Laurabelle’s Blog

This weekend Jeff and I hiked a section of the Wonderland Trail at Mount Rainier. The Wonderland Trail winds a 93-mile circle around Mount Rainier, and some day (maybe soon) I hope to do the whole thing. (But not yet!)

This time we planned to start from Longmire and hike northwest along the trail with Mirror Lakes as our eventual goal. We were to spend the first night at Pyramid Creek, then hike up to Mirror Lakes the second day and come back down to spend the night at Devils Dream. On the third day we would hike back out. We thought it was a pretty good, conservative plan. It’s only about 3.5 miles from Longmire to Pyramid Creek and 2.2 from there to Devils Dream. Mirror Lakes are another couple of miles beyond Devils Dream (but they’re relatively level miles—relatively).

That was the theory, anyway. As we all know, practice is always its own creature.

You can find our proposed route on the Mount Rainier National Park Trails Map (look toward the lower left-hand corner). Also see another hiker’s description of traveling essentially the same section of trail. Finally, the Seattle Times has a nice set of pages about the Wonderland Trail.

Thursday, March 24

Jeff and I hauled ourselves out of bed at 5:30 and were on the road by 7:30. (We meant to get up at 5:00, but I think I did my trick of silencing the alarm without waking up. It’s a good thing I set two alarms!) We were just a few miles from the park when I realized we’d forgotten our breakfast oatmeal. Luckily there were still a few tiny grocery stores on our route, so we ducked into one of them and bought a box of instant oatmeal and also some instant chicken noodle soup (not ideal, but almost anything hot tastes good on a cold morning). Our new Golden Eagle Passport let us into the park, and we proceeded to Longmire without a hitch.

We used the restroom (last flushies for three days!), loaded our packs, and were ready to go—except that we couldn’t find the Wonderland Trail. There was a sign saying Wonderland Trail, but it was pointing east, and we wanted to go northwest. A friendly park ranger corrected our misunderstanding, and we set off, only to see a little signpost by the trail that said we needed permits in order to camp on the trail. Ooops. We turned around and found our ranger, who said we looked so ready to go that he thought we already had a permit. The paperwork was simple (it’s really more registration than permission; the rangers want to know if we don’t come back so that they can go looking for us), and we were finally on the trail!

The climb from the Paradise road to the top of Rampart Ridge was steeper than I would have liked, but I made it to the top, albeit with frequent stops to let my heart catch up. I found that although my breathing was not labored (years of singing in choirs have given me excellent lung capacity), my heart was not yet accustomed to this level of exertion. The pleasant side effect of my breaks was that I had ample opportunity to appreciate the beauty around me. There is indeed a reason it’s called the Wonderland Trail. (The photo here is from the section of relatively flat trail between Kautz and Pyramid Creeks, but that’s the first place I remembered to take out my camera.)

After we crossed the ridge, the trail descended via switchbacks to Kautz Creek, a braided river on a stony, sandy bed. We crossed the water easily via stepping stones and a sturdy log over the main channel, but then I looked up at the sandy slope rising perhaps twenty feet above my head, saw the little pink ribbons fluttering in a diagonal line up the slope, and realized that really was the trail. Jeff informed me that this was called a talus slope: a slope of loose rocks or sand, lying exactly at the angle where friction is just enough to keep the particles in place, but no more. Oh bloody hell. We made it up without any mishaps, but it was a little nerve-wracking. Jeff said that was what’s called an obstacle. (I like this definition of a talus slope.)

Beyond Kautz Creek, the land was relatively flat (read: gentle hills instead of steep switchbacks). For a few hundred yards we wound through the woodland, following pink ribbons because the trail was barely visible otherwise. Jeff was in heaven; we had a good obstacle behind us, and the trail was little more than a deer path. We were in the wilderness, with no other humans for distraction. We had seen only two other people on the trail that morning, day hikers probably taking the Rampart Ridge loop trail, and we did not expect to see any other humans until we returned to Longmire.

Although the last 3/4 mile past Kautz Creek wasn’t too hard, the initial climb had really tired me out. The sign for Pyramid Creek Camp was unequivocally the best sight in the world. There were only two campsites, one snow-covered and the other dry (with a bench and a convenient table-stump). Can you guess which one we chose?

We wasted little time in setting up the tent and preparing our camp for the night, because we were unsure about what time the sun would set and did not want to be caught out. It had snowed lightly during the afternoon, and we knew it was going to be cold that night.



We arrived at camp at about 15:00 and ate dinner about 16:30. (Dinner was freeze-dried chicken and rice, not gourmet fare but hot and filling, so who really cares?) After we had done the dishes and hung the bear bag, there wasn’t much more to do, so we went to bed even though it was still light out.

Friday, March 25

The next morning I woke at 6:30 and stepped out into a beautiful, snowy day. We were longer at our preparations than we had intended, so we didn’t get on the trail until about 9:30. The facilities were so luxurious, we were loath to leave, but we had to.

The trail was magnificent that morning, lying sparkling and white and pristine before our feet. We could see a few footprints, but they had been filled in by the snow. No one had come this way for a couple of days; we were absolutely alone.

I was glad that it had snowed, because we had the unparalleled opportunity to see tracks that our (mostly) four-legged friends had left during the night. The first was a small pawed creature (a fox? about that size, perhaps) who followed the trail for the length of a few switchbacks before branching off. The bird tracks we found were remarkably clear, as were some of the rabbit prints. Speaking of rabbits, at a couple of points the tracks crisscrossed the trail in crazy loops, prompting me to remark that this must have been the place to be last night. Most puzzling were the occasional slight tracks of a small creature who would appear from a small hole in the snow and disappear into another tiny orifice a couple of feet away. Either there were lots of these critters, or that one really got around. They were everywhere.

High up on the trail, close to Devils Dream, we even saw large hoofprints crossing the trail—maybe an elk?

It was nice to have something to look at on the ground, because I was too tired to look up other than during a pause for breath. Still, I was able to muster a smile while Jeff snapped a photo of me. I almost forgot to document my own presence on the trail!

The air became noticeably colder, and the snow on the trail became deeper. Because I hike slower than Jeff, I had been taking the lead so he wouldn’t get ahead of me, but faced with this deep snow, I let Jeff go ahead to break the trail for me.

That made the way a little easier, but still I was even happier to see the sign for Devils Dream Camp than I had been for Pyramid Creek the day before. In fact, we had expected to encounter the camp significantly earlier and were almost on the verge of turning back by the time we found it.

Unfortunately, Devils Dream was not very hospitable at that moment. Although it’s probably a nice camp in summer, yesterday it was covered with at least six inches of snow, and we couldn’t figure out how we would get down the little canyon to Devils Dream Creek in order to get water. The waterfall is pretty, but we didn’t want to camp on snow. Furthermore, I was feeling fairly burnt out, and I doubted that I would be able to make it to Mirror Lakes and back to Devils Dream, or even to keep myself warm all day and through the night in that snow.



So we laid aside our aspirations and instead spread a tarp on the snow, threw our packs down, and ate a brief lunch (kneeling on the tarp to minimize contact with the freezing-cold ground and standing up on our knees occasionally to let blood return to our feet). Boy, were we glad to get out of there and back down to a lower and warmer elevation.

Maybe it’s a measure of my fatigue on that downhill trek that, at first glance, a couple of short logs lying perpendicular against a larger log looked very much like a pair of car wheels. I would have appreciated a ride back to camp.

Saturday, March 26

Camp that night was much like the previous one, except that instead of snow, we had steady rain from about 1:00 onward. Although the tent kept the rain off well enough while we were asleep, water seeped through the floor of the tent and covered most of the floor. (I am incredibly grateful for my decision to spring for a new full-length sleeping pad, as my new sleeping bag is insulated with down and would not keep any heat at all when wet.) Somehow we managed to pack all our gear without allowing it to get much wetter than it already was (the tent was a lost cause), and after a quick breakfast of fruit yoghurt we got on the trail at 7:45. (By the way, that was one nice thing about the temperature: environmental refrigeration.)

The hike out was mostly downhill, but we had to pass the same obstacles as on the way in. My left knee started cramping up on the steep downhill switchbacks, so I had Jeff dig the first-aid kit out of my backpack and throw an elastic bandage around my knee. It helped, but I still had to walk even slower than usual. I limped into Longmire at about 10:00, hand-in-hand with Jeff. He offered to let me win, but it was better with him by my side.