The hike out

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.