Day 139: Thank You Sarah and Washington Shows off

September 5, Day 139: 2401.3-2431.0

Miles Hiked: ~20

Gratitude of the Day: I’m thankful for Sarah “Zippy” Paniati. I met Zippy on day one and she’s been an amazing person to hike with. She’s insightful, caring and thoughtful of those around her. 

I woke up this morning hearing Clyde’s alarm going off at 6am. So I got up and slowly got ready for the day. Made coffee and ate breakfast as the sun rose. At 7 I hiked out of camp with Navi and we were treated to some of the most beautiful views of the entire trail in my opinion. The sun rays were streaking through the clouds and making beams on the aqua blue lakes below our ridge line we were hiking.  We hit a saddle and saw our first mountain goats of the northern part of Washington right off trail, one even had a radio tracker around its neck. Also the Pika’s and Marmots were out in force today.

 

What wasn’t smooth sailing was the trail, it was basically scree/fist size rocks and it was slow going.  By 10am Navi and I had only gone 6 miles and the rest of the crew had caught us.  Usually in three hours we could cover 9 miles but with the steep terrain and the rocky trail we were only covering 2 miles/hour. The views made up for the slow going. Also in the back of our minds was the alternate trail we planned to take which shaved 8-9 miles off for the day and would take us through some alpine lakes.

By noon we’d covered around 10 miles as a group and we stopped at an absolutely amazing waterfall to fill up with water before having lunch at Pete’s Lake junctions where we’d start the alternate. It took us down to the lake which was beautiful and then shot straight uphill. Unlike the requirement of the PCT which can only have a max grade of 6% for the stock animals that are allowed on it, this side trail could do whatever it wanted, and it sure did. The climb out of Pete’s Lake over Waptus Pass was around 1000 feet just over a mile and then immediately descended the same elevation in about a mile and a half.

 

We then had to ford the Waptus river, which wasn’t bad, just out of the sandals and walked across to keep the shoes dry for the hike out of the valley tomorrow morning. Tonight we’re camped at a nice large campground and there’s what appears to be a hunters camp set up, but no one around. So we all had dinner on some pre-set up logs. We’re just a day and half out of Stevens Pass and less than 2 weeks from reaching the Canadian border.