With the first days of December, a record setting high pressure system settled over the Pacific Northwest and promised up to a week or more of good weather (and smog in the lowlands). My brother Alex and I decided to take advantage of the good weather and get in our first ski trip of the season to Camp Muir.
On Saturday December 3, we started out at 6 AM, arriving at the mountain 9:30. When we got to the parking lot we realized there were quite a few other people with the same idea. From the parking lot to just below Panorama Point we set a pretty good pace. But as we looked up the climb to Panorama Point it was clear all the other skiers were struggling. At first the climb was easy. Alex stated that he was going to try and skin all the was up. A couple minutes later Alex, who was ahead of me, yelled back to me to put on my ski crampons. A minute later he was hiking with skis over his shoulder. As I approached the area where he had given up skinning I thought I might be able to make it with my ski crampons, and I probably could have, but it would have been a long way to slide down if the crampons didn't hold, so following my brothers example, I put the skis over my shoulder and headed up hill.
After the climb up to and above Panorama Point, the skinning went well up to about 8,000' where the travel required navigating patches of ice with strong gusts of wind coming from all different directions. A couple of the gusts were strong enough that I had to stop and make sure I was well balanced against the wind. Around 8,800' the wind was just too strong, and most of the downhill skiers had warned us that it was extremely icy higher up, and most all other uphill skiers had turned around. So at that point Alex and I decided to turn around. So with high winds, and on an inch of snow on top of blue ice we carefully transitioned and headed down.
I woke up Monday around 6AM, and laid in bed until 6:30 AM before getting up and heading with the others down to breakfast. I was hoping we could order, eat and go in 30 minutes. But as 7:30 AM became 8 AM, and 8AM became 8:30 AM. We were loosing precious time, and we had 34 miles to go.
I looked at the map for any possible solutions. I had thought that day 3 would be the most isolated section of the trail, but then I noticed the West Side road. The road provided us with a way to skip the first two climbs of the day which covered roughly seven miles and instead trade it for 4 miles of hiking with much less vertical. We would just need Dave drive us up the West Side road to the point where it was closed to traffic and started hiking there. I pitched the idea to Tom S, but he told me at that point was feeling pretty ill, he still hadn't recovered from the previous day. The drive would be about 30 minutes, so it was decided that Tom S would join Tom M, Dave and me and he could decide at the last minute if he really wanted to take on another day with 31 more miles. With a lot of strong encouragement from the rest of us to skip day 3 if he didn’t fully feel up to it, Tom S utltimately decided to back out at the last minute. It was now just Tom M and me.
Dave dropped us off, wished us well, and we headed off hiked along the West Side road from the gate for a couple miles. Tom M and I were enjoying the easy hiking and taking as we hiked at a quick pace, eventually reaching Tahoma Vista. It was there that we realized we missed the trail head for Tahoma Creek trail by at least a mile. We had to backtracked and finally found the trail head hidden behind a barrel that I had previously told Tom M to ignore. The barrel was meant for climbers coming off of the high glaciers to leave their blue bags full of “human waste”.
Before we had started off on this path, Ben had promised the Tahoma Creek trail would be easy. However it didn’t take much hiking before we found the trail to be not in the best condition. As we continued on we moved slowly loosing and then re-finding the trail several times. Finally, 6 miles after leaving the car we caught up with the Wonderland Trail. It was suppose to be 4 miles, but missing our turn off by a mile, then having to hike a mile back had lead us to a bad start for the day. In the end we had given up 7 miles for 6, not really saving much distance.
suspension bridge over Tahoma Creek
Despite being way behind schedule we tracked a short distance just so we could walk the famous high suspension bridge over Tahoma Creek. Then it was back to the trail, only not nearly as quick as the past few days.
As we started our first climb up and over Emerald Ridge and then back down toward the South Puyallup River we were suprised to find far more hikers on this section of the trail than what we had seen on any other part of the trail. At one point we crossed paths with a Ranger who asked to see our backcountry pass. After explaining our plans to make it all the way to Mowich, and yes we realized we wouldn’t be arriving until well after dark, the Ranger told us what sections ahead would be good for running and which sections wouldn’t. He also told us to keep an eye open for the Salmon Berries as we headed down toward the North Puyallup River and make sure to grab a handful or two.
We dropped down to the South Puyallup River and headed back up again. The climb up from the South Puyallup River was pretty difficult, mostly because we had been going hard for so long. We passed a couple of older men who were really huffing and puffing. As I reached the high point before heading down to St. Andrew’s Park I decided to take a bit of a breather. The black flies were quickly finding me and Tom M an interesting target, but we hung out as one of the older men caught up with us there. He said he was 65, and that he started at Longmire. He was on his second day on the trail and was quickly realizing he signed up for a lot more than he was ready for. He said he was going to try and make his way eventually to Mowich, then hitch a ride to Enumclaw, then spend his life savings if necessary for a taxi to take him home. He looked totally defeated. He asked if we had an energy bar to spare saying his were too far in his pack to dig out right now. Tom M offered him one, and we wished him luck and headed on our way.
St Andrews Lake
As we reached St. Andrew’s Lake we found another older man happily swimming in the lake. This guy looked a lot happier. I really wished I could also go for a swim in the very inviting looking lake, but we had far too many miles to cover and far too few hours of daylight left. So we continued on towards the North Puyallup River. As we continued on I asked Tom M if he knew what salmon berries look like. He said he probably couldn’t identify them well enough to feel safe eating them.
view as we headed down to the N. Puyallup
The terrain heading down to the North Puyallup River was some of the most dramatic on the entire trail. Huge cliff faces, probably a thousand plus feet dropping from the Puyallup Glacier high above on the mountain, with waterfalls dropping many hundreds of feet off of the cliff faces. As we dropped lower and into thicker overgrowth I saw what must have been the salmon berries (looked like a black berry or raspberry only yellow to pink in color), either way it looked good and I was sick of energy food. I ate as many ripe ones as I could find, and they were good!
When we reached the North Puyallup River it was after 6PM. As we took a bit of a break I realized we still had a very long ways to go. I was getting anxious...this was going to be a lot of hours of hiking in the dark. We headed off again up towards Golden Lakes discussing how we would keep our sanity on the miles and hours of travel ahead in the dark. Tom M and I tried to tell stories and stretch them out, anything to keep minds off of the hours left to go. I tried to push for the goal of seeing the sunset from the last high point in the trail, but as we headed up I could occasionally see though the trees the sun getting really low in the sky.
sunset from Sunset Park
Finally as the last bit of the sun was setting, we reached the big open area known as Sunset Park. The setting sun was lighting up the Mowich Glacier on the mountain in a bright orange. Before long we were in complete dark, and this seriously slowed down our pace.
In the open area of Sunset Park the temperature quickly dropped. For the first time on this hike I was actually getting cold. However, as soon as we went back into the protection of the woods the temperature seemed to climb 15 degrees. After about an hour of traveling like this I saw what appeared to be a light in the woods; someone's campsite I thought. As we got closer it became clear that the light was coming from 3 square shaped windows; it was the rangers cabin.
The ranger came out to greet us, and probably question why we were hiking in the dark. We explained our trip to him and that we fully realized what we were in for over the next several hours. He mentioned that the other ranger we had met earlier in the day had radioed him to let him know we would be coming though. The ranger told us we had around 10 miles to go, and that soon the nearly full moon would be rising and possibly lighting up the trail a bit. He wished us luck, and we were off.
The trail went on, up and down, right and left, mostly down toward the Mowich River. Minutes seemed like hours. Everything was darkness. When the moon did rise the thick trees obscured most of the moon light. There were only occasional glimpses of the moon though the tree, but never enough light to help us see our surroundings. I was really hating this.
At 10:45 PM we finally reached the Mowich River. We needed one last refill of water before the last very long push up to Mowich Lake. For the first time since it became dark enough for us to use our headlamps, Tom M and I turned off our lights to sit beside the river lit only by the moonlight for a few minutes. It was almost (almost) enough light to hike by. We got our things together and started our final push of about 4 miles up hill. The crossing of the Mowich River was a bit confusing, because you need to cross 2 forks of the river. In daylight this definitely wouldn't be a problem, but in the middle of the night your entire world is only what is 10 feet in front of you and everything looks the same. I paused for more than a few moments thinking we had gone in a circle as we crossed the second fork of the Mowich River, but this had to be the right way. We continued on.
Those last miles up hill were pretty bad. I don't think Tom M and I spoke more than a dozen words. We had both been in that world of limited visibility for hours. With our cheap LED headlamps, there was almost no color and very little depth perception. We stopped around 12:30 AM for a break. We had probably been moving at less than a mile an hour. My ankles were really hurting at this point; unable to get any depth perception on the the trail I was constantly misplacing my steps and twisting my ankle, not enough to cause injury, but enough to cause pain when repeated for hours on end.
We decided to really push it until we got to the truck, so we picked up the pace. We were moving much faster than we had in the past 6 or more hours (which probably meant we were moving 2-1/2 miles an hour). Finally at 1:30 AM we reached the parking lot for the Mowich Lake campground. We went straight to the truck. Tom M took a sleeping pad and his sleeping bag and immediately crashed in the bed of the truck. Not wanting to deal with mosquitoes or setting up a tent, I climbed into the passenger seat, moved it back as far as it would go, leaned the seat back as far as it would go, and fell asleep.
early morning moonset on the way home
Five hours later we both got up, and drove back to Seattle. Only stopping once for a much needed Starbucks coffee. As we drove the dirt road heading away from Mowich Lake we saw our one and only bear of the trip. The bear was crossing the road, and he was there and gone too quickly for me to capture a picture. So that I could have one last picture from the trip we stopped on the side of the road so I could take a picture of the low lands around Mount Rainier covered in fog or a low cloud layer. The moon that had provided us so little light was now setting.
When I got home and looked at what my GPS had to report, it ended up shorting me about 10 miles over the entire trip. We had added at least a mile by going over Spray Park instead of Ipsut Pass on day one, then skipped maybe a mile on day two by avoiding Box Canyon and picking up the trail 1/4 mile down the road. Finally we skipped a mile on day three. All things considered I sure felt like I had just gone 93 miles. The trip was incredible, and I would definitely do some variation of it again.
Our early alarm clock failed to wake us, so we weren’t awoken until 5AM, after which we didn’t get started until 6AM. Again tear down the camp, a breakfast of a hard boiled egg and a banana, and we were off. Today was the climb up to the highest elevation point on the entire trail, Panhandle Gap. However the climb was not too bad as much of the trail seemed to only climb 500 feet a mile. As we headed up toward Panhandle Gap we entered the beautiful open fields of wildflowers found in Summerland.
As we continued to climb fields of wildflowers gave way to fields of snow, making the travel fairly interesting. Tom S and Ben were moving along a ways ahead of Tom M and myself. Tom M and I couldn’t seem to get enough pictures up along this high point. As Tom M and I appraoched and crossed over Panhandle Gap I felt great. Panhandle Gap ws the highest point on the trip and it felt like everything would be down hill from here.
Eventually we reached Ben who had found some shade and was relaxing with his shoes off. As we spoke to him he said he had just started getting some pretty serious pain in his hip, but he felt that after taking a break he would be okay to continue and he would then catch up. A little further down the trail we found Tom S who was coming down the trail towards us. He had lost the trail in the snow. After a bit of looking at the map, we decided the trail headed nearly straight up. We ascended a fair ways before we were able to look back down and see where the trail had actually continued along well below us right after a large patch of snow. At that point Ben had caught up and we directed him which way to go, and Tom S, Tom M and I crossed the snow higher up then dropped down to meet Ben.
crossing fields of snow
Ben was moving pretty slowly at this point down the steeply descending trail. The trail heading down to Indian Bar is a seemingly endless series of steps and not a fun section if you are experiencing any leg pain. I swapped my two poles for Ben's single hiking pole hoping two poles would make it easier for him to continue on, then I headed on down. At the Ohanapecosh River Ben caught up and we all refilled water bottles and rested near the Indian Bar hut. As we soaked our sore feet in the ice cold Ohanapecosh River we discussed how to handle getting us all to Longmire with Ben’s leg problems. Ben decided he would head on at his own pace with his one pole and finish up the day at Box Canyon. At Box Canyon Ben would hitchhike to Longmire. We wished him luck and continued on towards Box Canyon.
down to Indian Bar
Reaching Box Canyon was a real boost to my spirits. The three of us took a short break and tried to figuring out where the trail continued on. After studying the map, we opted not to do the little 0.3 mile loop into Box Canyon, instead headed though a car tunnel at Box Canyon and catch the trail on the other side, continuing on from there.
At this point I really wanted us to make it to the National Park Inn at Longmire. We were staying there for the night, but I believed that the restaurant closed at 8PM, and I wanted a sit down dinner. I began to really encourage the others to move fast “pick up the pace guys, this one is about getting steak dinners or having 3 day old un-refrigerated hotdogs”.
We crossed Stevens Creek, but then right before the trail headed up from Stevens Creek to Reflection Lakes rather suddenly bonked hard. I realized I hadn’t eaten much in at least a couple hours or probably longer. I had to stop and eat. I downed a Cliff Shot Gel, a package of Gummy Bears and a Honey Stinger Waffle; I was getting pretty sick of energy food at this point so I had to force myself to eat everything other than the gummy bears (I love gummy bears).
From here the trail started up though thick overgrowth covering the trail. The travel was slow at this point as I tried to ease my way around nettles. Eventually the overgrowth disappeared as the trail went into the woods and headed on up to Reflection Lakes. After a 1/2 hour or so the food started doing its job I was starting to feel better. I picked up the pace and caught up with Tom S where the trail met the road near Louis Lake. I went ahead to get water, but found myself attacked by black flies at the first water stop so I continued on to another. I quickly filled up my Camel Back and an extra Nalgene for the guys, then waited, and waited. Where were they? I was really wanting to get going, I really wanted that sit down dinner at the lodge. Tom S and Tom M finally caught up, they split the extra liter of water and we were on our way.
Around this point the trail actually went along side the rode for about a half-mile. I was so desperate to get my dinner that I tried to hitchhike, but there were no takers. So I tried push the pace as much as I could once we hit the trail again. The trail dropped down to the Nisqually River, we crossed the river and had 1.7 miles to go. At this point Tom S had to stop and to deal with some painful foot blisters. Tom M and I offered to order him food if necessary. We pushed it as much as we could (but that wasn’t much).
Finally at 7:15 we rolled out of the woods to the sight of the National Park Inn. I was really hooting and hollering, and high-fiveing Tom M. Ben was at the entrance all cleaned up and shiny in fresh cotton clothes. Unfortunately Ben had bad news for us: The kitchen closed at 7PM. But with a little work, Ben was able to convince them to keep the kitchen open a little longer so we could get an order in.
my feet didn't look too bad after day two
The restaurant was still very full as we rolled in stinking and covered in sweat and dirt and sitting down with Ben and Dave. I found the fact that people throughout the restaurant were looking and pointing at us rather amusing. I ordered pot roast and devoured it. Then downed 2 beers. It was all so good. However Tom S and Tom M were having trouble eating. Tom M couldn’t handle the hot restaurant which was making him feel claustrophobic, and had to go sit outside. Tom S was bonking hard and not feeling much like eating. A little later on the both were feeling better and were able to eat. I pretty much crashed in a very comfortable bed after a shower and organizing my gear for the next day. I made the decision that for our last day we would sit down at the restaurant one more time for breakfast even though the restaurant didn’t open until 7AM (much later than we had started the previous days). We would eat and try and get going right after breakfast with the full knowledge that we wouldn’t finish the day until well after dark.
As the actual date of to do the Wonderland Trail in 3 day my original group of a dozen or so people became just three, then two: my friends Tom S and Tom M (this was going to be confusing). The week before the trip my friend Ben decided to join us "off the couch". We were now four, with a fifth friend Dave providing support.
Day 0 - Getting to the Trail Head
The trip started off with us all meeting early afternoon on Friday September 9th, and making our way to the to Mowich Lake on the secluded North end of Mount Rainier. After several discussions over the phone with park officials, I had a very real concern about our ability to find a campsite at Mowich Lake which doesn’t take reservations. Because of this I kind of rushed the group to get to the campsite, passing up on the traditional pre-trip big meal for quick sandwiches to go at Subway. When we arrived at Mowich there were in fact quite a few people camping there, but it was by no means full. However, as we set up the tent, it didn’t take long to realize that mosquitos were going to be a real problem, so we ended up eating our sandwhiches in the truck and having pre-trip celebratory Rainier Beer tallboys.
Day 1 - Mowich Lake to White River Campground
sunrise on Mt. Rainier from Spray Park
I didn’t sleep well in the small tent 4 man that all four of us were in (assume any tent size is at least 1/2 a person smaller than described). I was awake well before the first alarm went off at 4:30 AM. Then with the alarm, everyone got up pretty quick and we quietly went to work putting our gear away, taking down the tent, and moving everything we wouldn’t be taking with us to the truck.
For me breakfast was a hard boiled egg and a banana. I wasn’t hungry, but I knew I needed to get some starting calories in me. After we all choked down our breakfast we headed out at 5:25 AM (about 2 hours before the sun would come up).
The night before we had made the decision that rather than head over the quicker and easier route of Ipsut pass, we would go up and over Spray Park. About a mile longer, and much more vertical, but much more scenic, and besides, no one wanted to start off right away with over 5 miles of downhill running in the dark.
crossing the snow at Spray Park
Things were bad for me from the start, as my headlamps batteries were dieing, and I could barely see the trail in the dark woods. Not being able to see I was constantly tripping over roots and trying to keep up with the others who were trying to keep it at a fast hike or slow jog. The others headlamps eventually disappearing in the darkness up ahead. Luckily Tom S stopped to check up on me. He tried to get me some new batteries in the dark, but between fumbling with the batteries and being feasted on by mosquitoes, we gave up and Tom S ended up following right behind me with his much more adequate headlamp.
A few miles of hiking uphill and we reached Spray Park as the first light of morning was making it so that headlamps were no longer needed. At that point we picked the pace up to a slow jog. Up around Spray Park we found quite a bit of snow, but the travel on it was quite easy as it was very consolidated and sun cupped. Crossing the snow that was side lit by the sunrise was pretty cool. Ben really picked up the pace the moment he hit the snow, he was in his element even if he wasn’t wearing skis.
crossing the Carbon River
As we cleared the high point, and started heading down to the Carbon River we were all pretty much moving at a good jogging pace. When we reached the Carbon River we stopped for our first real break of the day. I ate my second and last banana and second and last hard boiled egg. Nothing more for me that day other than energy food. As we headed out we encountered the first of two large foot suspension bridge, this being the one over the Carbon River.. It hangs quite some distance over the Carbon River and ominously warns hikers to only cross one at a time. The crossing provides a bit of a ride, bouncing and rocking.
We headed on up again, this time towards Mystic Lake, climbing along side the Carbon Glacier. An ominous sign told of the dangers of the glacier as we heard giant boulders previously frozen in the glacier breaking off of and falling over a hundred feet to the river below. Once past the the Carbon Glacier the trail weaved up amongst fields of very fragrant wild flowers filled with the constant sound of bees.
From Mystic Lake we headed down past the Winthrop Glacier, over the Winthrop River, then up to a high ridge near Skyscraper Mountain. I was a bit behind, and by the time I reached the high ridge the others were already relaxing a bit and taking a break. I was running low on water so I decided that rather than stopping, I would head on down the trail and take my break where ever I found water.
enjoying a beer at White River at the end of day one
I headed down towards a very unfrozen Frozen Lake to refilled my water at a small creek, then shortly after met Dave who had hiked in from White River to meet us. The others soon caught up, we all gathered in some of the sparse shade to say our hellos, and then took off jogging. Dave and I held back a bit and instead hiked on down towards Sunrise Camp then down to White River where the car that Dave had driven down that morning was located. That night he took over cooking and made us awesome carne asada steak quesadillas. After dinner and a Rainier Beer, it was early to bed, for another early start the next day.
On July 27, 2010 around 8:45 AM, I completed a longtime goal of summiting Mount Rainier. Prior to that trip I had set far more grandiose plans for the "next trip"; things like climbing Denali or Aconcagua. However, the trip up Rainier was a big wake-up for me. Climbing Rainier was much more difficult than I had imagined it would be. So I decided to scale down plans for my "next trip", but I wasn't sure what would make a great adventure. It was not until late December of 2010 that I really started formulating an ideal of the "next trip", and my inspiration came from a post I found on the blog "Learning To Do". The post was all about running light and fast around the 93 mile Wonderland Trail that circumnavigates Mount Rainier. (Here is a PDF map of the trail and a PDF trail elevation profile from the National Park Service's web site).
I began talking to and emailing friends about my idea. I read the stories of others who had completed the Wonderland Trail in one, two or three days, and emailed some of them asking for advice. The stories definitely did not make it sound easy, but 93
miles split into 3 days, at an average pace of 3mph, that’s just an
average of 11 hours a day. It seemed very reasonable. With a light pack I
should easily be able to average 3mph. As time went on my enthusiasm for the trip grew and friends began to sign on to the the idea of joining me on this trip (although other, wiser, friends referred to the trip as tbe "Death March").
I sent a seemingly endless flood of emails to friends who would be interested in joining me on this, but as the time for a possible trip approached my wiser friends began to realize the true scope of what I had proposed. The unusually high snow levels on Mount Rainier in 2011 moved our trip back from the traditional time frame of late July/early August until the snow levels could make the trail passable. So the emails continued, and the trip got built up bigger and bigger.
My friend John suggested that everyone who plans on joining me on this trip should have to prove themselves by hiking or trail running 30 miles in one day. I took John's suggestion to heart and signed up for the Grand Ridge 50K in August. During the 50K trail run, I pretty easily managed 5mph over 31 miles with over 5K’ of elevation gain, so 3mph over that same distance during 3 days should be easy, right? Wrong! As I would later discover the Wonderland Trail is a very different path than a nice single track 50K trail run like Grand Ridge. Some of the climbs are far steeper, some of the descents are also steep traveling across loose rocks along a ledge, and crossing rivers (even though all the actual water is crossed on bridges) is not easy...river rocks do not lend themselves to fast travel. Then of course there is the issue of being more worn out each consecutive day, but of our group of four, two of us managed to finish it with a total time on the trail of just over 40 hours over a period of 3 days, that works out to be around 2-1/3 mph (but it sure felt like we were moving faster than that).
3,300 miles in a car with 2 small children and your wife is not what most people would consider fun, but some strange longing for past childhood memories of summer road trips in the 70s lead me to inflict this on my family. To be honest, my wife was totally on board with the general concept, although I was pretty certain neither of us knew what we were in for. I kept telling friends that this would either be a wonderful trip or the worst trip of my life.
We were going to drive from Seattle to New Mexico and back, camping and visiting family and friends along the way. The plan was to drive 10 hours from Seattle to Bozeman and spend some time with my brother-in-law, then 155 miles down to Yellowstone and camp with my family and my brother-in-law, then 8-1/2 hours down to Steam Boat Lake State Park in Colorado, followed by 8 hours down to New Mexico to spend several days with family in a cabin north of Taos, then 8-1/2 hours East to Dead Horse Point State Park in Utah, followed by 9 hours up to Boise, and finally 8-1/2 hours back home to Seattle.
Sunrise during our early morning start
All of our days on the road (with the exception of our first night in Bozeman and our time spent at the family cabin in New Mexico) would be spent camping. What were we thinking?
The days leading up to the trip were a chaotic mix of trying to get everything necessary done at work and home before the vacation, add to all this trying to make reservations at campsites during the week of Independence Day; one of the busiest camping weekends of the year. After I mentioned my planned trip to a few coworkers, they suggested that I should head out in the wee hours of the morning on the first day, allowing us to reach our first destination with time to enjoy it, and allowing the cars passengers to sleep as we put miles behind us. It seemed like a brilliant idea to me, but my wife wasn’t on board. After a bit of a fight between my wife she very reluctantly agreed to put up with the crazy idea, but was not happy with it at all. We left at 3:30 AM.
The coffee shops opened as we went thought Ellensburg, lunch was in Missoula, and we arrived in Bozeman around 4 PM (even with the change to Mountain Timezone). Bozeman was a great town, and I broke one of my cardinal rules about not having fish more than 300 miles from a coastline and ate dinner at the restaurant my brother-in-law works at, Dave’s Sushi. The next morning we headed out to Yellowstone with my brother-in-law following behind us several hours later. We got to the very busy Yellowstone campsite near Grant Village, and checked in. At check-in we were informed that every couple days a 550 pound grizzly had been wandering through the campsite. The grizzly hadn’t figured out how to get into cars, so it was suggested we store all of our food in our car. After setting up our campsite we headed off to see Old Faithful where we met up with my brother-in-law.
The girls at the entrance to Yellow Stone National Park
The next day we got a late start and headed off to Steamboat Lake State Park in Colorado (just North of Steamboat Springs). Google had routed us South though the Grand Teton National park, though Jackson Wyoming, and eventually meeting up with Interstate 80 for about 50 miles before heading South again into Colorado. Grand Teton National park was filled with a million different views of the same amazing scene of the Tetons. We arrived in Jackson just in time to have a great lunch at the Silver Dollar Bar & Grill. By 4:30 PM it became clear we would not be arriving at our Colorado campsite until fairly late, so we made a stop at the Rock Springs, Wyoming McDonalds to get some quick food for the girls (nothing worse than having hungry AND tired young passengers). Then it was onto I-80 for the only miles of interstate we would drive between Bozeman and Eagle Nest, New Mexico.
Grand Tetons
Unfortunately the desire to really open up our Mazda 5 and see what it could do was too much for Kathy as she got pulled over and ticketed less than 30 minutes before we were to get off the interstate. I think I confused the Wyoming State Patrol officer when I said to him “Oh good, maybe you can help us with some road closures we heard about”. We had seen a sign earlier when getting onto I-80 that said that Wyoming SR-70 was closed indefinitely due to a landslide. I knew our route had us on SR-70 for quite a few miles, but I wasn’t sure if it was before or after our turn off onto the little county road that would take us to Steam Boat Lake. I actually needed to know this, because other alternative plan was continue on I-80 to Laramie or Chyenne and just get a motel room for the night. Unfortunately the officer was no help in this department, but the limited cell service that I had and my iPhone managed to get me enough information to suggest that we would probably be okay. Probably.
view from Steamboat Lake campground
We continued on I-80 for a little longer then onto SR-70. We were listening to the radio and several miles off of I-80 the emergency broadcasting service broke in with a warning of tornadoes in SE Wyoming, “find shelter immediately”. We were in the middle of nowhere, with nothing resembling services anywhere behind or ahead of us. After re-confirming where we were, we decided that the tornadoes where likely quite a ways East of us and we (hopefully) wouldn’t be coming anywhere near them. We got off or SR-70 in the tiny Wyoming town of Baggs, then proceded to visit increasingly smaller towns of Dixon (population 79) and Savery (population 25). Then the pavement ended. Kathy drove us on the next 2 hours on increasingly rougher dirt roads, up into the mountains, as we continued along the dirt road up into the mountains, we were greeted with views of deer running into the woods as the sun was setting. Eventually we reached the location of our campground, the beautiful Steam Boat Lake.
The next morning we casually prepared breakfast, packed the car back up and headed out. We stopped in Steamboat Springs to get Starbucks and wash the car (unlike 4x4s, Mazda 5s don't look cool when they are totally covered in dirt). As we continued on we decided to stop, for the novelty of it, in Leadville Colorado for lunch. At 10,152 feet Leadville is the highest incorporated municipality in the United States. Then on to Buena Vista Colorado where I was inspired to stop for ice cream by Colorado Twitter legend Steve Garufi.
As we left the mountains of Colorado the drive became increasing more boring was we drove to Questa New Mexico, then to Red River New Mexico, and finally arriving at the family cabin near the tiny town of Eagle Nest New Mexico. We had arrived, and had 3 days to relax, before starting the whole crazy road trip back. But that will have to be another post.
Mount Rainier is the highest peak in the state of Washington and a National Park. Every year thousands of people climb it. Although I have always wanted to climb the mountain, it is a fairly large commitment in time (conditioning for the trip) and money (guide service + equipment), so I set a goal that is a fair bit more attainable: hiking to Camp Muir. Camp Muir is the base camp for most climbers of Mount Rainier, and at just above 10,000’ it is the highest point you can hike on the mountain without a climbing permit.
Every year I say I’m going to hike Mount Rainier to Camp Muir, but in the past ten years I have only done this trip 3 times (2003, 2006 and again this year). This year I brought my wife, her sister and husband (who hiked it with me in 2006). In the past we would get up at 3 a.m. drive to Paradise on Mount Rainier at 5,400’, and start hiking hopefully by 7 a.m. but usually closer to 8 a.m.. This year to avoid the super early wake up, and hopefully get an earlier start we stayed at the National Park Inn; a lodge inside the park 8 miles from Paradise at Longmire.
Unfortunately a late wake up and the lure of a hot breakfast at the Longmire lodge pushed our start time on the hike to 8:30 a.m.. Lack of snow meant the path up the mountain was going to be very icy or very rocky. Finally the approach to Camp Muir involved negotiating numerous crevasses, further slowing us down. In the end the hike took us 8 ½ hours, combined with one hour spent at Camp Muir and a wrong turn on the way down, the 9+ mile round trip was 9 ½ hours.
The hike follows excellent trails for the first 2 ½ miles. Then the trails promptly ends at an area called the Muir Snow field. There you begin your travel on snow following a compass heading and other people’s tracks. Before long the snowfield ends and the glaciers begin. Our group lacked crampons so we opted to travel on the rock fields as much as possible rather than travel on the steep icy glaciers. (In 2003 I had a friend slip on the glaciers while coming down. He slid several hundred feet before coming to a stop. The rough ice ripped up his leg, and the bacteria on the glaciers caused him to get a rather nasty infection in the wound).
Despite the long day the trip was well worth it. Our long hike was rewarded with amazing views of Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens and in the distance Mount Hood in Oregon.
I left work early on a Wednesday afternoon to catch a 4:45 p.m. train. My wife met me at the train station with my daughters. We boarded our train to find a very nice family bedroom on the train, our sleeping car attendant Donna greeted us with personal bottles of sparkling wine for my wife and I and sparkling cider for my daughters. Although our family bedroom was not big, it was far larger than anything we had ever shared on a plane or car. While we were at Dinner Donna changed our room from seats to beds. The room was made up of two kid sized bunks, and two adult sized bunks with a larger bottom bunk that was kind of like a small full sized bed. My oldest daughter slept on the top bunk with my younger daughter on the bottom. The top bunk had a strap that kept my daughter from falling out of the bed.
Unfortunately the train did not get the Sightseer lounge car until we met with the train from Portland in Spokane (around midnight), so after we finished dinner in the dining car there wasn't much to do other than hang out in our car. We let the girls got to watch about half a movie on my laptop before going to bed, then my wife and I went to the empty room next to ours and shared a bottle of wine we had brought from home. When I woke up the next morning I was in something of a daze, I wasn't certain what time it was with the time zone change, and for a while I was somewhat worried we had missed our stop and were zooming though Eastern Montana. Donna assured me we hadn't even reached Whitefish Montana yet, so we headed up for breakfast as the train made its Whitefish stop.
From Whitefish Montana it was another two hours of slowly snaking our way though the scenic Southern border of Glacier National Park before we reached our destination of East Glacier Park Village. From the train station it was about a 200 yard walk to the Glacier National Park Lodge where we stayed. I hauled our luggage to the lodge then hiked back to the other side of the train tracks to pick up our rental car.
With our own set of wheels, we headed north to Many Glacier Lodge for lunch. After giving the girls a chance to run around and play in Swift Current Lake (which Many Glacier Lodge sits on the shore of) we headed back to the lodge at East Glacier park. On the way back we saw a number of cars parked on the side of the road with their passengers all out with cameras and one park ranger vehicle with a nervous looking ranger, in Glacier National Park this can mean only one thing: BEAR! So being typical tourists I quickly stopped the car, told my wife and daughters not to get out of the car, then jumped out of the car with my camera. The bear was mostly oblivious to us as it feasted on huckleberries. The ranger, who I now noticed was carrying a shotgun was clearly VERY nervous as he tried to control little old ladies trying to wander across the street to get a better view, and cars stopping mere feet from the bear trying to get a closer picture. I decided that there was a fair chance that the ranger might fire off a shot just to scare off the bear, and I didn't want to deal with two little girls crying from a loud shot gun blast, so I decided it was time to continue back to our lodge.
Back at Glacier National Park Lodge we were finally able to check into our room. The room was basic and rustic; no phone, no TV, no internet, but we did have access to our 3rd floor balcony looking out towards the park. Based on the fact that I spent $175 a night to stay in that room, I have to admit I was a little disappointed the room wasn't a bit nicer, but then again, we didn't come for the room.
The next morning we got a quick continental breakfast with plans to drive up to Logan's Pass. Since it was a vacation I let my girls eat fruit loops for breakfast. With a friends story of getting to Logan's pass and finding the parking lot full I drove as fast as I could safely drive on the windy highway 49. Turns out this was a big mistake. My youngest daughter started whining in the back seat and wouldn't stop. By the time my wife figured out what the problem was my daughter had emptied the contents of her stomach all over the rental car. At that point I was convinced the day was a loss, but my wife cleaned up the mess, and insisted we continue on. A quick stop in the town of St. Mary to get my youngest daughter all new clothing and we were back on our way.
We had no problem finding parking at Logan's pass, and took the girls on an amazing 3 mile hike. My oldest daughter hiked the entire trail on her own, and my youngest daughter spent about 2/3rds of the hike on either my shoulders or my wife's. As we reached the highpoint on the hike mountain goats started appearing from every direction. As three mountain goats walked past me with my youngest daughter on my shoulders I pulled out my camera and told my daughter, "Look there's the 3 billy goats gruff". From my shoulders my daughter started banging my head and shouting "Dat my book daddy! Dat my book!". A little further along the trail and we saw a pair of big horn sheep. They were a bit more skittish of people, but we were still able to get close enough to get some great photos. As we continued on the trail we found a couple of big horn sheep. The big horn sheep were not as interested in getting close to the hikers as the mountain goats were, but they did get close enough for me to get a few great pictures.
For our final day in Glacier National Park we had decided to take it easy and rather than drive to some far corner of the park we went for a Red Bus tour. The bus took us to Two Medicine lake where we took a 45 minute boat trip across the lake and back. Then the bus took us to Running Eagle Falls (a.k.a. Trick Falls), and finally returned us home. We hung out around the lodge and the town of East Glacier before our train trip home.
I look forward to the next opportunity I can visit the park, either on my own or with my family. I feel like we didn't even begin to scratch the surface of what this park has to offer!
Twelve years ago my good buddy Doug and I were at Northwest Folklife festival sitting in a beer garden contemplating our larger plans for the weekend. As fun as the folk life festival can be, we decided we needed to kick things up a notch. It was Friday after a long work week, and another weekend drinking beer just wouldn’t cut it. In those days Doug and I would often embark on ill-planned unsafe crazy adventures with the single goal of having stories to tell people on Monday (Doug still does this). Our plan: see if we could drive to the California border and still be back in time for work on Monday. ROAD TRIP! (Gas prices weren’t so high in 1996).
By 10 PM we had packed Doug’s tiny 88 Subaru hatchback, filled it up with gas, and we were off.
Sixty miles later as we were passing though Olympia and becoming terribly aware of how unrealistic our original goal was. Mid trip we changed our plans to something that seemed much more sensible: climb Mount Hood. A slight change in route and we were headed to Mount Hood.
By 2 AM we were hopeless lost on a very foggy road somewhere on what we believed to be the side of Mount Hood. The fog was so thick that Doug and I had the car doors open so that we could confirm where the stripes were on the road. We were also quickly getting to the point of not-awake-enough-to-be-driving head bob. Before something really bad happened Doug found a place that looked safe to pull off of the road, he pulled over to sleep (did I mention how small his Subaru was?). I opted to sleep in a sleeping bag inside a bivvy sack near the car. Doug was happy sleeping in the car (or just too tired to get out of it).
At 8 AM the next morning I awoke to find that it had rained a fair bit and I was now sleeping in a large puddle; while Doug on the other hand was in severe pain from managing to sleep in positions that would make any yoga master impressed. The spot we had picked to stop was not more than 100 yards from the Timberline Lodge parking lot. Despite wetness and extreme bodily discomfort the need for food was our highest priority so we headed off and eventually found a small convenience store where we loaded up on junk food. Then it was off to Timberline lodge (the starting point for our climb up the south route up Mount Hood). At 9 AM, with no crampons, no rope, no safety gear, and completely neglecting to register our summit attempt, we start up the mountain along Palmer glacier. As we headed up we notice that the only other climbers we see are coming down; actually they’re all just about down at the bottom of the hill. This would be a quick climb we thought; it didn’t dawn on us that most climbers had started up at 4 AM!
Mount Hood is known for very unpredictable weather, but we were lucky. The sun was shining, it was warm and so we hiked on. The hiking trail took us along the perimeter of the ski area and it was depressing watching all the people taking the chair lift up half the distance that we had to hike; but we opted not to use the chairlift. It wasn’t that Doug and I were trying to be purist and avoid mechanical aid in climbing the mountain; rather we were too cheap to buy a lift ticket for just one ride. Half way up the ski area is the Silcox Hut which was a nice stopping point for lunch. We pathetically hiked across the ski area into the hut and got a couple of bowls of chili and continued on. After a long slog we reached Crater Rock and eventually found ourselves crossing Hogsback; the ridge that must be crossed to reach the summit. Hogsback is verry narrow and stretches a fair distance dropping on either side into two of the volcanoes fumaroles. At the end of Hogsback is the infamous bergschrund that swallowed up and killed three climbers on May 30, 2002 (and led to a dramatic televised crash of the rescue helicopter). The real danger of the bergschrund was unknown to us, since it was snow covered. But to be safe I had Doug go first. (I remember back to my mocking of the climbers we had seen earlier in the day who had been roped up).
We eventually reached the summit around 3 PM, enjoyed the view. We were completely spent nothing left to give, and we still had to go back down the mountain. Then suddenly Doug thought it necessary to get naked, something about being on top of a mountain and the feeling of freedom. The view suddenly became a lot less attractive; enough so to get me back on to my feet and begin my descent.
As I headed down I could see Timberline Lodge was off in the distance, the size of a pin point. I started to realize the first reason that everyone else had started up at 4 AM. All the other climbers we had seen returning were able to gently glissade down the mountain in still frozen snow. The retuning climbers had formed a toboggan like path. However, by the time we were got around to descending the snow was complete mush from the day’s warm sun. Attempting to use the glissade path only succeeded in getting by butt wet. I tried to use my arms to get my body to slide, but it didn't help, so I walked. With most every step, my legs sunk knee deep in soft wet snow. Post holing our way down the slope we reached the top of the chair lift only to witness it get shut down for the day.
Eventually Doug and I did reach the car at about 8 PM. We packed up and began the drive home. We made it all of 15 minutes out of the parking lot before we decide we needed to find a place to sleep for the night and there was no way I was going to sleep on the ground or in Doug’s car again (ever!).
We found relatively affordable lodging in the nearby town of Government camp. After dinner, and a good night of sleeping on an actual bed I awoke to find the other reason that hikers start up the mountain at 4 AM. My face was stuck to my pillow. It turns out that a single application of SPF 8 suntan lotion is not enough sun protection when you spend 11 hours in the sun hiking on glacier, between 6,000 and 11,245 feet elevation. My face was beyond burnt, it was actually purple and oozing something.
Despite a week of suffering from painful radiation burns, we did have fun on that trip, but it would be nearly eight years before an attempt was made to repeat the trip…
I work with web sites and software, I play with photography, and I try to get out of the city when I can. However all of this plays second seat to my family.
