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This was originally posted August 18, 2019.
Some of you may be aware that I love being outdoors, specifically hiking outdoors. I’ve been consistently doing day hikes for a number of years now but up until last year it had been a long time since I did any serious backpacking. Last year I started buying some new gear and decided I would try to go on at least one backpacking adventure each summer with a goal of backpacking into the wilderness at least three or four nights at a time each year. Last summer I completed a loop of ~45 miles in the wilderness north of Lake Wenatchee and had a great time despite the fires raging in the region.
This summer Karen had a girlfriend getting married in San Diego the first weekend in August and since she has family down there she decided to make a week of it with Sam and Karen’s mom, Mary. Their plan of being gone all week spurred me to look at taking the same time off to go on my own trip. I had backpacked around Mt Hood 20+ years ago on the Timberline Trail and that was a wonderful experience. The Wonderland Trail similarly goes around Mt Rainier but is almost double the length of the Timberline Trail. Where the Timberline is around 45 miles, the official distance of the Wonderland Trail is 93. Most people do the Wonderland in 8 to 12 days.
I’m going to break this write up into sections. Feel free to pick and choose what you want to read and jump to the sections you might be interesting in and skip the others. Or, alternatively, feel free to just delete the whole thing and move on with life. There are various links to pictures and whatnot. Again, pick and choose what is interesting to you, or not.
What you’re going to find is that the story is mostly about the experiences and people that I ran into along the way and less about the trail itself. It’s really long so if you’re just interesting in the trail then it’s easiest to just skip down to the links and look at photos!
1) Preparation
2) Itinerary
3) The Hike
4) People
5) Spirituality
6) Wildlife
7) Statistics
8) Equipment
9) Links (photos and whatnot)
1) Preparation
In recent year hiking and backpacking have exploded in popularity. It’s easy to see why. Technology rules our lives and it’s easy to be overwhelmed with the constant surge of information coming from all sides, particularly social media. Hiking is one way to leave that behind if only for just a short while. Ironically many of the most loved trails have become victim to this popularity and are basically freeways through the woods. I would love to do the Pacific Crest Trail, which is a 2,650 miles trail that follows the Sierra and Cascade mountain ranges, when I retire but because of movies like “Wild” (which I haven’t seen) and media bloggers like “Darwin on the Trail” and “Homemade Wanderlust” (both of whom I follow and enjoy immensely) even “extreme” adventures like that have become goals for everyone and their mother. Am I a victim of the same advertising and do I simply fall into this category? Hmm… Maybe.
Anyhow, because of this the trails and the resources protecting them are being overwhelmed and the National Parks Service has had to put restrictions on the number of people allowed in at any point in time. These are fragile ecosystems and they’re easily destroyed by a few careless people. Google “John Muir Trail” and you’ll quickly find out how difficult it is to get a “ticket” to spend time in the wilderness is. The funny thing is that a lot of this is driven by the media influencers and they focus on these popular destinations. Get a few miles off the most popular trails and you’ll never see another person. The Wonderland Trail is no exception and so in order to spend the night on the trail you can only stay at designated camps and at any of the campgrounds on the trail you must have a permit. So, if you want to hike the Wonderland in nine days you must have a permit for each night and you can only stay in the place you have a permit for. Eight nights equals eight permits for eight camps. If you start the trail and find you can’t keep the scheduled itinerary you have planned then technically you are camping illegally. Furthermore others will most likely have permits for where you are and will ask you to leave. More about that later…
There is a application process each March for itineraries around the mountain. You pay $20 and put in an application with your planned scheduled dates and the number of nights you would like to be on trail. Do you want to go clockwise or counterclockwise around the mountain, what camps would you like to stay in on what nights? You put all of this on an application and some poor soul at the National Parks Service tries to match all this up. I put in my application with all sorts of flexibility (large window in time, flexible in number of days, don’t care which direction, etc…). Even with this I got the sad news in April that they couldn’t make anything work for me. All is not lost though! About 30% of the sites are set aside for “walk up” permits. Also, if you have a permit from the lottery in March and don’t check in by 10am on the day you are supposed to start then you forfeit your permit and it goes back in to the pool. There are four ranger stations around the mountain where you can go each day and try to secure an on-the-spot itinerary. If you’re flexible supposedly they can almost always come up with something that will work. I decided to go this route and see what I could get.
In order to position myself for the best possible odds of getting permits I wanted to be there when the ranger station opened. The ranger station at Paradise opens 30 minutes prior to the other three so I picked that one hoping that would give me the best odds. The risk in going to Paradise is that is also where most of the climbing permits are given for those going to the top of the mountain, which is one reason they open earlier. There was no point in going to the ranger station that opened 30 minutes early if there were 12 climbers waiting in the front of the line, so my plan was to be first in line!
I got up at 1:30 Sunday morning, August 4th, and headed out. Paradise is a long drive from our house but other than a herd of elk in the road east of Elbe the drive was uneventful. I got there at 5am and the first problem was finding the right building. It doesn’t do any good to get there 2 hours early and then sit outside the wrong building! The information I had read said permits were issues at the Wilderness Information Center but it wasn’t clear which building that was. Luckily it’s marked on Google maps so I had a pretty good idea. There is also a Ranger Station, which would be where you might expect the permits to get issued. This is the first building you see from the parking lot and there was a girl sitting on the steps. I went over and talked to her and she was there for the same thing as I. Her name was Tera and she had driven overnight from Salem and got there an hour earlier than me. I told her I was pretty sure she was at the wrong place so we wandered around a bit together and finally found what looked to be the correct building and entrance. It didn’t say anything about Wonderland Trail permits but did indicate it was the climbing center and since the permits for both are issued from the same place we felt it must be correct. We tried the door and found it open. Inside was a foyer with some benches where we could sit and wait for the center to open. Tera and I talked for a bit and I found that she had quite a bit of long trail experience. She had hiked the John Muir Trail and several other longer hikes. After about an hour another couple showed up. Brad and his daughter, Bella, were hiking together. This was Brad’s third time hiking the trail although his first time in about 20 years. I don’t think Bella had ever done and long overnight trips but she was up for the challenge. The four of us hung out and chatted for the next hour. A group of climbers came in just as the center was getting ready to open.
So, we’re in! This being a government agency though there were issues. People were just coming back from vacation so they didn’t know what was going on, computers were down so they had to get a laptop, they couldn’t get the printer to work, etc… The only hope is that the other ranger stations would have the same chaos when they opened!
Tera was first and eventually managed to get the exact itinerary she had hoped for. I was next and was pretty flexible.
I got close to what I wanted starting the next morning (Monday). Most people go clockwise around the mountain but because I’m just that way I wanted to go counter-clockwise. I wanted seven nights (eight days) but in order to make it work I had to do eight nights, with day four being a short day. This ended up working out fine as you’ll see. I also got nights scheduled both the night prior to me starting the trail and the night finishing the trail. This was nice, especially to start, because otherwise I would have had to find some place to spend the night Sunday night and then got up the next morning to drive to the trailhead.
Brad and Bella were last and because they wanted more nights on trail it was a bit harder for them to get an itinerary. They finally managed to make something work. I think they were on trail 12 or 14 nights.
One nice thing about a huge loop like this with multiple ingress and egress points is that people have multiple trailheads they can start from. You can also drop food caches at multiple points around the loop so you don’t have to pack 10 days worth of food. I started at Mowich Lake and dropped food at Longmire and White River. This was ideal because from Mowich to Longmire was three days, Longmire to White River was three days and then another two days back to Mowich. Technically Mowich is also a place you can cache food but it’s not as secure as the other locations and there were people who said they had food stolen from that site. Not good if you’re depending on that for your next three or four days of nutrition!!!
The problem with the food caches when you’re a single party like me is that I had to then drive to each of these places to drop food. It’s a long drive around Mt Rainier! I left Paradise around 8:30 and drove back down the mountain to Longmire and left my found at the Longmire ranger station. You put your food and whatnot in a plastic bucket with a lid and mark it with your name, permit number and expected date of pick up and then they hold it for you. Nice. I asked if they had any spare buckets and the girl laughed. “How many do you want? We have thousands!”
From Longmire I drove back up the mountain past Paradise again, back down the mountain on the Stevens Canyon Road to highway 123 and up to 410 which takes you to the White River entrance to the park.
I had almost gotten to 410 when I came across a couple standing next to their car. The road at that point had no shoulder at all and their car was half in the road and half in the ditch. I stopped and they explained they had hit a rock in the road and had a flat tire. Even if they had a spare there was no safe place to change the tire. The only way you could do it would be to pull the car back onto the middle of the highway and hope no one hit you while you tried to change it. There was no cell service so I told them I was going to the nearest ranger station at White River and that I would take them there, where I was sure there was probably a phone they could use. It turns out they were Chinese students in the states attending college in Michigan. They had come out to Seattle for four days and this was the last day of their trip before returning to Detroit. I told them I had to go into the park at White River but would drop them at the ranger station and they could call the rental car company and try to work something out. I let them know I would stop back by the ranger station on my way back out of the park and if need be give them a ride to Enumclaw, which was on may way to Mowich Lake and was the nearest town.
By that time it was around 10 am and there was a long line at the White River entrance. It took us about 20 minutes to get into the park. Later I heard that the day before the line had gone from the entrance all the way back to highway 410, which is about 1.5 miles!
I dropped the kids (yeah, people in their 20’s are officially kids to me) off at the entrance and drove the five miles up to the White River Patrol cabin, which is where the food cache is. I got there only to find that because of limited space in the storage containers they want you to leave your food bucket back at the entrance point and then they bring your food up for you a day before your planned arrival! Back down the mountain I go… I got back to the entrance just in time to see a park ranger leaving with the couple. He was going back to the rental car with them to see if he could change the tire. This was way better than me trying to help them because he had an official park police car with lights and whatnot and he had the authority to stop traffic and do whatever was necessary to be safe. I didn’t see the couple again but the ranger assured me they would be taken care of.
I finally made it to Enumclaw about 12:30, had lunch in town and then headed up to Mowich Lake. As a “park entrance” the road to Mowich is the one less traveled of all of the major entry points. You end up driving on a washboard riddled dirt road for about 15 miles up to the lake. It was late in the afternoon by this point and cars were parked along side the road for about a mile down from the lake but fortunately it was late enough in the day that people were starting to leave. I drove on top to the trailhead and scored a parking spot only five or six spots from the campground entrance. Sweet!
Mowich Lake has about 20 campsites, half of which are reserved for Wonderland Trail permit holders. There were five of us staying the night there that night. A father and son that I didn’t talk to much, an older gentleman named Jeffery from Santa Cruz (or was it Santa Clara?), a couple (Nisha and Brandon, at least I’m calling him Brandon because I kept forgetting his name), and a latecomer to camp, Candice.
Jeffery looked to be in his 70’s and appeared to have spent most of his life outdoors. He had a huge pack but I have no idea what could have been in it because it certainly wasn’t a tent. His sleep system consisted of a piece of plastic and a sleeping bag. He used rope to rig the plastic into a kind of cover but there wasn’t any place to tie rope here so he was slept in his bag on the open ground. Luckily it was nice weather but the dew was heavy that night so his bag was wet in the morning. He was about seven days into the trip at that point and had family from Olympia that met him at the campground and provided him with food for the next section of trail.
Nisha and Brandon were engineers, she at Microsoft and he at some start up company he had only worked a couple of weeks at. As part of his hiring process he negotiated time off to do the hike. They were very interesting and we spent a fair amount of time talking. They were four days into the trail and were going clockwise (as most do). One interesting aspect of going the opposite way as most people is that I routinely saw people on the trail more than once and I would see Nisha and Brandon again on their final day on the trail a few days later.
Candice showed up late in the day. She had a huge 45 lb pack of all new gear and looked like a walking REI advertisement. She said she was doing the trail to celebrate her 50th birthday. Kudos to her but from the start I was concerned about her fitness and planning. I’m not sure she had ever spent more than a couple of nights outdoors and some of her equipment choices probably weren’t the best. She had a 22 ounce beer to “celebrate the start of the adventure” and pulled out a full size leatherman tool to open it. Her permit had her starting at Mowich Lake the next morning, same as me, but she still had to drive back to White River and Longmire to do her food drops. Why she would drive all the way up to Mowich to spend the night and then have to go all the way back to the other ranger stations to drop food and then back to Mowich and hike to the next camp on Monday didn’t make any sense. Why not spend the night closer to one of the other sites where you had to leave food? The only thing that saved her is that her first day had her spending the night at South Mowich River, which was only 3.4 miles away. Somehow though by the fifth night she was supposed to catch up to me at Nickel Creek. I wished her well but in my mind I was going to be shocked if I saw her again. I did not ever see her again, but that’s not the end of her story…
2) Itinerary
What? You’re shocked we’ve made it this far? Told you this might take awhile.
Here was my assigned itinerary. The mileage is what I actually recorded.
8/5 – Mowich Lake to Golden Lakes, 11.5 miles
8/6 – Golden Lakes to South Puyallup, 12.63 miles
8/7 – South Puyallup to Pyramid Creek, 10.48 miles
8/8 – Pyramid Creek to Cougar Rock, 7.04 miles (this was my short day)
8/9 – Cougar Rock to Nickel Creek, 15.36 miles (the longest day)
8/10 – Nickel Creek to Summerland, 11.62 miles
8/11 – Summerland to Sunrise, 13.85 miles
8/12 – Sunrise to Mystic Lake, 9.85 miles
8/13 – Mystic Lake to Mowich Lake 14.82 miles (back to start)
3) The Hike
3a) Day one, Mowich Lake to Golden Lakes.
This was a pretty easy day. Mostly in the woods down to the South Mowich River and then back up through the woods to Golden Lakes. This kind of sets the tone for the Wonderland Trail. The whole trail is either straight up or straight down. Up to a ridge and then back down to a river.
For the most part the river crossings are just logs placed across the river. These tend to wash out and then you have to find a safe place to ford the river. Luckily all the logs were in place for me but I did hear later that the South Mowich crossing washed away, or came very close a few days after I was there. Mid-August is actually when the rivers run the highest because it’s the warmest time of the year and the glaciers are melting. One dangerous thing that can happen is that the glacier can melt behind an ice dam and when the dam finally breaks the water all comes down at once, essentially causing a flash flood. Per a ranger I talked to later when I was at Longmire picking up my food supply this happened that week to another of the trails in the park and they had to close the trail temporarily, although the crossing on the Wonderland wasn’t affected.
I met Jeffery again down at the South Mowich river crossing. He had his sleeping bag out drying on the rocks. We leapfrogged each other a few mores times that day. He was also spending the night at Golden Lakes so I would see him again.
I reached the Golden Lakes camp around 2pm and picked my spot. There were five designated spots in this campground plus one group spot. You must camp in a designated spot but the specific sites aren’t preassigned. You just pick one out of whichever sites are left when you get there. The group sites are reserved for groups between six and twelve people, twelve being the most they allow in a group on the trail. Parties up to five people traveling together are assigned and individual site and it’s up to you to make that site work for your party. This caused the only human conflict I encountered on the trip.
I set up my camp and by the time I got done all five sites were taken. I went for a little walk and met a gentleman named Ernest who was hiking with his son. Ernest and his son only had a permit for a section of the trail, which apparently is something you can do. He said that all the sites were taken and in asking around he found that there was a party of five ladies with one permit but who were taking two sites. I actually had been concerned about this when I got my permit and had asked the ranger how you would handle it. He said it didn’t happen often but if it did you have every right to ask someone to move. You have a reserved spot and they need to clear out and let you have it.
Ernest had talked to the women and they weren’t moving. They claimed the ranger had told them they could take as many sites as they needed (not true!) and that they had been on the trail five or six nights and never had a problem (highly unlikely!). Ernest asked me that if they continued to refuse to move if I would come over and talk to them with him, which I said I would do. The women had five tents for the five of them, three set up on one site and two on another smaller site. Ernest was focused on getting them to move from the smaller site and was trying to help them find a solution. They had some larger tents and by sharing the tents they could make the one larger site work, but they didn’t want to do that. He also had talked to some other women who had enough room for one more tent on their site and they had agreed to let one of the ladies come over and share their site. They women also didn’t want to do this.
I went back to my site but could overhear Ernest talking to the women. There was one main woman talking and she was not pleasant. She said Ernest was trying to intimidate and threaten them and they weren’t moving. She called Ernest all sorts of names and said he was a bad example for his son. After 15 or 20 minutes of this I decided I would go over and try to talk to them. About that time Ernest gave up reasoning with them and came over to find me so we went back over to the site together. I have to say that these women were just mean, nasty people. One had a foreign accent and basically just kept repeating “I’m a foreigner from a foreign country and I don’t know the rules here”. The other way the main speaker and kept calling Ernest names I won’t repeat here. For his part Ernest was remarkably calm but was insistent that they move. At one point he asked the women doing the talking to please stop using profanity and she looked him right in the eyes and said “I haven’t even started yet”.
I obviously backed Ernest in that the rules said that a permit for a party allowed them one site, regardless how many were in the party. Finally after some time they agreed to move but they were none to kind about it. Ernest volunteered to help them which only got him more cursing at. They didn’t want his help… He said he would go to the other side of the lake where his son was waiting and eat and leave them alone until the moved.
An hour or so later I wandered over to the other side of the lake and Ernest was still there. We chatted for awhile and even then every once in awhile the women would shout verbal obscenities at Ernest. Ernest was concerned about what they might try to do to his permit so he kept it in his tent with him that night although you’re supposed to display it on the outside in case a park ranger stops by. He also asked me to exchange contact info with him in case they tried later to say that he had threatened them.
The next morning I talked to Ernest again and the women had again confronted him that morning before leaving. It kind of ruined his trip with his son. He lives fairly close to the mountain and routinely backpacks on the trail and said that in all the years he has been coming to the mountain he had never had a problem with anyone.
3b) Day 2, Golden Lakes to South Puyallup
Day two was uneventful. I said goodbye to Jeffery, who was not going as far as I was. Nothing two special about the day other than the weather was nice and South Puyallup was a decent camp. The area through Klapatche Park had some nice views but nothing compared to what was upcoming. I met Tera (from the permit process at Paradise) on the trail going the opposite direction and we stopped and chatted a bit. Ernest and his son were spending the night at South Puyallup so we spent some more time together.
3c) Day 3, South Puyallup to Pyramid Creek
I said goodbye to Ernest and his son, Gavin, who were going all the way to Longmire and exiting the trail. I had a brand new fuel canister that for some reason wasn’t working right and wouldn’t stay burning so Ernest gave me a half-used one he. As it turned out I was able to get my canister to work and never needed the one he gave me but it was nice to have a backup for the rest of the trip.
Up until now the good views of the mountain had been few and far between. Most of the hike was in the woods and although it was beautiful sunny weather there wasn’t a lot to see other than Klapatche Park. That changed today. From the South Puyallup river you climb steeply to Emerald Ridge and for a couple of miles are in direct view of the west side of the mountain and as close as you can get to the Tahoma glacier.
From there you drop back down to the river and cross a suspension bridge. I didn’t realize it but there are two on the trail. This one was more fun as it was higher and longer than the second.
From there you climb back up again and end up in a gorgeous series of meadows in full view of the mountain ending with the Indian Henry’s patrol cabin. There are a series of cabins built around the mountain for the park rangers to stay in and this was in one of the more scenic places.
From there drop back down to Pyramid Creek and the camp where I spent the night. Coming down the trail I met Brad and Bella and chatted with them. We were both going to be spending the night at Mystic Lake a week out so we promised we would talk again.
There was a family of five staying at Pyramid Creek. The three kids were 7, 9 and 11 years old and full of energy. The family was four or five days on the trail and had done 10 miles that day but the kids still ran around playing until it got dark. Must be nice to have that much energy. There were a surprising number of families with children on the trail.
3d) Day 4, Pyramid Creek to Cougar Rock
The next morning I awoke to a change in the weather. Thursday morning was foggy and a bit misty. I initially assumed it was because I was in a basin by the river and thought it would burn off but once the sun was fully up and I was on the trail I realized that wasn’t going to happen. The clouds hung low all day long and I think this was the only day I didn’t bother taking a single picture.
This was my shortest day and also was my first resupply at Longmire. It was only 3.5 miles from Pyramid Creek to Longmire but I added another 1.5 miles by taking a detour out Rampart Ridge to a lookout there. I couldn’t see a thing from the lookout but I hadn’t really expected to. The detour was just to add a bit of hiking time to the day.
I reached Longmire right about lunchtime so I stopped at the ranger station, picked up my bucket of food and repacked my backpack and then went over to the Longmire Inn and had lunch.
I had the good fortune of sitting next to an outlet so I charged my phone and watch while I ate lunch. I only had to charge my phone one other time in the nine days. I did need to charge my watch every other day but that was only because I was tracking the whole trip with the gps in my watch. I had a small battery with me and when I was finished with the hike the battery still showed it was full.
The only other electronics I used on the trip was a headlamp (which was very handy) and a Garmin InReach Mini that allowed me to send Karen a satellite text every night letting her know where I was and that I was all right. There was no cell service anywhere on the trail so I never bothered taking my phone out of airplane mode but the InReach is handy, both for basic texts and for SOS emergency situations should they ever arise. Hopefully I’ll never need to use that capability.
Full from lunch I trekked another couple of miles to Cougar Rock campground. Let me say, Cougar Rock sucks. Sucks!
Up until a year or so ago the camp for Wonderland Trail hikers was a place called Paradise River. Last winter sometime there was a windstorm that took out a bunch of trees around the camp and the remaining trees are deemed to be in danger of blowing down so they permanently closed the camp. While they decide where to put a new camp they have the through hikers staying in a designate group camp site in Cougar Rock. This is car camping with a thousand of your closest friends and is not why you go backpacking in the wilderness.
There were three parties of us in this dump that night. Myself, a nice couple hiking around the mountain for their 31st wedding anniversary and one other guy who showed up after I went to bed.
Every other camp on the trail either has bear poles, tall poles you can hang your food bag away from your tent to discourage bears and pesky critters, or bear boxes where you put your food inside a box with a latching door. For whatever reason Cougar Rock was the only place that didn’t have one or the other of these conveniences. I wasn’t to concerned about bears, for certain in a campground this size there are easier targets for a bear than my little bag. Mice were another story. The were everywhere. I finally decided to just keep my food bag in the tent with me that night.
Around 7:30 is started to drizzle and the rain never let up all night.
Around 10:30 I awoke to a mouse running over the top of my tent. At this point it dawned on me that having my food bag was probably a really bad idea. The last thing I wanted was a hole chewed in my tent. I thought about my options and ended up taking my food bag into the men’s restroom. I hung it on a rod that went from the wall over to the latrine wall to hold the wall up. It was safe from mice but I hoped it wouldn’t get stolen by two legged bandits.
A couple of hours later I felt something moving around in my tent with me. Certain I had a mouse in the tent I turned on my headlamp and started tearing the place apart. I finally lifted up my air mattress and found the intruder, a cricket. I tossed him out on his ear but he wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was that the floor of my brand new tent was leaking. This is not good when your sleeping quilt and most of your insulating layers are down. Down does great until it gets wet but once it’s wet it is worthless. I mopped up the water and spent the rest of the night restlessly trying to make sure the quilt didn’t drop over the side of my pad.
Around 2:30 am several new people showed up at a neighboring group camp. They were driving full size diesel trucks with nice loud exhausts and had trailers. They kept trying to get the trailers jockeyed into position in the site. They finally were happy with their work but now that the trailers were in place, should they level them? Why, yes. Yes they should! So, now they spend the next half hour with some sort of ratcheting mechanism jacking the trailers up and down until they were just right.
I was just about back to sleep when another mouse ran over my tent. I really just can’t wait for morning so I can leave!
The next morning I staggered out of my tent all bleary eyed and ready to abandon camp. The guy that had shown up after I went to bed announced that he had enough of this and was quitting. He had been on the trail for only about three days and his car was at White River. He packed up and headed for the road. He figured it would take three or four rides to hitch back to his car but he didn’t care. He had signed up to go hiking, not sit in his tent in the rain.
3e) Day 5, Cougar Rock (grrr…) to Nickel Creek
I climbed for a couple of miles out of Cougar Rock and managed to break out of the clouds prior to Paradise. The area around Paradise is beautiful, but from a hiking perspective it’s not the most interesting hike since you can just drive down the road and see the same thing. Reflection Lake had wind blowing across it so no reflections were to be seen. It was nice however to see the sun after the previous night’s misery. I thought about stopping for an hour to dry my tent out but decided to keep going. This turned out to be a wise move.
From Paradise you drop down following Stevens Creek. There is a lovely little waterfall named Martha Falls along the way down. Further down the trail is a landslide area that is incredibly sketchy. It’s a 50 foot section of trail that’s been washing away for years. One section about 5 feet long is really bad and if you slipped or the ground gave way you would have a long ride to the bottom of the canyon. Adrenaline got pumped in the system there!
Towards the bottom of the hill I met Nisha and Brandon again. They were combining their last two days into one and making a long push to their exit at Longmire. We chatted a few minutes and said goodbye.
I reached the low point in the day at Box Canyon and started back up the other side to Nickel Creek where I would stop for the night. By this time I was low enough in elevation to be firmly back in the gloomy clouds.
A little later I met a grandmother and her two grandsons, who were probably 10 -12 years old. They all looked a little familiar so I asked if we had met before. She said, “no, but I know who you are. You’re the guy with the beard from Monroe!” Hmm…. Apparently people on the trail are talking about me. Turns out she was also from Monroe and has hiked the Wonderland many times. This was the first time with her grandkids and they were having a good time being introduced to backpacking. We talked about the weather and she said there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad rain gear. Sounds like something I would say!
I made it to Nickel Creek camp around 3:30 after my longest day on the trail, almost 15.5 miles. I could hear thunder in the distance as I quickly set up my tent and by the time I got camp prepared there were scattered rain drops. After the leaking episode with my tent the night before I was nervous about what would happen if it really rained so although this is something you really shouldn’t do, I scraped a little trench around my tent to try and divert any water. Digging the trench inevitably will cause some erosion of the campsite but I didn’t want the tub of my tent being soaked again.
About 7:30 it started raining constantly. I sat in my tent and monitored the situation and all seemed fine. It wasn’t raining that hard and the water seemed to be moving away from the tent for the most part.
As it got dark the rain picked up and the thunder and lightning got closer. The trenches weren’t doing so well so I got out of my tent and tried to improve the flow and get debris out of the way. Seemed to help.
And then it rained. No, it didn’t rain, it poured. It dumped. Torrential, flash flood rain. Thunder. Lightning. Rain that makes you pull over to the side of the road because you can’t-see-where-you-are-going rain. Water came down in buckets, all the cats and dogs fell out of the sky at once. You get the idea. No trench was saving this tent. The floor of my tent was surrounded by water.
The tent floor is sewn like a tub with walls that go up about four inches. It’s a great design and assuming the material is waterproof it should keep almost any water out, but the previous night’s continuous drizzle had highlighted the fact that the integrity of the floor had been compromised, even though there were no visible holes or abrasions to the tent.
So, I sat there in the dark with my headlamp and my handy microfiber towel and waited to soak up water and fight to save my stuff. And. Nothing. Ever. Came. In. The floor of my tent never got wet. Not even a bit. Hmm…
So, why? I don’t know. All I can say is that it rained again the next night at Summerland and the tent stayed dry. Why did it leak the first night and not the next two? Who knows. Now that I’m home I need to find some way to test the floor out but for now I’m chalking it up to a miracle. By all accounts I should have been soaked that night.
The next morning I talked to another group who had camped there. Their campsite wasn’t as well placed as mine and their whole site was basically a tub. One girl said she had sat there and watched her shoes float away from the tent. Fun times!
3f) Day 6, Nickel Creek to Summerland
Having completed the furthest day on the trail I now had the day with the most elevation gain. From Nickel Creek to the panhandle above Indian Bar was almost 5,000 vertical feet. Imagine climbing a ladder almost a mile up and you get the idea. This also marks the high point on the Wonderland Trail. My watch put it around 6,600 feet. Later on through Spray Park I would go higher but Spray Park is actually not the formal Wonderland Trail route even though most people seem to take it rather than the formal trail. So there.
Indian Bar and Summerland are widely considered to be two of the more beautiful parts of the trail and the camp sites are highly coveted with people attempting to secure spots at both despite the fact they’re only 4.5 miles apart. The two areas are separated by a high ridge that tests your conditioning. I met a girl later who told me the encouraging story of how she puked the first time she tried to climb it. Regardless, both areas are gorgeous meadows where the bears frolic and play and you sit in your tent in full view of the mountain.
That’s what I’m told. It wasn’t a terrible and wasn’t raining but it wasn’t sunny either. Clouds drifted in and out and for the most part I couldn’t see anything. There were certainly no bears frolicing or any stunning views of the mountain, just lung-busting climbing from Indian Bar up to the ridge followed by a knee-busting descent to Summerland.
When I got to Summerland the first person I saw was a girl sitting in her tent at site 1. We said hello and she introduced herself as Daisy. She said the other sites were already taken but there was room on her site for another tent if I wanted to set up camp there. Not again! Luckily there were four park rangers who happened to be doing something so I went over and talked to them. The lead ranger said he would go investigate who was camped illegally and would let me know what he found. He came back and evidently Daisy hadn’t done her homework because there were at least two sites still available.
The rangers and I got to talking though and they looked at the itinerary I had. “Hey, you were at Golden Lakes on the 5th. You wouldn’t happen to have witnessed an altercation, would you?” Turns out one of the rangers was the lead law enforcement ranger for the park (and the only ranger I saw the whole trip who was carrying a 9mm pistol). Apparently Ernest had proactively filed a report when he got to Longmire and the ranger wanted to hear my side of the story. We talked for 30 minutes and he took pages of notes and then gave me his contact info and asked me to write him an email when I got home as a formal statement. And I thought I was done with that experience.
After the rangers left I went back to tell Daisy that I had a site. By the time I got back to her she had shared her site with another girl named Sara. Sara wasn’t officially on the trail and didn’t have a permit. She was just doing some climbing on the glaciers and needed a place to spend the night.
Daisy had a nice two person REI tent but I had to ask what happened to her tent pegs, because she had none. She had some sticks pushed in the ground on one side of the tent and some rope tied to a root on the other. She said she had taken the pegs out of her pack to save weight. Her partner had left her so she was backpacking solo around the mountain and wanted to keep her pack weight down.
Two thoughts came to mind. First, a backpacking trip around the Wonderland Trail is one way to bounce back from your partner leaving you. And, second, I can think of far more effective ways to get rid of pack weight than to ditch a vital and relatively light component like tent pegs. Like maybe get rid of the 4.5 lb two person tent and get a 2 lb one person tent.
Anyway, Daisy seemed a bit nervous about hiking alone and we were both spending the night the next night at Sunrise so I volunteered to hike with her the next day. She wanted to leave at 7 the next morning but for whatever reason it takes me a couple of hours to get going in the morning. I always got up around 5:30 on the trail but rarely was packed and on trail prior to 8:30. What do I do for 3 hours? I have no idea. Anyway, we compromised and said we would leave at 8am.
3g) Day 7, Summerland to Sunrise Camp
I was at Daisy’s site at 7:45 the next morning. She was sitting in her tent talking to Sara and wasn’t remotely ready to go. Turns out her phone had died and she didn’t have a watch and had no idea what time it was. I didn’t want to wait an hour for her to get ready to go so she told me to go ahead and she would catch up. I average about 2 miles per hour and she said, no problem, I can go a mile an hour and I’ll catch you. Something about the math doesn’t add up there.
Daisy also told a little more of the story about this “breakup”. Evidently she was hiking with another lady and that person had quit the hike at Longmire and Daisy continued on alone. That changed the story in my mind a bit. Anyway, we said goodbye and I told her we would talk again at Sunrise.
I headed down the mountain and after a few miles ran into Tera for the second time on trail. She was doing well and had three or four more days on trail. We exchanged stories and then said goodbye for the third and final time.
I continued on and not to far down the trail ran into a guy with two children. We stopped and talked and he asked if I had spent the last night at Summerland. I said yes and he asked if I had seen a single woman. Daisy? Yep. Turns out this was Daisy’s husband and kids and they had come to White River to bring her next resupply of food. The story was starting to make sense now. I told them that Daisy was probably at least an hour behind me and they said they would continue on up the trail to meet her.
I continued on down to the White River Campground and retrieved my last food cache from behind the ranger station.
From there it was back up the mountain to the Sunrise camp for the night.
Daisy and her husband showed up to camp about 4:30. I had some extra tent pegs so I went over to her campsite to loan them to her. Turns out her husband had went to REI and bought her a new one person tent. Nice guy! He also brought her a watch and spare battery so she was all set. Daisy and I were both going from Summerland to Mystic Lake the next day so agreed to try the hiking together thing again and she promised she would be ready by 8 this time! Daisy’s husband had expressed some concerns about her continuing the hike by herself but seeing the camp and how it seemed safe and the fact she would hike at least one day with me seemed to alleviate some of his concern.
3h) Day 8, Sunrise Camp to Mystic Lake
The rain had stopped and the weather the rest of the journey was much improved! Daisy and I met in the morning and took a leisurely pace up the mountain.
A couple of miles in we experienced one of the highlights of the trip, at least for me. We went over a rise in the trail and came upon a herd of 50-60 mountain goats grazing right in the middle of the trail. We could have walked through the middle of them but they were going up the hill so we just stood there for five or ten minutes and let them pass. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful moment.
Over the course of the Daisy I got more of Daisy’s story. She had wanted to do a long hike and so searched Facebook for a hiking group and found a page about the Wonderland Trail. A lady that lived not far from Daisy had a permit for a party of three and was looking for a couple of women to go with her. Daisy and another woman responded and they all went together on a few day hikes. It didn’t work out with the third lady but Daisy and the original poster got along well and they started making plans. The woman’s husband would meet them at Longmire to resupply their food and then Daisy’s family would meet them at White River for the second resupply. It all went well until they started hiking but by the second day the other woman was starting to complain about everything. Daisy picked up more an more of the slack until she was pretty much was doing everything, even carrying some of the other woman’s gear. By the time they got to Longmire the other woman just wanted to go home. They tried to convince Daisy to leave with them but by this time she was determined to go on alone. It’s quite the story and I was/am pretty proud of Daisy!
We continued on and got to the Mystic Lake camp around 2:30. The lake itself is another 1/2 mile or so on up the trail. Daisy decided to go to the lake and go swimming. I don’t swim and want nothing to do with water so I stayed in the camp and set up my gear hoping to finally get stuff dried out.
Brad and Bella showed up sometime later and after they set up their camp we chatted quite awhile. Remember Candice? She had made it two days to South Puyallup and couldn’t go any further. She ended up staying there two nights and Brad and Bella were there the second evening. Apparently Candice was not in good shape at all. She wasn’t hungry and couldn’t keep anything down even when she tried to eat and was shaking uncontrollably. A ranger showed up at some point and helped rescue her. Fortunately the South Puyallup camp is only a mile or two from a forest service access road so the ranger called for a car to come pick her up and then walked with her out to the road. I wasn’t really that surprised but had been concerned about what might have happened to her so I was glad to hear she made it out safely.
Daisy came back from swimming and got to meet Brad and Bella. They were all into mushrooms, and there were tons of mushrooms along the trail, so they spent time getting to know each other and talking about all the mushrooms they had seen (and how Brad and Bella had made an excellent mushroom meal one night).
3i) Day 9, Mystic Lake to Mowich Lake
Last day on the trail!
I said goodbye to Brad, Bella and Daisy. Daisy was going my direction but was stopping at a camp about half way to Mowich so it was a fairly short day for her and she wanted to spend some more time at Mystic Lake.
From Mystic Lake I headed down the mountain to the Carbon River. The trail follows the Carbon Glacier. I met a ranger who told me that at nine miles long it’s the longest continuous glacier in the lower 48 states.
Of course the same ranger spotted my name and wanted to hear once again about Golden Lakes. Evidently his had actually spoken to the women and of course their side of the story was very different from Ernest’s. They had said he was threatening and tried to intimidate them into moving. Even talking to the ranger they were convinced they were in the right and seemed shocked when he told them that they were in fact wrong about how many sites they could occupy. Fortunately he said they were off the trail now so I didn’t have to worry about running into them again!
From the Carbon River the formal Wonderland Trail continues down the mountain to Ipsut Creek and then climbs all the way back to Mowich Lake. This route is mainly in the trees and you don’t see the mountain much. The alternate route in to cross the river, turn and climb back up toward the mountain to Spray Park. It’s about the same distance as the traditional route but has quite a bit more elevation gain. The pay off is that you get back to the mountain views and go through Spray Park, which everyone said was incredible right now. The weather was nice so I decided to go that route. 4,000 vertical feet later I was there and agree that Spray Park was one of the nicest areas I went through even though by that time some late afternoon clouds were covering the mountain so I didn’t get the full effect of the surroundings. As I started to leave Spray Park I again met the couple I had spent the night with back at the horrid Cougar Rock camp. Turns out that today was their actual 31st wedding anniversary. I congratulated them on the longevity of their marriage and spending their anniversary in such a stunning environment. They were spending the night at the same camp as Daisy so I asked them to introduce themselves and make sure she was ok, which they agreed to do.
A couple of hours later I was back at the truck and that’s the adventure.
4) People
Other than the women of hate everyone I met on trail was incredible. The fact that I was going the opposite direction as most people allowed me to see many of the same faces two times and even for those going the same direction I might end up spending multiple nights at the same camps. It was cool to see how this group of hikers formed their own little momentary community. We shared stories of experiences, what to expect on the trail, where water was good, where the trail was bad, how others we knew were doing, etc… I’ll probably never see any of them again but for a week and a half we were community. Tera, Brad and Bella, Nisha, Brandon, Candice, Jeffery, Ernest and Gavin, the couple w/the anniversary (that I can’t remember the names of for the life of me), the grandmother from Monroe, Daisy and her family. All wonderful and interesting people.
5) Spirituality
When I say spirituality I don’t mean some mystic force although I’m sure some might say that about being out in the wilderness. What I mean is that surrounded by the beauty of nature I find intelligent design and the hand of a creator in everything I see and it set the tone for my thoughts and actions throughout the day. Everyone can believe what they want but I find it unfathomable that any of this just randomly happened. There is simply far to much order in nature and everything works together in perfect harmony season after season. The first part of my hike every morning was spent acknowledging the God who created this and praying for those I love. It set the mood for the entire day, one of awe at the wonder of it all. You certainly don’t have to agree with me but I can’t see it any other way.
6) Wildlife
Everyone saw bears but me. That’s all people talked about but I never saw a single bear. I did see a herd of elk on the morning I drove up to get my permit. There were marmots at Indian Bar and my camp in Summerland. The mountain goats leaving the Sunrise area would have to be the highlight of the trip as far as animals go. Other than that, chipmunks were omnipresent and the mice were out in force. I saw mice at a couple of camps but only had problems with them the one night at Cougar Rock.
7) Statistics
Officially the Wonderland Trail is 93 miles and 22,000 vertical feet of rise. That may be correct if you just go directly from point to point but probably no one actually does that. You’re always taking little detours, getting food re-supplies, going in and out of camps that are not directly on the trail, etc…
Per my Garmin Fenix 5+ I used to track the trail I completed 105.5 miles with 25,980 feet of elevation gain over eight nights and nine days.
The high point on the trail is the panhandle gap between Indian Bar and Summerland at 6,750 feet above sea level, although Spray Park may be higher (but isn’t officially part of the trail).
The low point on the trail is technically at Ipsut Creek, but I bypassed this by going up and over through Spray Park so I’m guessing my lowest point was the South Mowich River crossing which is at 2,605 feet.
Garmin says I took 195,000 steps over the course of the nine days but that’s almost certainly low. I use hiking poles and they badly skew how long each step is. Still an interesting stat…
8) Equipment
Base weight is an important measure for long distance hiking is. The base weight of your pack is the sum of everything you’re carrying minus consumables like food and water. I’m not ultralight but anything under 15 lbs is considered lightweight and my pack was just under 15 lbs. Fully loaded with 2 liters of water and three days worth of food the total weight I was carrying was almost exactly 25 lbs, which was very comfortable and the perfect weight for the pack I use.
The good.
-One thing I purchased right before the trip was sun gloves. These lightweight gloves protected my hands from the sun but also from blisters caused by carrying hiking poles.
-I wore long pants, a long sleeve shirt and a hat. With that and the gloves I never needed to apply sunscreen and had no problems with sunburn.
-Along the same lines I soaked all my clothes with a product called Permethrin prior to leaving home. This product when dry doesn’t smell or cause any (known) harm to humans, but keeps mosquitos, ticks and other nasty bugs away. I never had any problem with bugs the whole trip and never once felt a need to apply bug spray.
-I pieced together my water filtration system using a Sawyer Squeeze filter, CNOC 3 liter bag and an adapter that screwed on 1 liter Smartwater bottles. This system worked great. I could screw the only assembly together and hang it and let gravity filter the water, or more commonly just held the bag and squeezed it. Smartwater bottles are expensive for buying water to drink, but as water bottles you use on trail they are light, strong and work perfectly with all sorts of adapters, plus unlike some systems where you put dirty water in the bottle and then filter it as you drink it, my bottles had clean water in them and I could add electrolytes to my water.
-Speaking of which, the first few days in particular were hot and hiking uphill I was sweating profusely. Last year on my three day hike I didn’t even think about the need to replenish salts, potassium and other vital minerals the body needs. In this environment drinking water can actually lead to “overhydration” where your body sweats out vital chemicals and to a certain extent drinking plain water accelerates the process. Last year I paid dearly for this and felt terrible. This year I used a product Costco sells called “Liquid I.V.”. A packet or two over the course of the day put in my water and I felt great. I think it’s probably unnecessary most of the time but if you’re sweating a lot then it really works.
-Love my pack! I used a Granite Gear Crown 2 which holds about 50 liters and has a maximum load capacity of 30-35 lbs. It isn’t ultralight but it’s cheap and weighs under 2 1/2 lbs. With the weight I was carrying it was supremely comfortable.
-Big sky pillow. 4.1 oz of inflatable luxury. Nuff said. http://bigskyproducts.com/Big-Sky-DreamSleeper-Deluxe-inflatable-pillow.aspx
-I have a Nightcore NU25 headlamp and it worked great. It’s light, waterproof, bright and most importantly, rechargeable so I didn’t need to carry any extra batteries.
The ok.
-My Enlightened Equipment quilt is great and I’ll never go back to a full sleeping bag. It’s only 21 oz and is full of 900fp down. Having said that the 20 degree comfort rating is a joke. I sleep cold but I don’t see how anyone could rely exclusively on this. I don’t think it got below 40 even in the higher elevations on my trip but I still ended up putting my down jacket on in the middle of the night.
-I have no idea why my tent leaked at Cougar Rock, or why it didn’t leak the next two nights. All I know is that I’m going to have to do some testing in the backyard before I trust it on another long hike. It’s to bad because other than the tub leaking I love everything about it. As a one person tent it’s relatively light at just a tad over two pounds, quick and easy to set up and take down, has large vestibules for cooking in the rain or storing things out of the weather, and on bad night I would bring everything completely inside the tent and still have enough room to sleep comfortably. Other than the leaking tub I had no problem with condensation or water gathering inside the tent. https://drop.com/buy/massdrop-x-dan-durston-x-mid-1p-tent
-My stove. Stoves have come along way and mini stoves are a dime a dozen. I have a Kovea Supalite which weighs 1.9 oz and has always worked great. I’m assuming that with a new fuel canister the seal just wasn’t being completely broken so I had to fiddle with it the first couple of days and I was nervous that it might keep having problems. After that though it worked great the rest of the trip and one small 100g can of gas lasted me the whole trip, providing hot water for meals every night and hot coffee every morning. About half the time I had cold breakfast and the other half needed hot water for breakfast as well.
-Shoes. I’m a complete convert to wearing trail running shoes rather than heavy hiking boots. They are so much more comfortable and less fatiguing than boots. In the category of trail runners I have worn Altras the past couple of years and love them. For whatever reason I battled hot spots all trip though and was constantly applying mole skin and trying different sock combinations. I’m not sure why this was but I have worn these shoes for a long time so can’t blame the shoes. I’m not sure if it was the humidity so my feet were always wet or what? Regardless, I stayed on top of covering hot spots, mainly on my heels and the ball of my feet and managed to go the whole trip without actually having a blister form. It was still irritating because my feet were literally the only part of my body that caused me any problems on the whole hike.
The bad.
-Nothing was truly bad. I’m pretty happy with my set up. Out of everything I put in my pack really they only thing I didn’t use was a tripod and some clip-on filters I had I brought for my phone camera. The only reason why I didn’t use them was that I was just too lazy to bother getting them out every time I took a photo. I had planned on bring my Sony RX100 III on the trip but ultimately decided my cell phone camera was good enough and leaving the Sony at home saved over a pound of carried weight. Lbs add up quickly!!!
9) Links
Here are just some of the photos I took. Even this is quite a few but if you would like to view all the photos and videos just let me know and I’ll share. https://photos.app.goo.gl/PVqCDZnwdnxmmtwr6
I also recorded audio thoughts as I hiked. Most of that’s in the write up but feel free to listen to the recording if you’d like. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-J5yTI0l4eAHzBiz14yOx_OyZnWKMQ6H
Bonus content
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. You must be retired!
I’ve been wanting to hike the Enchantments for awhile now. The Enchantments is an area south west of Leavenworth with otherworldly scenery. It’s difficult to access though and even more difficult to get a permit to spend the night in. I decided the only way to see the area was going to have to be as a day hike. A very challenging day hike. The traditional way to do the area as a day hike is to start at the Stuart/Colchuck trailhead, hike to Colchuck Lake and then scramble up a huge rock ravine called Aasgard Pass. In hiking Aasgard pass you gain 2,500 feet in less than a mile! There really is no trail up this thing but it’s pretty intuitive and there are well placed cairns to follow.
From there you are now in the core Enchantments area. Again, no real trails but there are more cairns to follow for a couple of miles as you slowly go lower in elevation. Once you reach the other side there is more scrambling until you eventually run into somewhat of a decent trail at upper Snow Lake. From there it’s just a long slog down the mountain to your vehicle that you left at the Snow Lakes trailhead.
There is an excellent service provided in the form of a shuttle that will take you from the lower trailhead to the upper one and drop you off. This way you only need one vehicle and don’t need to try and hitch a ride or have an eight mile road walk to get from one place to the other. $20 well spent! The service runs on the hour at 5, 6 or 7am and when I got home Wednesday from my Wonderland Trip the only available spot was a 7am on Thursday. I’ve had a day to recover, right? Why not go for it.
Turns out just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you should. The WTA website says the trail is 18 miles one way. They lied! It’s more like 22 miles with 5,200 feet vertical gain and 6,975 of loss back to the truck. I left the Stuart Lake trailhead at 7:30 am and got back to my truck at the Snow Lakes trailhead at 7:45 pm. It was a brutal hike and three days later I’m still sore, but I’d totally do it again. The Enchantments truly are incredible.
Enjoy some photos!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/q4rTNbSmadDRA6YR7
