We'll be doing a short hike today, only about three-and-a-half miles, from Mowich Lake, where we'll leave my Ford F-250, to Mowich River Camp, just past the North Mowich River, right on the South Mowich River. It will take us about an hour-and-a-half to drive there from Tacoma, and I want to get off to a good start. After Matt's up and at 'em, we get the last few items secured, loaded, and bolted on to our packs.
Tip:
Get in shape before you go. You can't get in shape in 10 days, regardless of what anyone has told you.
Having had problems with a dead battery in my pickup for the past few months after extended periods of not driving, I figure I ought to connect the Camry to it and let it charge while we eat breakfast. After about a half hour of rejuvenation, it fires up without complaint. Matt and I hit the road around 9:30, heading toward The Mountain which will be our constant companion, sometimes unseen, sometimes unfriendly, but always nearby, for the next 14 days. Something I didn't expect from my truck, in which I recently installed a new radiator, is overheating. The temperature gauge is taunting me by bouncing up past the half way mark. Depending on my speed and whether or not we're sitting at a light or going 60 on the freeway, the temperature varies. Just what we need...to have our vehicle break down on the way to the trail head.
Maybe this is fortuitous. I'm actually feeling a little apprehensive about starting. It's a long hike. A lot could go wrong. My knees could buckle (the left one is bad from a skiing accident at Snoqualmie years earlier and the right one probably isn't much better by default), we could sprain ankles, break limbs, get eaten by a bear, or worse. Well, there probably isn't much that could happen to us worse than getting eaten by a bear. Partially eaten might be worse, but we'll just make sure not to annoy a mama when her cubs are nearby. We'll watch our step, use our heads, and everything will be fine. Matt's feeling confident. I tell him he's self-delusional. I then discover that self-delusion can be a good thing, as it makes me feel much better.
Fortunately, the truck toughs it out and gets us to the parking lot at Mowich Lake. Knowing that the battery will, once again, be dead in two weeks upon our return, I make a point of parking on a slope so that, after making it back from our jaunt around The Mountain (knock on wood), we'll be able to throw our packs in the bed, get our things in order, hop in, and, with a little fancy footwork, get the engine going with a little help from gravity.
Having parked in an appropriate spot, just a few hundred yards down the long gravel road from the Mowich Lake parking lot, we hop out, give our gear one final inspection, make sure I've got all my camera gear, figure out what to do with my keys (I end up taking one aluminum key on the hike—the key to the truck's doors—and leave the rest in the truck), and throw our packs on. Okay, maybe not throw. It's hard to throw a 50-pound pack onto your back. It's more like a wrestle. We get used to it, though, and it gets a little easier each day as we refine our pack-throwing technique. We make a quick rest stop at the bathroom—one of the last times that will take place in a normal fashion for the next 14 days—and then head out.
We know it's all downhill to Mowich River Camp. Nevertheless, within about 5 minutes, I jokingly comment about being tired and ask if we're there yet. Matt lets out a chuckle, but most certainly will grow tired of my joking before the end of the hike. After maybe an hour of steady decent, I stop, unbuckle my pack, and let it fall to the ground, more or less. This, too, will get a bit easier over the course of the hike, excepting the days when I'm about to die of exhaustion. I figure we've got loads of time, as it's early afternoon, we've got only a couple hours hiking to accomplish today, and we're fresh. As we will do countless times in the coming days, we stop to drink some water, eat a snack, rest our shoulders and legs, and look at the map and GPS to figure out where we are. We've come maybe a couple miles and so we know roughly where we are, but I want to figure out exactly. This is something both Matt and I enjoy. We get out the map, get the elevation from the GPS, and pinpoint our location. If we weren't completely surrounded by trees, we would also identify nearby peaks, ridgelines, and other land features. We do, however, manage to locate the hill forming the other side of the valley into which we are hiking and which we will be ascending tomorrow. It will be a long climb up. Farther up than we're going down today. I can't wait.
Time to get on with it. A short ways down the trail, we meet the first group of hikers of many we will meet who are attempting the same thing we are—hiking almost 100 miles over rough terrain with a heavy load strapped to our backs. This is a group of seven (actually a group of 3 and a group of 4, hiking together temporarily) doing the trail clockwise from Longmire.
Probably ninety per cent of all Wonderland hikers do the trail clockwise from Longmire in 10 days. The remainder do it in a differing time period, or in a different direction (very few), or from a different starting point.
We have a brief chat, receive a warning of a hornets nest in the middle of the trail just a few switchbacks down, and go on our way, somewhat more gingerly than before.
We hike about 50 feet when I hear someone yell out "Are you guys Jay and Matt?" We do a 180 and head back up the trail. As it turns out, the sole female in the group did a search on MSN the day before they began their hike and found this very website! Needless to say, I'm thrilled that someone found my Wonderland site. What are the chances we'd run across that person? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure they're slim. We chat for a few more minutes, I snap their photo which they want displayed to the world, and we continue on. Matt is amused, but I'm beside myself. What a kick.
They reminded us of the hornets nest and say I should go first since I'm wearing shorts. That way, I'll stir up the nest and the hornets will have to deal with Matt's long pants instead of my bare skin, as the first person through stirs up the nest and those following behind get the wrath. As the slow person is always the one leading the group, I am in front anyway. Although I don't see the nest, I'm stepping carefully over anything in the middle of the trail that looks suspicious. Several minutes later, Matt asks if I saw the nest. I hadn't, but apparently, I didn't step on it. Matt had seen it and stepped carefully over it. Glad to be past that little threat. You don't want to get stung. Trust me. A fellow in that first group had been stung on two occasions. Four stings on one and two on the other. No fun at all.
Before long, we hear a raging river in the distance, a welcome sound we will encounter time and again. It's the sound of hope, an indication that we're almost at our destination. Something's strange, though. Here's the river, but where's the campground? We may have missed it, but I don't think we're that blind. Well, maybe we are, so we whip out our trusty Stanley—the best map available of Mount Rainier National Park. As it turns out, we've just arrived at the North Mowich River (fed, not surprisingly, by the North Mowich Glacier). Unfortunately, we're not there yet. The Mowich River Camp is situated on the shores of the South Mowich River (fed by the Edmunds Glacier and the South Mowich Glacier). Disappointed that we can't drop our packs permanently (at least within the framework of that night's stay), we continue on, crossing the North Mowich River and heading back into the woods.
Within just a few minutes, we see what will become a welcome sight—a sign on the trail with the name of one of our camps. This camp, like most, is just a few hundred feet off the trail. We wander into it, inspecting the various sites, any of which we can choose, excepting the group site, which is reserved for groups of 6-12 people. We end up choosing the site at the back of the camp, which has convenient access to the river, via a short trail.
We begin what is to become an ritual each day upon arriving at a new camp. I unload everything in my pack to reveal the tent, which is packed in the bottom. It's the first thing in and the last thing out. We inspect the ground for bumps, rocks, and slope, figuring out the best place for the tent, wanting, of course, the most comfortable night's sleep possible.
We still have quite awhile until dinner, having arrived mid-afternoon, so Matt and I both bum around the river, independent of one another, until, like dogs at the backdoor, we instinctively wander back to camp when our bellies need filling. I've already filled my water bottles from the silty glacial water running through the river bed, so we use one of my Nalgene bottles to fix our first of many yummie Mountain House freeze dried dinners. If these things weren't so expensive, I think I'd eat them every day. They are grubbin'.
We've forgotten bug spray and the bugs are bugging Matt in particular and me to a lesser extent. They seem to be the worst in the evening, but go away when it cools off. Thankfully, this is one of the few days where bugs are a problem. We've met a group of four other hikers who are staying here and they give us some bug juice. Most hikers doing the trail seem pretty generous. This group is hiking the trail in sections, like many people do. They are doing their third and final segment—Mowich Lake to Longmire. We will camp with them again at Golden Lakes and then one final night at Klapatche Park.
After dinner, Matt spends some time filling both his water bottles, and I take some pictures of the river and up the river bed toward the lower ridges of The Mountain. Today, we can't see The Mountain because we're in a valley which twists at it moves uphill where the view might otherwise be. On other days, it will be clouds that block our view. I burn through some memory instead of film, as I get my new camera warmed up to the park. I don't know if my memory cards or batteries will last the entire hike, but I don't worry about it. I snap away, in my own little world behind the viewfinder, camera sitting on my carbon fiber tripod.
Matt and I hit the sack early, as there's not much to do after dark. When you're out in the wilderness, you tend to go to bed just after dark and get up shortly after the sun rises. This is the pattern we adopt. The first day is largely a success. We're feeling good and we've made it to our first camp, gotten things set up, and cooked our first dinner. We're feeling good.
Photos of the Hike
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