July 14.
One week on the trail. Had mice in the tent the night before that kept me up. Paranoid that they had chewed through my tent to get to my food. Thankfully they hadn’t. Climbed the bridge supports in the morning to get back on the trail. Lucas left early and Twig passed by shortly after, already having done 2 miles from where she had stayed the night before.
This was probably the hardest day of hiking so far. There was so much elevation change. Started off the day with a gradual uphill forest climb that turned in a ton of switchbacks. Eventually ended up at a pass that had amazing sweeping views. Saw the mountain we had been next to the day before in the distance. Climbed down to the base of Glacier Peak where the other were having lunch.
Slipped on my way in and scratched up my leg then slipped again when going to pose for a pictures under the mountain glacier. Thankfully Spats managed to capture my fall. Hurt my knee pretty bad and have a welt on it but can still hike fine on it.
Drank the best tasting glacier water and hung out with the others for a bit. We caught a guy named Bart, an Australian who had moved to the bay area from Texas.
We gave Taylor the new trail name Grouse Bait for being attacked by grouse twice. He doesn’t seem to like it so it might not stick.
Hiked with Twig and Zeke (now Spats) for a while as we may our way down a long series of switchbacks down to the river again. The trail was exposed and overgrown and it was hard to see where to step. I hit my toe so many times and rolled my ankle.
Finally made it to the bridge crossing at which point we had climb back up 4 miles through more switchbacks. It was fucking brutal. I was trying to carry less water and ended up being dehydrated but too stubborn to stop to get some at the little streams we passed. It took over 2 hours to go up the 4 miles to the lake and I was so mentally fried.
Around 4k feet we got in some big patches of snow that eventually turned into big snow fields and the last mile was mostly covered in snow. Had to cross a few sketchy looking snow bridges over fast moving streams. They held out okay but looked dangerous.
Lucas, Twig, Spats, and Skybird were already there when I finally got in. The lake and the camp around it was completely buried in snow.
We had planned to go swimming and wash clothes and relax at the lake and it was so demoralizing to see covered in snow. The guthooks comments had mentioned how this was such a nice spot to swim and relax with a big rock to jump off of. Nope. Never trust the nobo comments.
We managed to improvised a few campsites, some with amazing views of the valley we came up, and of the frozen lake. We made due and had dinner and talked for a long while. Im glad I’m at this point with others as trying to cross all this snow by myself would definitely not be fun.
Tomorrow looks like more snow. We’ve decided to sleep in a bit to let the snow soften but tomorrow will probably end up being a hard day again. We’ll see how it goes.
Plants Outside 