Trip Report, Pacific Crest Trail - August/September 2004
(I posted the following report on my blog last September but somehow managed to lose it while I was becoming acquainted with the archiving process of my blog entries; I've reconstructed the original report and here is the resurrected version.)
9/6/04
Trip Report
Pacific Crest Trail (#2000)
Stevens Pass to Snoqualmie Pass
Aug 28 - Sept 2, 2004
Thad H., Mike H., Max B. (author)
The
Pacific Crest Trail is a 2,650-mile national scenic trail which runs from Mexico to Canada through California, Oregon, and Washington. Hard-core hikers who are unemployed or on a 6-month sabbatical may choose to hike the whole distance, but my friends Thad and Mike and I chose to hike the 70-mile section of the PCT in Washington State from Stevens Pass (Highway 2) south to Snoqualmie Pass (I-90).
We estimated our backpacks weighed about 45 pounds, each containing 8 days worth of freeze-dried dinners and high-calorie breakfast bars and snacks, plus tents and sleeping bags and essential backpacking gear (moleskin, stove, water filter, first aid kit, etc.). We planned to hike about 8 miles or more per day and expected perhaps to have a "down" day where we could just rest in camp or take a side trip, scrambling up one of the Class 4 peaks along the way. As it turned out, we finished the 70-mile hike in 6 days, averaging almost 12 miles per day and we ultimately took no downtime.
DAY 1, AUGUST 28:
Stevens Pass (4,056') to Mig Lake (4,600'), 8 miles
We
started our journey at noon on Saturday under cloudy skies and occasional showers. The temperature was warm and we knew the forecast predicted better weather the next day so we were not concerned about the clouds. We hiked 8 miles to our first destination -- little Mig Lake. We encountered three other overnight campers (and their dogs) at Mig Lake, all of whom had hiked to the lake using a 2-mile long shortcut from Highway 2. Mike spent a good hour tweaking his new ultralight
tarp, erecting a nice rain and wind shelter for us to
spread out under while we calorie-loaded for the next day's hike.
Blueberries were everywhere and we ate as many as we could. Mike noted (with tongue planted firmly in blue-stained cheek) that they were far fresher than the blueberries he bought in his suburban Chicago grocery store that summer.
Before crawling into my sleeping bag that evening around 9 PM, I paused at the
tent door and pointed my face to the sky, felt the soft sprinkle of gentle rain, and took several deep peaceful breaths of the moist mountain air. The tall blurry evergreens in the late twilight stood like night watchmen outside my tent and I slept reasonably well for the first time in several weeks.
DAY 2, AUGUST 29:
Mig Lake (4,600') to
Deception Lakes (5,100'), 9 miles
We awoke on Sunday to discover perfectly crystal-clear blue skies. We broke camp and made our way southwest above Trapper Creek Basin and eventually crested above absolutely gorgeous
Trap Lake (Trapper Creek's headwater) at about 5,800', where we had lunch. From there we descended past Surprise Lake and
Glacier Lake (by this point we almost barely glanced at the beautiful alpine lakes -- they became repetitively gorgeous, kind of like swimsuit models in a Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar.)
Our high point of the day was Pieper Pass (6,000') where we paused for a rest and a snack. We met an old man with a green canvas backpack who had been hiking on the PCT for about a month. He had a bushy white beard and a jolly belly and, as Mike pointed out, looked very much like Santa Claus on summer vacation. We didn't learn his name but we referred to him thereafter as "
White Beard".
We descended pleasantly to Deception Lakes (5,100') and set up camp. The sun was still out so
Mike stripped and dove off a rock and found out how cold the lakes were. I heard a splash and then a loud Wisconsin-accented scream. I soaked my sore, blistered feet in the cold water but didn't go any deeper. A chunk of rock dislodged from the hills above the lakes and crashed down loudly which made us take a second look at our campsite to make sure we weren't in the path of any rock chutes. White Beard passed our campsite and told us he was pressing on towards Deception Pass, and that we'd likely overtake him tomorrow.
That night, mice came out and investigated our tents and gear. In the morning, Mike discovered mouse poop in his coffee cup which he had left outside his tent. Thad laughingly pointed out his own coffee cup -- upside down and poop-free on the cookpot.
DAY 3, AUGUST 30:
Deception Lakes (5,100') to
Deep Lake (4,382'), 12.5 miles
Blue skies reigned on Monday and we had a pleasant, easy traverse above Deception Creek Basin. The morning light brilliantly displayed
Mt. Hinman (and its glaciers),
Mt. Daniel and
Cathedral Rock off to the southwest. Cathedral Rock seemed so far away and we knew the pass below that peak was going to be our high point for the day, so we didn't waste any time.
We stopped to filter water that morning and Thad's water filter didn't work. After some tweaking he managed to make it work again which was a great relief. It was our only water filter and we didn't relish the idea of drinking iodine-flavored water for the rest of the week. We stopped at Deception Pass (4,440') and had a snack.
From Deception Pass, we roller-coasted up and down, crossed about four streams, and spied
Hyas Lake at the north end of Cle Elum River Road. Farther East, the
Wenatchee Mountains blocked our view of Eastern Washington. The biggest stream crossing was
Daniel Creek which got our boots wet but didn't pose too great a challenge, then we ascended a couple miles to
Cathedral Pass (5,600') just below Cathedral Rock, where we had lunch. After lunch, we began a knee-jarring 3-mile descent to Deep Lake (4,382') where we camped for the night.
Deep Lake and its beautiful surrounding meadows were a special month in our alpine lake calendar -- one I'll definitely keep displayed even after the month is over.
We saw White Beard again as well as a young man with three beautiful huskies, each with its own saddlebag presumably full of dog food. White Beard was just pausing for dinner and intended to hike on further that evening. We knew we'd see him again.
While setting up camp, Thad borrowed Mike's orange plastic poop shovel and returned a few minutes later with two shovel pieces. While digging a latrine for himself, Thad broke the shovel on the waistband of a pair of buried underwear. The underwear had been there for quite awhile.
DAY 4, AUGUST 31:
Deep Lake (4,382') to Chimney Creek (3,200'), 17 miles
Tuesday proved to be our toughest day. It was a grueling 17-mile death march though we didn't intend it to be so.
In the morning we had a very easy descent through the deep woods with
enormous trees which we paused to photograph. About four miles from Deep Lake, we detoured away from the PCT trail and dropped down to Waptus Lake (2,963').
Waptus Lake was absolutely the most gorgeous lake we saw by far on the whole trip - definite pin-up material. Thad commented that the lake view reminded him of a beer commercial ("Hamm's...The Land of Sky Blue Waters..."). I didn't see any flying bears but I agreed with him. The sharp peak rising to the northwest of the lake was called "
Bears Breast Mountain" (7,197'). We walked along the north side of the lake, had
lunch in the hot sunshine above the lakeshore, then rejoined the PCT at Spade Creek (3,100') where we filled our water bottles. While pumping water, White Beard overtook us (we had passed him earlier in the day) and he was astonished to learn that we were planning to press on and climb to Waptus Pass (5,200') and beyond. He told us we'd never make it. He was planning to camp near the creek and "rest up" for the climb.
The next four miles was a painful uphill battle. (White Beard’s lack of confidence in our successful completion of this day’s hike proved to be all the motivation I needed to press onward). We passed a 7 or 8 person US Forest Service crew which was doing trail maintenance with pruning shears and shovels. Fred Beckey's "Cascade Alpine Guide" described a camping spot just past Waptus Pass (5,200') but we didn't see it and by the time we realized we'd passed the "open basin camping" we were at least a mile
beyond the alleged campsite. It was early evening but we decided to press on even though the next campsite was about 5 miles away.
My feet were killing me but I kept my mouth shut and thought of the old fat man with the white beard resting against his canvas backpack. We hiked along
Escondido Ridge (5,600'), then plunged downhill along a punishing 3 mile descent as the sun set behind
Lemah Mountain. Most of Escondido Ridge is a graveyard of burn-scarred dead white
trees though there is quite a sign of resurgent flora. We paused briefly to take photographs of the surreal landscape.
As the daylight faded we struggled to determine where we were on the map. We were looking for a trail split where Beckey described campsites along Chimney Creek (3,200'). After a few hundred yards of headlamping through the woods, we stumbled across a beautiful campsite with a fire pit and we realized that for the first time during our trip, we were going to camp below 4,000' and were thus permitted to build a campfire. Mike jumped all over that and erected a blazing fire within moments. I'm not supposed to tell anybody he cheated and used stove fuel to get the fire going.
From our campsite we gazed straight up at the towering glaciers on Lemah Mountain, glowing in the moonlight as the Big Dipper swooped in like a giant ice cream scoop seeking that first virginal spoonful of vanilla. The sky was cloudless and absolutely perfect. We felt fortunate that the projected low pressure system appeared to have bypassed the region and we were in for continuing dry weather. What a relief. Plus, this campsite was so nice and we could enjoy a fire -- why not spend a day lounging here by the roaring creek, resting our weary bodies after our 17-mile death march? That was my vote. We decided to sleep on that idea.
DAY 5, SEPTEMBER 1:
Chimney Creek (3,200') to Park Lakes (5,000'), 8 miles
And then the rain came.
Or, as Thad announced at 6:30 when we woke up to the pitter-patter of rainfall on our tent roofs: "And the Lord spake, and declared: 'Thou Shalt Suffer.'"
Sitting around in the rain wasn't an attractive idea so we quickly packed our wet tents, pounded some breakfast bars and ibuprofen, donned our
rain gear, and launched ourselves onward toward Park Lakes.
The first 3 or 4 miles were quite
wet but very easy and flat. Then, suddenly, we ascended sharply to the 5,300' pass on Chikamin Ridge above beautiful
Spectacle Lake. After the pass we spied
Park Lakes (5,000') and started looking for a campsite. The weather worsened; the rain got thicker; the temperature dropped to about freezing level. We quickly set up camp then crawled into our sleeping bags to dry out and warm up. While resting, marble-sized
hail pounded our tents and piled thickly on the ground. We emerged after the hailstorm to have dinner and discovered the camp stove was broken. We managed to produce some lukewarm water with which we semi-cooked our freeze-dried food. MacGuyver-like Thad spent a couple hours reconstructing the stove with spare parts and discovered, ultimately, that he only lacked some WD-40 to soak the tube. Hmmm. We realized we were going to be living on power bars and beef jerky from that point on. Since we were only 15 miles from our final destination, we weren't too worried. We figured we'd hike those 15 miles in two easy days.
Heavy thunder and lightning and hail and rain plagued our sleepless night. I wrapped my damp sleeping bag in an emergency space blanket in order to repel water and trap some heat, which sort of worked. It was a cold, miserable night.
DAY 6, SEPTEMBER 2:
Park Lakes (5,000') to Snoqualmie Pass (3,022'), 15 miles
It was still raining when we stirred the next morning, and still cold. Mike shouted from his tent, "Well, boys, shall we get the hell out of here?" We decided at that moment that we would definitely push through to the end of the trail and do the entire 15 miles that day.
I took the water filter down to one of the Park Lakes to make some water for our hike. One third of the way through the first bottle, the water filter irreparably broke. Now, we had no working stove, no working water filter, and a broken poop shovel. Circumstances were reinforcing our decision to finish off our hike early.
I glanced up Chikamin Ridge and saw a heavy blanket of snow just above us, perhaps 500' above our own elevation. Winter, it seemed, had come early to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area.
Not 25 yards from our campsite, two
deer were foraging on a hillside. Thad took this as a good sign. "Animals know this meteorology stuff way better than those TV weathermen; they wouldn't be out eating unless they knew the weather was getting better." I breathed a sigh of relief at this observation because I wasn't in the mood to go plunging through snow.
We packed our wet gear into our wet backpacks and headed up to the 5,700'
gap in Chikamin Ridge, where we obtained a massive, sweeping, fog-covered
view of the huge gully area south of
Chikamin Peak. Distant lakes and waterfalls were barely visible through the dense clouds. (This view of the foggy, water-falled gully reminded me of Caspar Friedrich’s painting called “
The Wanderer”. Any successful photographing of this view was defeated by poor lighting and foggy conditions, but Friedrich’s painting truly captures the essence of what we observed at that moment.) The breeze was persistent and cold and we found ourselves treading through about 2 or 3 inches of
snowfall by the time we crested on the
exposed ridge. From Chikamin Ridge, we then descended to saddles (Huckleberry at 5,550', then Joe-Edds at 5,040') then back up to Alaska Mountain saddle at 5,600'. We declined to take the "walk" up to the top of 5,745' Alaska Mountain because visibility was so poor and we could smell the end of our road.
About 8 miles from Park Lakes we paused briefly at Ridge Lake where we might have camped for the night had we still had the use of a working stove and water filter. None of us second-guessed our decision and we pressed on quickly, unable to tame thoughts of the warm, dry clothes waiting for us in Thad's truck nor of the thick juicy steaks we were planning to eat at the Outback Steakhouse in Bellevue.
A couple miles later we came to the Kendall Catwalk which has a legendary view of Silver Creek Basin and Kendall Peak. The clouds were so thick that we couldn't see more than about twenty feet, so we didn't even slow down. We were 5 miles from the truck.
A couple hours later when we arrived at the parking lot at Snoqualmie Pass we were
dismayed to discover that Thad's
truck had been broken into and most of our dry clothing was stolen, in addition to his CB radio. The Sheriff's department had left a note on his windshield indicating the break-in had occurred several days earlier and that, happily, much of our stuff had been recovered and was waiting at the North Bend Ranger Station. We raced down I-90 and retrieved our dry clothes, then drove on to Bellevue and had our steaks. It was sunny in the Puget Sound region and we had a hard time believing that we had just hiked through snow and very winter-like conditions mere hours earlier.
Here we are at the end of our 70-mile journey:
