Wonderland Trail Day 7: Klapactche Park to Devil's Dream

Aug 15
Mileage: 10.7 miles
Klapatche Park: 5515 ft
Devil's Dream: 5060 ft

I woke up at the crack of dawn again and was actually in a good mood wanting to be positive about moving forward a day on the trail.  Also, it was not raining, but a heavy misty fog and it was cold.  I got dressed and had breakfast of cold cereal.  I had an energy bar in my pocket night before I went to sleep, so stuck in my pot hoping the mice wouldn't get to it, but they did, not leaving too big a mess.  Hope those dates gave them stomach problems. :)

Got my pot cleaned up and heated up some water and ate another meal as I was still hungry.  This is becoming normal for me eating two meals at breakfast and dinner.  I wanted to be by the lake on the phone at 0730 talking with the rangers to see if I could go on to Devil's Dream today and before they gave out permits to walk-ins.  I called the White River Ranger Station, however, they didn't have the computers up yet, so I had to wait until they had it up and running.  An expensive 15 minutes later, I got confirmation to go on to on to Devil's Dream, so I was really happy and knew I had a long day again.  I called Jen to tell her I would meet them at Longmire on Sunday and if they couldn't get me a room for Sunday night, I would  sleep in one of their cars.  I went back to camp to pack up and left camp at 0855 and took a few pictures of Klapatche Lake.

 

Klapatche Lake

 

Headed uphill to St Andrews Lake and the park was gorgeous with the fog and the morning dew.  My plan was to arrive at S. Puyallup River Camp in 3 hours since it was 4 miles away and have lunch, so wanted to move as fast I could today.  I hit the ridge line and a miracle happened, yup after 7 days on trail, there was the mountain and the sun came out!  I grabbed my camera and took some pictures watching the fog roll up from the valley below and then no more mountain.  Well, that made my day and put a spring in my step.  The mountain is beautiful up close like that.

 

WLT uphill thru Klapatche Park

Klapatche Park

 

Hey look, sun and Mt Rainier

 

Just that quick, the fog rolls in

I arrived at St Andrews Lake and the sun came back out and the fog was rolling about and got some good pictures there.  I dropped my pack and had a snack for a few minutes and then moved on.  The trail heading up and up to the ridge line.  Also, it dawned on me that I was half way done with the WLT and on the west side heading to the southwest, cool!  I met a few thru-hikers along the way from the Midwest so we chatted a bit and I had one guy from Ohio get my picture.  I met another group of hikers and traded camp info and the woman like my GPS so we talked about it for a bit.

 

St Andrews Lake with Rainier

 

Me in St Andrews Park

After that it was downhill the rest of the way to the S. Puyallup River Camp.  I met this bother-sister on the trail as they were humping up and they had these humongous packs!  OMG!  I had to wonder what they were carrying that was so big.  I told them about the rain and how I yelled at the sky at Golden Lakes and they laughed about that.  I made camp in 3 hours after crossing the river, right on target so I was happy about that.  Small victories work wonders sometimes.  I pulled into the group site and got some water and wolfed down 2 meals.  Here lately, I'm just hungry all the time and really eating heaps of food.  I wanted to lighten up my pack going up to the Emerald Ridge as it was going to be a nasty uphill for a while.  I walked to the camp toilet and forgot that this camp has the lava rock formations, so ran back to get my camera and took a few pictures.   Pretty cool rock formations!  I think they call this Devil's Organ Pipes or something like that.

 

S. Puyallup River

 

Lava rock formations

I left camp at 1330 and headed uphill for the ridge and stopped along the way to take off the rain gear.  It was not raining, just foggy and I was hot climbing the trail.  I stopped and talked with several people comparing notes about the trail, weather, rain and camps.  I met on couple from Wisconsin and like me were disappointed in the trip so far with a lot of hiking and no views.  They had been on the trail for 6-7 days too!  I asked them if they were enjoying the mountain view and they asked where the mountain was and I pointed behind them.  The Tahoma Glacier should have been in our face, but all we saw was fog.

 

View of Tahoma Glacier from Emerald Ridge

The trail along the Emerald Ridge was thin, very steep and dangerous.  I had to keep telling myself if I fell to fall right.  A fall right would hurt but a fall left was fatal as in 5000 ft to the river.  It looked like a major portion of the trail here had given way to a landslide, so it wasn't a nice part of the WLT that is for sure.  This also jogged my memory of the woman I met who fell and cut up her face as I guessed this is the part she fell on.

Steep trail on Emerald Ridge   

                                                

Trail on Emerald Ridge 

Finally got up to the ridge looking for Marmots but didn't see any and up to this point hadn't seen any in 7 days.  That is not common in the sub-alpine areas as they are usually everywhere.  The trail started downhill and turned to rock, which really slows me down.  About this time a group came from behind and scared the crap out of me.  I know I startled them as well and they were the first people who passed me from behind in 7 days, not counting the ranger.  They were moving fast, so I just got out of the way.  Ah, to be young again and have the ability to move fast without the knees hurting.  Still heading downhill to the Tahoma River met a large group and spoke with them for a bit.  There were several women and one guy who had his wife with him, so I teased him a bit about  being the only man of the group.

The trail heading downhill now got bushy, rocky and muddy so again took my time walking through it all.  I finally came another suspension bridge this one higher and longer than the Carbon River one.  I walked across it and had taken pictures before crossing and it was cool to see how the river flowed from up above.  After making it across the river the trail sign said I still had 2.9 miles to camp.  Again, I set another goal of 2 hours to make it 3 miles and was hoping to get to camp by 1900.  I stopped for a break, took off jacket that I had put on coming down the ridge and hit the trail.  The 1.8 miles to Indian Henry's was all uphill and very steep.  It wore me out and at this point just wanted to get to camp and out of my boots!  About an hour later I arrived at Indian Henry's Hunting Ground and it was very beautiful so took some pictures.

 

Suspension bridge over Tahoma River

 

 Tahoma River

Indian Henry's Hunting Ground

 

Ranger Patrol Hut

 

Indian Henry's

The trail sign posted Devil's Dream about 1.5 miles away.  I had a snack on the move and saw the ranger from the hut there come out and start heading my way on the trail.  He caught me asking me where I was going and he would check my permit there and took off.  He did say the rest of the way was down hill and it was.  I arrived at camp being the last one in at 1915 and got site #2 which is what I wanted per a recommend from a hiker.  Got to the site, set up the tent and unpacked and headed to get water.  Water access here is a bit tricky as the area is dark, damp and very slick with mud.  I wasn't too happy about having to hike up and down a muddy slope to get water, but got water and back to camp.  This camp was dark, damp and the mosquitoes were out in full force, which is the first time they have been a problem on this trip.  I made dinner and got camp bedded down by 0845 and it was dark outside by time I crawled in the tent.

I was tired as all get out after a very long strenuous day, so tried to stretch out and relax and then fell asleep knowing tonight was my last night in a wet tent, at least for a few days.

Wonderland Trail Day 6: Golden Lakes to Klapatche Park

Aug 14
Mileage: 7.8 miles
Golden Lakes: 5130 ft
Klapatche Park: 5515 ft

The human body is amazing as it can endure demanding physical activity day after day and come out of in good condition.  However, what throws a wrench into the grand plan is the mental state along with its by-product, emotion.  These 2 things just screw everything up and get in the way.  Physically I felt fine, mentally and emotionally I had hit my breaking point.  I was miserable, tired of the rain, gray skies, humping up and down with no views and the rangers telling me today was the day the sun was coming out!

I woke up once again to rain and it just weighed on me.  Everything I had was pretty much soaked.  Sure, I had pack cover and had things in plastic bags, but everything got wet anyway!  My tent footprint was wet and very muddy which transferred to my tent floor.  Amazingly enough, I did manage to keep my sleeping bag dry throughout this whole ordeal!  I had it in a waterproof compression sack and in the tent I spread out everything plastic around the mattress pad to prevent it from getting wet.  I didn't sleep well during this time as I kept waking up to make sure I hadn't moved during the night onto the wet tent floor.

So, what does one do when they wake up to day 5 of rain?  Aside from wishing my friend Kris would come pick me up in his helicopter, I picked up the sat-phone and called Jim as I knew he would understand.  Leaving a message for him, he called back and told him I wanted to vent; I was miserable, it had been raining 5 out of the 6 days I've been out here and that I was done with this.  I had to keep moving forward, but that I was done and coming out early.  Then the phone died!  Great, but finally the rain stopped and I heard the sites on either side of me emerge and start to break down there tents and they were gone.

I got dressed and grabbed the water bladder, bottle and filter and headed down to the lake.  I was starving and needed to eat and in a hurry!  Grabbed the food bag off the pole and headed back to camp where it started to rain again.  I got some water going and ate breakfast and some extra stuff as well.  Drank some tea and water and felt much better.  It stopped raining and the fog came in.  As I was packing up, I kept asking for some sun.  What do know, it actually came out!  Wow, and it really felt good!  I ran over to site #4 to grab a picture of the view from there.  It's beautiful and I was bummed out I didn't get that site, but oh well.

 

View from site #4

I was still famished and boiled some more water and ate another meal, while the sun was out allowing it to dry out my stuff for a little bit.  Again I had another late start, but sitting in the sun eating a meal felt good, so I didn't worry too much.  I walked out to the ranger hut and Paul was leaving and seemed startled anyone was still here.  He asked me if I beat the storm in and told him what happened and he just shook his head.  I asked about Klapatche and he said it was uphill and unlike yesterday the trail was steep and not nice.  He also mentioned to get water before I got to camp and not to drink out of the lake.  Klapatche Lake is a scum lake and he said there was a stream right after the river crossing to get water there or I would have to hike 2 miles to get water!  He then left for Indian Henry's and had a long day of like 18 miles.  I left right behind him at 1035 after taking a few pictures. 

 

Ranger hut at Golden Lakes

The trail out of camp was up and down and the rest of  Sunset Park was beautiful.  I ran into some hikers and we talked about the weather, the misery and the ability to keep going.  North Puyallup (pronounce Pew-oll-up) River Camp was 4.9 miles away and I set a goal of arriving there at 1300-1330.  Met a guy who was moving and had left from Longmire and was going to Mowich Lake.  What?!  He then said he was doing the trail in 3 day and I can't imagine doing that!  Met a two other groups of 2 guys, one of which said Klapatche was freezing cold last night, so they came down to North Puyallup for the night and they were done and bailing off the trail.  The other group told me there was a stream to the south of the lake they used for water, not to hump it up the hill. All of the groups said that people have bailed off the trail because of the weather.  I made to the North Puyullup camp at 1310, so made good time. Crossed the river over a nice wood bridge and stopped at the group site for a snack.  I still debated going out via a trail to the Westside Road, but kept going.

 

Sunset Park

 

Flowers at Sunset Park

 

Sunset Park

 

Trail on way to N. Puyallup River

 

Bridge across N. Puyallup River

 

N. Puyallup River

After a break, started uphill for Klapatche and found the stream that the ranger had mentioned and listened to my gut and dropped the pack to fill up the bladder and my water bottle.  Filling up the bladder meant unpacking the pack, but I needed the water so it wasn't a big deal.  After getting water and repacking, my pack was heavy once again as water weighs around 8 lbs/gal.  The uphill trail here was tough and steep and nothing like the gradual nice uphill of yesterday as the ranger had said.  It was nothing like Ipsut Pass though!
I passed this tree that had these huge rocks still embedded in its root system and one had fallen down to the trail.  Pretty cool to see that!

Those rocks aren't small

Met some people coming down with one couple telling me that the ranger was at Klapatche eating lunch and that was at 1400, so Paul had hiked 7.8 miles in like 3 hours.  Wow, guess when you have a very light pack you can move!  The wife had her face all cut up and she told me she fell down some steep part of the trail coming out of Indian Henry's and fell on her face and even lost a tooth!  I'm thinking I would have been done at that point, but here she was, hiking on.  The trail continued on with up and more up and then the switchbacks got longer.  I hit a flat spot thinking I was at the top until I looked at the map, nope, more up and steeper, then finally the switchbacks got shorter and I came out into Aurora Park and the fog.

 

Uphill to Klapatche

Aurora Park in the fog

 

Klapatche Lake in the fog

I finally made it to camp and took site #3 on a recommend from one of the guys I passed on the trail.  I was the only one in camp and I think I got to camp around 1630.  The fog was thick and it was cold at 5900 ft.  I got the tent and camp set up and ate some more snacks.  I had dinner limiting myself to one meal here although I easily could have eaten two of them as I had to water ration until tomorrow.  After dinner, I looked around for the creek the guys talked about, but never did find it, so glad I humped it up the hill.  I also called Jim and Jen and worked out a plan to come out early not really sure on how it would all work out.  I wanted to get to Longmire or keep heading south on the trail so that the hike on the road wouldn't be that long.  I had 3 choice at this point:

1. Bypass South Puyullup River Camp and go on to Devil's Dream which would put me in Longmire a day early.
2. Hike the trail out here at Klapatche Park onto the Westside Road and meet Jen at the gate.
3. Hike to South Puyullup River Camp and take the trail out to the road and meet Jen at the gate.
   

I told them to call the National Park Inn to see if they could get me another night added on to my current reservation and I would call them in the morning.  I needed to call the Ranger Station in the morning to see if I could stay at Devil's.

I went to sleep with a light rain and the question of how things would pan out in the morning.  I was the only on in camp again and I don't like being the only one in camp.