Bauers in Seattle
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Northern Loop Trail
[chris]
What a trip. We were up, packed, and on the road by 6:30 Monday morning on our way to Mt. Rainier. Beat rush hour traffic through downtown and had some great views of the mountain. The weather was perfect, not a cloud in the sky and about 65 degrees.
As we entered Mt. Rainier National Park we stopped and checked in at the backcountry ranger station. We then drove on up to the visitor center and trail head.
The weather for our first day was perfect. A little on the cool side but greatly appreciated for our first few climbs.The trail started off heading straight up and it wasn't long before we started having some amazing views of the mountain and surrounding valleys and were quickly out of breath.
Some of the forests that we hiked through had huge 6-9' diameter trees. It was very interesting seeing the different forests at varying altitudes and life cycles and how much they differed in plant life, size, and density.
We crossed little mountain streams all day long and a few larger rivers coming from the glaciers. The rivers were all milky white in color from all of the fine sedimentation coming from the glaciers.
We hiked by some amazing waterfalls. We always had to stop and pump some fresh water or just take the packs off and enjoy them for awhile.
This is a picture of our first camp. We were all tired after the first day and did a lot of laying around once we arrived at camp. Matt and I ended up cooking our dinners around 4 and were all cleaned up and ready for bed by about 5:30. We sat around and talked for an hour or so and had a deer wander through camp which kept us up another 30 minutes. But we were all in bed and quickly fell asleep soon after 7.
The next day we had a long hike up to windy gap, a high mountain pass. We found a nice grove of trees to have lunch and relax. We all kicked off our shoes and had a quick nap. Matt also found that his cell phone could get reception if you stood in just the right spot and even then it was spotty but we still all called a few people.
After a nice hour break and lunch we were off again down the trail. About 1000 feet down the trail from the pass we noticed this little trail heading along the ridge to the left. Jack decides we should give it a shot and see where it goes. We check the map and see that Crescent Lake is up on the nearby ridge. So we backtrack a little ways and start heading towards the trail up the side of the ridge.
There isn't much of a trail and the path that we saw ended up being more of a mountain goat trail then anything. But we kept going up the side of the mountain heading towards the lake on the map. We soon caught a glimpse of the lake and that was enough to keep us going. We headed up and up and finally got to the lake. The lake was amazing, crystal clear water with unbelievable shades of blue. We decided that we might camp there instead of heading down to our reserved campsite because of the amazing views and lake.
We all started walking around the lake looking for a good flat sandy spot to put our tents and finally found one. We all dropped out packs and soon were sleeping in the sun. Jack and I were then awaken by a yell from Matt. It ended up that he woke up and decided to head up the near by mountain. Jack and I both awoke and watched him climb the side of the mountain taking pictures of him.
We then decided that we also had enough energy to give it a shot and started climbing the up to meet him. It was a fairly steep climb but we were soon on the top of the ridge overlooking Crescent Lake. Once we were on top of the ridge we noticed a bank of gray clouds moving across the adjacent mountain chains. We quickly decided we better head back down since we hadn't put any of our rain covers on our bags and our tents weren't set up yet.
We quickly scampered down the mountain and all arrived at our packs. We then decided that it might be better to head over to our reserved camp site across the valley because the next days hike was going to be tough and we really didn't want to add any distance to it. Again we looked at the map and made a group decision to try and contour around the valley and end up at camp in no time rather then back track the way we came. With the rain clouds moving in we started off at a good pace but quickly ran into problems. The 80' contour interval maps we had didn't show all of the ravines and valleys along the ridge that it soon became appart that we couldn't get through with our loaded packs on our backs.
We ended up climbing up and around many of them and were quickly exhausted due to the very steep mountain side that we were on and our previous hiking. We then saw a possible route down through the valley and I went down without my pack to check it out. It was a little steep but doable. Matt and Jack followed and we climbed through the steam valley and soon found the trail that we were supposed to be on. We arrived at camp, set our tents up, and had a quick dinner and were ready for bed. Right as we climbed into out tents it started to rain.
It rained all night long and continued as the sun came up. We soon decided that there was no end in site and started packing up to hit the trail. With our raincoats on we started hiking. We were all still very tired and soar from all of the previous day hiking and our side hike up the mountain that we were moving pretty slow. We were all completely soaked most of the day. We met up with the Wonderland Trail and spent some time checking out a nice suspension bridge spanning one of the rivers.
The final hike to camp was brutal. Right as we thought we were getting over the final ridge another one would appear. We finally saw Mystic Lake and headed to camp. Right as we arrived at our campsite the rain died off and the sun came out. We quickly hung everything we had out to dry and layed down for
a nap. The sun only lasted about 30 minutes and soon it was starting to rain again. We set our somewhat dry tents up and climbed in to continue our nap in our damp, but warm, sleeping bags. After an hour or so the rain let up and we all crawled out to cook some dinner in the light rain/mist.
It rained on and off throughout the night
and we awoke to an end in the rain and even saw some small patches of blue sky. It was a fairly nice day and we were all rested up and ready to head to the car. We hiked by a couple glaciers and along a couple rivers coming out from under the glaciers. The views were amazing of the mountain and glaciers but soon the clouds moved in again and covered everything in a thick fog.
As we continued up over skyscraper pass and descended towards the car we were completely surrounded by clouds. Right as we arrived at the car it began to rain again. We threw our packs in the car and grabbed our bags of clean clothes to change into. We checked out the visitors center and then headed down the mountain to find some hot food. We pulled into McDonald's and ordered 6 double cheese burgers, a quarterpounder, 3 fries, 3 drinks, and 3 ice creams and ate it all.
We arrived in Seattle to see rush hour traffic heading through downtown but soon arrived home where we started doing laundry and had a long awaited hot shower.
***We are still having a few problems posting pictures. We have all of our pictures posted on a Yahoo site with the link on Jacks blog posting.
