Washington PCT 2015: Day 31

Beautiful morning!

Day 31 was another day of amazing sunny views and climbs over mountain passes. We awoke to a little bit of fog floating up from the valleys below but that quickly burnt of in the late morning. Still, it made for a nice cool trek down to the next water crossing.

One last shot from the pit toilet

Heading down there

Putting away layers as it warms up

Cool old tree

Milk creek

Then we were climbing again. The climbs in this section of trail are relentless, steadily rising for thousands of feet without a break! But we had Glacier Peak to motivate us. It flirted with us all morning, nearly uncovered but always just behind a cloud.

Looking south toward Kennedy and Glacier peaks

Getting higher!

We finally arrived at the top of a bluff with a great view of the mountains to the south. After a break for lunch, we continued to a gorgeous valley to the north of Glacier Peak. We finally got our money shot of the mountain. It felt like we could walk right up onto it, though it wasn't really that close.

Nice spot for a lunch break!

Northern Cascades

There's Glacier peak!

This is a really cool section to hike

Northern Cascades, here we come!

Beautiful afternoon!

After a good long walk on what felt like the top of the world, we started down into the Suiattle river valley. There were quite a few downed trees to climb over, under, and through. Toward the bottom, Laura befriended Giggles, another hiker, who was hiking solo through Washington. We struck up a friendship and continued on to our campsite.

This tree was gigantic... went under it.

We almost lost the trail here

We camped right next to the Suiattle river. Giggles checked out the campsites and came back with more friends. It turned out she had found the owner of my new hiking pole. He had lost it crossing the river 2 days back and Laura and I had brought it back. He was quite willing to it back for his improvised pole. It was a really cool moment!

This worked out nicely

It ended up being quite a group at our campsite, including Giggles, Team Minnesota, and Gotta Go, another friend from Waptus lake. We had a dinner and chatted till dark. It was a great time with some wonderful people.

Enjoying dinner!

Looking down from the bridge

Suiattle river