Sunday most definitely started sometime before midnight Saturday night.Yeah, we weren’t getting much sleep, and decided to get up early and get on with the day rather than continue somewhat futile efforts at sleeping during the rain and thunder. When Karen mumbled a, “finally! It’s 5 a.m.”, I wasn’t sure if I were also glad, or grouchy about having to deal with wet tents. (ok, all you backpacking haters, I will admit it. I really hate this part of backpacking. But really, I got over it the minute our wet campsite was cleaned up).

It was so misty Kim and Karen almost stole our neighbor’s bear bag. But just about the time we headed out, the sun was peaking through the haze. After continuing our journey up, we entered the most gorgeous highland meadows.

These pictures might show about .01% of the beauty? Shall I stop gushing? Sorry, not yet.

We met a couple coming from the other way, who gladly took a picture for us. It was a gorgeous spot, and the fog had lifted. “you know there’s snow ahead, right?” Yeah, we know.

The shoes of the guy? He had those new toe running shoes. We all noticed and laughed about. But this story may end differently without those shoes.

The scenery gradually changed. From meadows we entered more rock and evergreen land. We dodged piles of snow. We passed many tarns:  (not sure what tarn is? look it up, expand your hiking vocabulary. And no, sorry, I did not post a link for you).

More snow and rocks appeared as the trees gradually disappeared. We pass by some more snow patches. “I think this is the snow fields they were talking about”, said Kim. “Hmm…” I reply. I really don’t think so, but maybe?

The wind has a new feel. It’s that icy, it’s-going-to-snow feel. We’re now above the tree line. There around clouds surrounding us again. Did we accidentally walk off into Siberia?

And then we saw it, the snow. This was no snow field for the faint of heart. It was a rather steep uphill snow field, with no away around. And with the mist and fog, we couldn’t even see the top of it. Besides that, our path had basically disappeared. Do we really just hike up onto that thing? Then we saw it.  There were new, fresh imprints in the snow. Our fellow hiker had left us a trail with his toe-shoes.

We head up the snow. Finally Karen called out from ahead, I see rocks! A huge cairn greeted us at the top. (Don’t know what a cairn is? Better look that up too, never know when you’ll be hiking through snow and might need to know).  However, along with the welcome cairn was another realization. Another huge un-ending snow field lay ahead.  This one had a pretty good trail marked, so we headed out, I admit with a few feelings of trepidation. Karen vocalized our thought, “So do you think if we’d get lost here we would ever find out way out?” Karen, Karen, we’ve been following the cairns! we won’t get lost. Not to mention all the random cairns I’d seen NOT along the trail.

In this moment, I was glad I had bothered to ask Google if there are wolves on Mt Rainier–there are not. This most definitely looked like wolf territory.

It’s like snowboarding. Except you’re carrying your board. And you fell off the ski-lift. And there is actually no ski-lift.

We tarried on, after the 2nd uphill snowfield, we crested our portion of the mountain. Unfortuantely, there were no fabulous views, due to the fog, but we were ecstatic to be heading downhill. Trees again! Mixed in with some more flat snow fields, but the wind had lost it’s blizzard chill.

We entered elk country. With no elk unfortunately. Only a lonely marmot.

yeah, I’m ready to hike out.

A few more miles of meadows, forests, creeks and waterfalls followed. One last uphill trek couldn’t stop us now. Mowich Lake, we have returned!

A final very grungy group photo. We really were quite happy, although we look mostly tired in the picture. Can we make it the last 200 yards to the car? And basically thinking about food and getting out of my rain gear pants into clean clothes.

Yay for DQ! If the lady at the counter was concerned about 4 limping, dirty, I washed my face in a creek this morning and haven’t looked in mirror since girls, she hid it well.

The thoughts “ouch” and “brrr” collided in my brain as I woke up.  It was probably in the 50s or warmer, but I guess I’m a little hard to please as I wake up. And my calves were pretty upset at the abuse they suffered from our downhill climb the day before. But hey, nothing eating some hot cooked oatmeal can’t fix, right?

Thankfully the sun was out bright and beautiful, and we only had about 7 miles of hiking planned for the day. A more relaxing day was in store. Our water bottles filled, and tents again in our packs, we headed out.

Gorgeous scenery ensued. We spent most of the day hiking along the Carbon River. Huge trees lay like toothpicks across the river, results from floods and river changing its coarse over the past few years.

After not being able to see the glorious peaks of Mt Rainier since the afternoon before, we were again delighted and awed by it’s beauty.

Setting a camera on self-timer is not so hard. However, it’s hard to get up from the rock you’re sitting on, while wearing a 20+ pound pack and into the picture before it starts taking. Sorry Kim 🙂

and success.

Now time to move on into the interior rainforst. This inland, temperate rainforst was a fascinating ecosystem for sure. I was fairly sure I saw a fairy fluttering around some large mushrooms, and  a few gnomes peeked out from under mossy rock piles.

Our travels continued to a side trail where could hike up to the the tip of the Carbon Glacier. Cool right? A glacier. I had pictures of a gorgeous white snow mass. None of us really thought it through too much. Because what we found was this:

A rock pile? Sometimes I fail to think clearly on some matters. Like the fact that it was September and hadn’t snowed for  5 months. And that rocks apparently fall in onto of a glacier as it melts in the summer? I don’t know, but the Carbon River is sourced by this glacier, so it’s pretty powerful. I’m sure had we bothered to hike further we would had better views. But we continued on, still in slight shock at how strange (ugly?) this glacier was.

A suspension bridge took us over the river. We chatted with a middle aged couple relaxing on some rocks eating subs. When we asked them where they were going they preceded to describe the same trails we were doing. However, they we doing our 3 day trip, in one day. Flabbergasted we continued our now steeply ascending trail. How could anyone do this trail all in one day? And how could they be sitting so relaxed on those rocks?

We stop for a minute to rest when a couple passes us up on the trail. Kate talked to them.”Well” she said, “I told them, ‘I thought we’d be seeing you soon’ ” Confused, we looked at her. “weren’t they the couple we talked to back further?” No…… The poor lady was probably a little concerned for us all. She’d never seen us before, but Kate says that we’d been expecting them. We laughed for a while over that.

We got to our campsite pretty early and set up, and started getting supper ready when it happened. It started to rain. I’ll keep this short, but our tents weren’t necessarily ideal for rain. Specifically the 2 person tent.

I don’t even know how to talk about that night, the tents, and the rain without wanting to burst into giggles with tears mixed in. There were 4 girls in a 3 person tent. It rained. It thundered, loud, echoing, rolling thunder.  I woke up hoping it was morning for how uncomfortable I was. Kim was sitting up, so I hissed, “what time is it?” Kate immediately says, “Did you sleep yet?” Oh, Karen is awake too, “guys….it’s not even midnight yet” We laughed and laughed, tired, desperate to sleep giggles.

A trip to the west coast! Repeatedly, people would ask, “So what brings you to Washington?” Hmm… to see Washington? It’s an interesting story, but to put it simply, 4 friends jumped on a plane and headed to Seattle.

Fast forward to later that evening in a motel in Seattle. Last minute details were arranged, and bags packed. Sadly, we never had a scale to weigh our packs, so insert here how heavy you want to imagine them to be. Pretty sure mine started out somewhere in the 20 pound range, and was at least 60-70 pounds by the time we hiked out.

In the morning our excitement grew as we drove towards the gorgeous hibernating volcano. I kept my vivid imagination to myself, which involved anything from an unexpected volcanic explosion, to a rabid mountain lion (or an entire pack), to someone falling off a cliff. (none of this happened, in case you are concerned)

The trailhead was at Mowich Lake.  With such incredible beauty, what might be waiting along the trail? We said goodbye to the car, and headed out into the forest. I was delighted to find a beautiful, well-kept trail. I can’t even describe the scenery, you really have to go see it for yourself. But huge evergreen trees surrounded us, with rock ledges above and below us.  Occasionally we had sightings in the distance of the snow-capped wonder. After a mile, we turned off the main trail to head uphill a mile to Lake Eunice.

The rather strenuous extra 2 miles were completely worth it with this fabulous view.

Back on the mail trail we met some charming ladies at Ipsut Pass who took our picture before we headed the next 5 miles down. Down. Down. And down. “How is is possible to keep going downhill?” Our toes became very frustrated with us. But switch-backs continued our way down.  Creeks and streams sang beside us as waterfalls tumbled over mossy rocks. (Places like this just can’t be put into words. It’s more a feeling that only those that have been there can still feel somewhere deep inside of them. Trust me on this). But after a while we could hardly care about anything other than getting to our campsite. We stayed the night at Ipsut Creek Campground. The advantage of this campground is that it used to be car accessible until a flood washed the road out several years ago. So we were quite pleased to have accommodation of bear-lockers, picnic tables and an outhouse.

I’ll put my confession here. I never really looked at the elevation of our descent/ascent of the hike we were doing. By the time we pulled out the topographical map that first night, our feet already told us what we would find.  Our campsite was about 2400 ft ASL, 2900 ft lower than Lake Eunice which sat at 5300 ft. (That’s over twice as far down as the world trade centers were high) Is your brain going where mine was? Would we have to hike back up that same elevation? No, actually higher. The peak of our trail would occur at 6300 ft. Thankfully, the climb would be spread over the next 2 days.

We had a gorgeous evening next to the Carbon River, which is sourced by the Carbon Glacier we would hike to the next day. Over rice and beans I smiled at my co-hikers. Don’t worry, your pack won’t even feel heavy when you put it back on tomorrow morning. And those blisters and sore muscles will just heal right up over night. And even if I’m lying, would you like to turn around and go back up that hill we came down today? No, I didn’t think so…

I’m drinking my second ginger ale for the day. Or is it the third? It all becomes muddled from skipping across these great united states on multiple flights. I’m quite sure that in the moment if buying the plane ticket a decision was made, something like this: “let’s get the cheapest one possible! It starts out by heading west instead of east? With 2 layovers? But 18 dollars cheaper!”
But we already know the pains of traveling by air, so I’ll skip talking about that.
Because as a matter of fact, I’m feeling fairly content with life at the moment. there is something to be said for returning to a normal schedule after the chaos of a vacation.
I experienced so many incredible sights and adventures on this trip. But here’s a shout out to the best travel partners, Karen, Kim, and Kaitlyn. They endured the backpacking portion of the trip with great excitement and hardly a complaint.