Date: August 14 & 15, 2017
Miles: 2282.2 – 2312.1
Since we only had about ten miles to go from camp to White Pass, we didn’t get up super early this morning. We packed up sometime after seven, and had a Mt. Rainier-filled hike in to town. I don’t think Tim was quite prepared for the accelerated pace that we push when we’re headed into a town. We were practically crawled up onto his pack as we were hiking in behind him, and he kept apologizing for his pace, which was fast by regular hiker standards. I probably should have relaxed a bit, but I was thinking about bacon cheeseburgers and my legs took off. There’s no slowing down a hungry thru-hiker.
We reached the trailhead at White Pass and ran into Donkey and Polliwog, who were heading out as we were coming in. After chatting with them and promising to catch up soon, we headed toward the White Pass ski area and got a room that would fit five smelly hikers (A-Game joined us later that afternoon…yay!). The next order of business was food. Tim gave us a ride in to Packwood and we hit the Blue Spruce Saloon for the biggest burgers we had ever seen.
The next day, it was hard to get motivated to leave civilization to start hiking again, especially because Tim was with us. I could have stayed in bed and watched movies all day and my feet would have been so happy. But staying in bed wasn’t going to get me to Canada, so I got moving and eventually we all wound up at the trailhead, physically, if not totally mentally, ready to hike. I had a whole new outfit on – Tim’s shorts, shirt, and even his shoes. I needed to replace my worn out things and he literally gave me the clothes off of his back. Thankfully he had extras to wear home.
The terrain that we went through today was located in the William O. Douglas Wilderness and Mt. Rainier National Park.
The landscape wasn’t as striking as in the Goat Rocks, but the tall trees covered in bright green moss, the abundance of ferns and wildflowers, and the appearance of a looming Mt. Rainier toward the end of the day made for a beautiful hike.
We camped at Two Lakes, located a little ways off trail. On the way in to camp, Rodeo saw two bears and I saw a bunch of hefty marmots, and we went to bed hoping that none of those animals would be back looking for a meal.
