Glacier Peak Wilderness Hike

Here are some belated pics from our last hike. We planned a 7 day/6 night hike, but it quickly devolved into a snowfest, forcing us to make the difficult decision to turn back. It was disheartening, but even the part we saw was absolutely gorgeous. Enjoy!

This trail head map shows the lower half of our planned route. We were going to take the largest loop starting from the "You Are Here" arrow and going counter-clockwise. Instead, we made it out and back to Blue Lake.

Here are the most recent trail conditions. (Notice the date at the top.) Also, rejoice that the bears and mt. lions have not yet teamed up to attack hikers. Phew!

Due to a road closure, we started our hike with a seven mile trek up the road just to get to the trail head. The one plus was that these beautiful flowers were bountiful. Oh, and we saw a fox! She was too quick for a pic, but a delightful treat nonetheless.

Albino spider?

Giant, Dinosaur kale. Edible? It was so beautiful I really wanted to make a trail salad.

Stream crossing, less challenging than it looks.

Ramen snack at Rainy Camp, our first night in the bush.

Tent site

I hope these are salmon berries because we ate a bunch of them. While we were at Rainy Camp, a bear hunter came through and told us the orange ones were good to eat, just stay away from the hairy ones. These were both hairy and orange - hmm. We weren't pleased to be on a trail that attracted a bear hunter, but heartened to hear that he didn't so much as see one. "No berries yet," he explained. Is that a good sign or not? The berries haven't attracted the bears yet, but maybe they are lurking nearby and HUNGRY without the expected glut of berries.

After Rainy Camp, we headed up the side of Pilot Ridge - a steep two mile climb that we were not exactly looking forward to. First we crossed the South Fork of the Sloan River via fallen trees.

Too focused to stop for a picture.

There are few pictures of us climbing the ridge. It was a hard slog up, but once we gained the ridge, the views were worth it. Here is Glacier Peak peeking through a forest window.

Lunch time in the sun to try to dry the sweat that was cooling me too quickly for comfort.

What is he so happy about? This is a hard hike!

So pretty. I wish we could identify all the prominent peaks visible from Pilot Ridge, but we don't know the topography around here well enough (and our map was too zoomed in).

Eventually the snow began. This patch was easy enough to traverse, but it made wayfinding quick difficult. Basically, we just tried to head towards the top of the ridge and would eventually rediscover the trail.

After the snow and some buggy, foresty bits, we made it to open meadow. Breathtaking, especially when coupled with the snowy peaks crowding every inch of the horizon.

Here is a nice view of both meadow, valley and some of the less prominent snowy peaks.

We knew we were too early because we were among the first human feet of the season to grace the trail and try to knock back the wildflowers from their largely unchecked encroachment on the trail.

Surely Blue Lake is around here somewhere...The day wore on and we were still miles away from our destination.

Here is what looks to me like a yellow avalanche lily. They were multitudinous near marshy snow melt.

Although I swore that I was going to stop stopping to take pictures because the day was getting very late and we were no where near Blue Lake, I had to stop for this marmot. It is difficult to discern in the picture, but he basically has a white mohawk. I think he must have a white winter coat that he is slowly losing. 

This picture of Rainier was taken when we found a suitably flat spot to camp for the night. It took a lot of effort just to get here, we lost the trail, backtracked, climbed a snow field then a grassy knoll (grassy knoll sounds so beautiful, but it was a bitch - I was on my hands and knees clinging to these low growing plants and using their roots as my own because it was so steep), then we found trail, then we discovered we were on the wrong trail, then the sun went down, then we found a flat-ish spot covered in wildflowers and decided that it was the perfect place to camp. Blue Lake be damned! (Along the way, we actually spotted the lake - completely frozen). Camping on top of the flowers was really our only option at that point, the trail was too steep to attempt going any further in the dark and the temperature was dropping quickly. We sort of went into survival mode (just after I took this picture). We gathered water from a snowmelt trickle nearby and made soup and dinner and scarfed it, admired the stars as we danced from foot to foot to keep warm and then made a break for the tent. We were fine, but we don't like to get that close to being not fine. Getting into the tent felt safe until I realized that Robert was still shivering, even with all of his clothes on and in his sleeping bag. Uh-oh. We promised each other to wake the other up if we got TOO cold, but really we knew that there wasn't anything else we could do to get any warmer. Thankfully though, our tent is the best little insulator in the world and we only woke up to peel off layers as we overheated in our sleep. It was an intense day.

Couldn't decide which picture I liked better. Which do you like best?

Our blessed flat spot. I was trying to dry out my still sweat soaked clothes before having to get out of my long unders.

At breakfast, the bugs were terrible, but the view was nice.

Robert contemplates what we should do next. (The smudge is probably a hummingbird. They were continually buzzing us and my bright red backpack especially.)

A snowmelt lake formed in the valley on one side of us.

And this, my friends, is Blue Lake. It was at the bottom of the valley, we just stopped before descending. What help is a frozen lake? You still basically have to melt snow for any water.

This is the next pass we would need to hike through to continue our loop hike. Looks daunting and very snowy! At the bottom of the valley you can spot Little Blue Lake, which actually isn't frozen, but we didn't notice that initially.

This is a view of the trail that we traversed the night before. You can see two sections of distinct trail, otherwise the trail is under the snow -- somewhere. We came up the grassy bit between the two snowfields on the far right of the picture. 

Pause to enjoy the wildflowers that remind me of Dr. Seuss.

This is a picture of a very scary section of trail. Trail? Yes. The "trail" is somewhere under the snow and then comes out of the snow at the elevation of the three trees on the left and leads into the trees on the right. We were up there and had to get down. The snow proved too steep for us without crampons, so we opted to climb down the snow/dirt interface on the right. This descent began with me pointing my butt down the slope and putting my belly button on the dirt of the trail, sliding my feet down the slope until they caught on some branches. (Basically a very elegant reverse body-slide.) I got off my belly at the first substantial foot hold and tried a controlled slide using my knee to brace against the snow. This continued until the land got too steep to slide in a controlled manner, so I crawled deeper into the trees. I tried to lower myself down between two curved trunks, which would have worked, but my pack was too wide. I ended up getting caught and dangling from my pack with my feet scrambling for a hold. I couldn't reach anything until I unclipped my pack and dropped to my feet. I freed my pack and then opted to slide it down the rest of the steep bit without me attached. It thankfully stopped rolling before going over the cliff. It was a trippy experience and most amusingly - I wasn't the scared one!

Snow hiking is made easier when you borrow trekking poles from your brother!

Sometimes it is still a little scary - hence the bent knees and stooped over posture.

The wildflowers love me.

Robert handled the snow much better than I did, but even he struggled to keep his feet at times. Notice that the camera is being held level -- the hillside is really just that steep!

No matter the snow, the view continued to amaze us.

We are still newbies to snow hiking and one lesson we learned this time is that snow melts when the sun has time to heat it through. Overnight, snow freezes up again. This matters because we were able to get snowmelt water last night, but this morning the snow was refrozen and we couldn't get water! Oops. By lunchtime we still hadn't found a good water source so we had to boil snow. It would have been fine except that we tried to boil the first batch in last night's dinner pot (without cleaning it), thinking the hot water would soften the dried on cheese, instead it burned and then all our water tasted like burning. Ugh.

We made it halfway down Pilot Ridge and found a good enough campsite to break up the hike out. (We decided to turn back because we were too nervous about snow in the next pass to risk continuing.)

Even a forest campsite has a view on this hike

Squatting to tend the fire. I learned the pose from the Southeast Asians who use this pose to wait at the bus stop. 

Last decent picture from the trip. After camping the night partway down the ridge, we hiked all the way back to the car and went into town for real groceries! Yumm


We did not enjoy the hike out on the road because it took forever, but we were overjoyed upon reaching our car. Not only was the hiking over, but our car wasn't broken in to! The car parked in front of ours did and there were hand prints on all the windows where someone cupped their hands around their face to get a better view of our treasures. The tailgate was also open - thankfully the bed topper lock that we just replaced held up just fine. Phew. Poor truck in front of ours had the driver's side window smashed and who knows what was taken. We had heard reports of trailhead vandalism from the bear hunter we ran into and apparently he wasn't kidding. I was so nervous about Robert's computer being stolen - it is our only backup of all of our pictures!! That will change soon.


Overall- amazing hike, just too early in the season.