I am awakened this morning by the quiet shuffling of another Wonderland hiker. Jamie is getting up at the crack of dawn to head out. The weather isn't that great, but it's not currently raining or snowing. She's now behind schedule and so has to play a little catch up.
Matt and I, on the other hand, have scheduled two nights here. We'll sleep for a couple more hours. Then we'll just relax and hopefully get out stuff dried out some. The weather of the last couple days got things a wee bit wet.
We're up around 10:30. Ahhhh. What a nice night's sleep. No rain. No snow. No wind. No tent to deal with. Nice. We leisurely go to the bathroom (the real kind), wash our hands in a real sink (with real cold water), and chill out with some hot chocolate.
A nice couple from from Wisconsin, Brad and Mary, drive in to the campground and set up camp right next to our, er, the park's shelter. Matt hits it off with them while I sit on the porch of the shelter, resting and watching. Interestingly, Matt uses the bathroom up the hill from the shelter while I use the one next to the parking lot, just downhill from the shelter. That's why Matt meets up with Brad and Mary. He has to walk past their campsite to get back to the shelter.
Matt must be smoking crack. I didn't know he brought any, but he's got to be on the stuff. He asks me if I want to hike up to Sunrise with him. Yeah, right. I want to hike up a bunch of switchbacks when I could just sit here all day. No thanks.
The weather is cloudy, but I'm hopeful that the clouds will break and I can take advantage of the sun's energy both to dry out my shoes, socks, and other sundries, and to warm up my extremities. I may as well just get it over with and tell you how it turns out. It's cloudy and cold all day long. I'm freezing and my stuff is cold. I drink several cups of hot chocolate and eat a hot Mountain House meal for lunch and for dinner. Just trying to keep warm.
Shaun and Allie, a couple other hikers who are doing the trail, slept in the back room of the shelter last night. They're packing up, getting ready to head out. Their first night on the hike, up at Sunrise, they got about a foot of snow. Shaun is an avid photographer as well and we spent awhile talking photo talk. They've got too much flavored drink mix, I guess, so Allie gives me some of their lemon-flavored mix. We absolutely love it and finish it by the time we're done, two days from today.
Matt's gone, it's not nice outside, I'm cold, so I just crawl back into my sleeping bag in the middle of the day. At least I'm (sort of) warm in here. I pull out some chemical hand warmers, tear open the plastic, and throw them down into the bottom of my sleeping bag. They don't do much. Their expiration date is 1995. Guess I'd better get some new ones for next time.
Okay. I'm bored and can't sleep. After all, I slept all night. We've got to go down to the small ranger shack and pick up our supplies (this is our second and final re-supply point), so I may as well do that. On the way, I wander over to the Inter Fork of the White River. It's fed by the Inter Glacier. There's a family who just pulled up and is setting up a meal on the picnic table near the trail leading down the river. I limp down the trail to the river bed and just look up toward The Mountain for a few minutes, enjoying the serenity. It's pretty quiet on this Sunday.
After spending a few minutes enjoying the river, I slowly and gingerly walk down to the ranger station. I walk around back, but don't see our crate. Thankfully, the ranger is there and they had apparently just left our food inside the cabin instead of putting it out back with the food left by others. At least it's there. The ranger hands it to me and I walk it back to the shelter. We end up having way too much food and take what we want and leave the rest with the ranger.
At around 4 o'clock, a car pulls up in front of the shelter, the rear door opens, and Matt steps out. Brad and Mary had bought him lunch (remember, we have no money) and then brought him back with them. Matt reports that he had been warm hiking up the switchbacks, warm while in the lodge eating lunch at Sunrise, and warm riding back in the car. Now we're both sitting around trying to keep warm.
The kind ranger says he'll leave the shelter open for us one more night. We're very grateful. There's another group of hikers, Rori, Mike, and Mike's father-in-law, on their third day from Mowich Lake, that got caught on the north side in the same storm that hit the rest of us. Their stuff is soaked. We let them know they can sleep in the back room
and they're pretty psyched about that.
Matt goes over to visit some more with Brad and Mary and comes back after awhile telling me that we should start a campfire at the campsite. Well, that makes me pretty excited. My shoes are still completely wet. They didn't dry out at all today. This will be the first time I'm warm all day, and I don't relish the idea of starting tomorrow's hike in wet shoes and socks.
After gathering some scraps of wood from other sites and after borrowing a hatchet from a passing motorist (who also gives us some dry logs), we make some kindling and get a fire going after much effort. I place several pairs of socks and my shoes around the perimeter of the fire pit. Rori and Mike join us. We all enjoy a very pleasant, warm, chat around the fire. This is the first fire we've been able to enjoy on our entire hike. Open fires aren't allowed at camps around the Wonderland Trail. Drive in camps are the exception.
After a super nice evening (first time I've been warm since I got out of bed 12 hours earlier), Matt and I hit the sack for our last night indoors, before heading West across the north side of Mount Rainier National Park. Three sides down, one to go.
Photos of the Hike
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