra night in which case we would have depleted
our fuel sources, we would have gone through all of our food
and we would have been,
I have no idea what we would've done.
Luckily some of our team were prepared and had some pieces
to kind of Frankenstein together my binding.
[zip ties squeaking]
It got put back together with bailing wire, gorilla tape,
ski straps, and of course, a couple of zip ties.
Well, binding has been MacGyvered back together.
Hopefully it holds, got a heck of an uphill to get up
and then three miles of downhill.
The three of us are really physically fit
and we all exercise quite a bit and we're still sore.
We are beat emotionally and physically and mentally
pretty much run into the ground after this trip.
It's raining sideways.
Ah, yes!
Yeah!
[all laughing]
These skis, I'm done with 'em.
I don't wanna do this anymore.
That was great.
That was a good trip, guys.
[uplifting music]
JESS: Oh my gosh, wow.
As we looked over the lake,
the clouds parted just actually see across the lake
and didn't realize, you know,
"Hey ladies, we just went around this whole thing."
And we could kind of look around the lake
and see point by point and say,
"Hey, this happened to us there."
Just really nice for us to stand up there as a team
and reflect on what we had just done.
JESS: "And when we at least go down the long white slopes
to the levels of civilization.
The pains vanish like snow and sunshine.
All the noble and exalting pleasures we gained
remain with us to enrich our lives forever," John Muir.
[uplifting music continues]