Posted 8/30/14
Well tonight we finally got back home to the PCT! It's odd calling one trail home while another felt like a vacation, but that is what the Wonderland trail felt like to us... our hike away from home. We finished our 90 mile, counterclockwise loop around Mount Rainier with a bang. The final day was a rough and tough 19-mile hike up and over the Cowlitz Divide which hosted some of the most amazing views of the mountain we had seen yet. Being on the west side of Rainier, we had a clear look to Mount Adams and the Goat Rocks Wilderness, which as you can tell from our last posts and pics was pretty incredible.
We spent the morning climbing up 4,000 feet from our camp at Maple Creek to the Indian Bar area. The final push was a steep climb up a two mile long staircase; my legs were burning and tired but the views were fantastic!
The day after our last blog post was the 4th day on the Wonderland Trail when we left our amazing campsite at Klapatche. After having completed the entire trail now, I think Klapatche was one of the best camps on the whole loop. It had a great view of Rainier, a lake, and it was up high enough that we could see the sun setting on the horizon. We sat and watched the sunset that night as it slowly disappeared over the Pacific Ocean. It was a hazy evening and the clouds filtered most of the sunlight out so you were left looking at the sun itself, which looked like a glowing red, circular ember. As the sun set, it looked like a fiery wafer being dipped into a field of grey pudding as it vanished into the oceanic horizon. I think that'll be one of my favorite memories of the whole trip!
Leaving Klapatche was pretty gorgeous, and when we descended back into the trees we got to walk across the largest suspension bridge I've ever seen! We were probably 100 feet above the raging Tahoma Creek swinging and bouncing across wooden planks tied together on massive cables.
That evening we camped at Pyramid Creek and were able to set up our tarp and climb just moments before it started raining. We sat and listened to the storm pass us by while we chatted about the upcoming remaining weeks on the trail which was mostly about whether or not we wanted to continue our hike all the way to Highway 20 when we got back to the PCT. We both were feeling incredibly exhausted and sick of backpacking and debated exiting the trail earlier than planned. The beauty of the Wonderland Trail was impressive, but we were not nearly as jazzed about the scenery as all the other hikers. We talked to a bunch of folks on the trail and the conversations would be them saying something like, "gorgeous day today, huh!?!" with us having an underwhelming "yeah" as a response. I loved the Wonderland Trail but it also helped us realize that our enthusiasm for backpacking was dwindling as we started to really look forward to being done. We were not nearly as excited about alpine meadows and gorgeous forests as we were when we started this trip so we came to the conclusion that when we get to I-90 that we'll just get off the trail there and head in to Seattle. That means we have only one week remaining on the trail and the primary emotion I was feeling once we made that decision was a sense of relief. It is time for us to finish and get back to the real world! Obviously the whole point of this trip was to have fun, and since the miles are starting to feel more like work than pleasure, then that's a sign that we might just be over backpacking for now.
The next day we had a short 3-mile descent to get to Longmire where we hitched into Ashford. Hitching in a National Park is not allowed, but luckily the rangers at MRNP are pretty lenient about that rule. We got picked up in about 30 minutes by one of the park mechanics in a pick up truck who lives in Ashford. We went straight to the post office to grab our resupply and then were eating breakfast at the Highlander by 10am! I made the mistake of ordering way too much food (again...) and I was really aching when we started back on the trail. Hiking 12 miles when your stomach is so full is not recommended. On our climb up to Reflection Lakes we were walking over piles of hail from the storm the night before. It was interesting to see that the storms had hailed on the south side of the mountain but only rained on the west side where we had camped. Mount Rainier is just so massive that the conditions on one side of the mountain can be totally different than the other!
So after camping at Maple Creek last night and finishing the loop today, we both agree that the highlights of the Wonderland are:
• The east side, Summerland to Indian Bar
• The north side, Sunrise to Granite Creek
• The west side, South Fork of the Puyallap to Indian Henry Ranger Station
Anyway, we're so glad to be back on the PCT again where it's not so darn hilly!
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