A Look At Our Future

8/24/13

PCT mile 2550 - 2564   - 14 miles

Elev 2325-5383

One more overnight and a day of hiking will bring us to our resupply town unreachable except by foot or by boat. We are so ready to rest, I'm needing more food than I had planned, we are tired girls. 

My feet were wet all day yesterday and disintegrated any tape I put on wear spots so this morning I've decided to leave the tape off and see how I do.

Last night Peggy took glacial water out and let it sit all night to settle the silt. She then poured off what looked ok to drink and treated that with her Aqua Mira tablets. We both have 1/2 liter for the morning until we reach a good water source. I can't use my filter on this water.

The noise of the water made us miss our alarm so Peggy woke me this morning at 6, we were hiking by 7:15. 

We took one last look at the Suiattle River.

See the high banks of ash and some devastation from past floods that necessitated the new bridge being built.

It seemed to take forever to get past the river today and we took a wrong turn for 1/4 mi.  It just didn't feel right so when I checked my GPS and found we were off trail we traipsed back and made the correction.

Climbing slowly from the low elevation of the river through lovely forest with the occasional big Douglas Fir, we caught a last glimpse of Glacier Peak.

  After awhile we rounded a corner in the forest, double checking our GPS for the exact spot in the first 5 miles of hiking today to celebrate our 400 mile mark!

Hooray!

We took a break, laid out wet socks to dry and snacked. 

Along came a distance hiker named Pigpen who had started near Ashland, Oregon and was going to the Canada border. I suspect he hadn't spoken to anyone for awhile but once he stumbled around for his first words he had lots to say. A real interesting man who'd been an electrical engineer but was now a confirmed wanderer with no home address. He's been wandering the world's hiking trails for 9 years. 

Then came the 2 older men we've been leapfrogging with for days who stopped to chat, they told us they admired us for undertaking Washington.

We continued up the trail with the sky looking like it might rain. Stopping at a river for water the 2 men passed us again.  It was really looking like rain so we pushed on.  

Peggy has been taking photos of mushrooms along the way, some are really bizarre looking   We saw probably one of the weirdest on this trail, a white round growth close to the ground with red syrupy-looking drops coming out of the top like blood droplets! I didn't take a photo but Peggy did, we later looked it up in a book and found it was poisonous (of course) and was called Strawberries and Cream!

We crossed lots of streams today of varying width, here's one bridge over water that we used.

We are pushing to get to Suiattle Pass but there are blueberries and huckleberries clustered along the edges of the trail as it climbs higher and higher.

We picked handfuls, eating as many as we could then putting some into a big leaf in the middle of the trail to encourage the 2 older guys that are struggling behind us to make it up the hill.  There was a young hiker coming south, we asked him not to step on the berries when he came to them.  We found out later that the young guy met the 2 men & told them we'd left them a present, we got a thank you from them days later in Stehekin!

Rounding an uphill part of the trail we saw an amazing view of surrounding peaks that surprised and encouraged us.

I couldn't wait to see more!

Reaching the pass it was time to take stock of what was before us, big clouds and blue patches of sky and a valley that stretched before us ending in Stehekin down there somewhere... our last resupply town!

Hiking down from the pass we came upon a boulder field and wanted to rest and enjoy the view.  A voice said "Sit, there's lots of room."  There were 2 40 something men out weekend hiking, really excited to be in this beautiful place too.  They were fun to talk to and completely wowed that we were hiking all of Washington at one time. We enjoyed listening to these men talk about their trip and what fun they were having out here.

Moving on downhill we ended up going over and around mountainsides into new valleys.

Going deeper into this boulder field I found a huge rock to have fun with.

I'm pushing it apart with all the bicep strength I've built up on this hike!

More huge boulders that amazed me with their size. The trail goes through these two.

More views at where we're going tomorrow, it looks rugged.  Yikes!

Pasqueflowers are in all the high alpine mountains.

We climbed another mountain and dropped into the area we'd planned to camp. It's in a tiny meadow below the trail just under the tall peaks and snowfield of this mountain. It's sure to be a cold, damp place to camp but the only camp marked on the maps for 2 tents -so we're stopping. 

Looking up to the peak from our tents; the peaks and snowfield.

There was a small, little stream where I filtered water for us.  

The sky was clear and stars bright in one part of the sky, the other had a dark cloud looking heavy with rain.  It's a toss up whether or not it will rain tonight.