Washington PCT 2015: Day 11

Day 11 was one of the best days of our hike. In fact, I am pretty confident that it will always be one of the best days of hiking in Laura's and my lives. The morning mountain air was crisp and cool. We awoke at daylight and had a bit of food before packing up and heading out.

Mount Adams in the morning

St. Helens

More St. Helens

Waiting for sunrise

Goat rocks has some tall mountains and those peaks blocked the sun for the first few hours of hiking. Finally, around 8 or 9 in the morning, the sun peeked over the mountains and said hello. During this time, we hiked over alpine meadows absolutely packed with wildflowers. There were few trees and those were small so we were afforded something like a panoramic view all the time.

Here it comes!

Sunrise!

We could clearly see Adams, St. Helens, and Rainier... and a bit of Mount hood although it was pretty difficult to see at this point. There were flowers everywhere. It felt like walking into a picture on a hiker magazine age only it was real!

Panorama south and west

Mount Adams at trail junction

Jesse in front of split rock

First snow!

I remember taking that picture!

Almost to the north side of the mountain!

Laura in front of Goat Lake with Rainier in background

But the fun was not remotely over. We started seeing small snow fields and walked across one of them. Soon we were on a ridge facing north across a beautiful green valley toward Rainier. To our right was the small but still scary Packwood Glacier. It was at this location that I got my name!

First full view of Rainier

Panorama on the terrace

Laura not excited about snow fields

 

Hurry up, guys!

Just about to cross Packwood Glacier

Its a long way down!

Ready to go

Rainier from the Packwood Glacier

Laura and Jesse were not keen on heights, especially when the path was icy or loose... so they were a little freaked out by the Packwood Glacier. To be fair, it was a bit dangerous. If someone crossed at the wrong time and slipped in the wrong spot, they might break something. That said, I felt pretty confident on such slopes and was happy to share my confidence with them. I led the way and talked them through the crossing step by step. We rejoiced and walked around the corner to discover another blanket of snow that was steeper and more difficult. I led the way across that as well. Whenever I said to do something Laura or Jesse would reply "Yer, sir" to be funny. At some point, they started saying "Yes, Scoutleader." And that is how I got my trail name.

Yay! Made it!

Little did they know that just around the corner...

Relaxing after the glacier. I climbed straight up the rocks behind them.

At the other end of the snow, we rested and rejoiced for a bit. There is something about exposed heights that is invigorating and we were all high on the experience. I still had a lot of energy so I left my pack with the others and ran up to the top of the Old Snowy alternate route. There was quite a view from up there!

Panorama from Old Snowy

Looking back toward Adams

Looking forward to Rainier

That is the ridge we will follow

The old snowy trail was steep

After I got back down from the mountain top, we continued on. We quickly learned that the scary trail was not finished with us yet on the knife's edge. Here we saw mountain goats. We also saw some very tiny path on very loose dirt. It was barely wide enough to fit two feet side by side. It was also carved into loose dirt and scree on a very steep slope. There were quite a few times that we stopped to breathe and gather our nerves. Even I found some of that trail a little frightening.

Laura is ready for knife's edge

Can you follow the trail?

Elk in the valley crossing snow

We're following the leader, the leader, the leader,...

Goats on our trail

Laura posing in front of Old Snowy mountain

Rainier, here we come!

Oops, good thing we didn't fall through!

Pretty picture

Relaxing near elk pass

Down, down, down...

We came from there!

One last look before the forest

Finally we came down to Elk Pass, which is one of our favorite campsites that we never camped at. We rested and had a long lunch before continuing down the mountain and back into the forest. We met a few people on our was down from Goat Rocks. We camped after about 13 miles of hiking near a trial intersection. Here we were met by two older guys named Brian and Ahu. Brian was a heavy packer who even had a 300-page novel with him. Ahu, on the other hand, was a light hiker. He walked into our camp and asked if anyone had a spoon because he couldn't find his and it made him so angry that he "ate all his food". He was a hilarious and interesting character who had done the AT more than once but was attempting the PCT for the first time. Apperently, man-made stacks of balancing rocks are called Ahu's and that's how he got his name. To this day we think of him whenever we see one of them. After a long time talking, we all got a good nights sleep. We would hike into White Pass tomorrow!

Happy to be alive!