Wednesday, August 29, 2012

High Divide Loop

This was our long hike of the summer, any by far the best. Five days, four nights and lots of wildlife.

We started off hiking to and camping at Sol Duc Park for the first night. I remember it being veeerrry cold. I think a lot of the cold air collected in the area we were camping. Nice little stream between some rock beds in the middle of the forest.

Day 1 - Sol Duc Park.

The next day we hiked to Lunch Lake. This was also Andy's birthday. Happy Birthday, Andy!


Cold, sun shiny morning :)


This is Heart Lake <3 center="">


Clearing at a high part of High Divide..


Hey, cool dudes.

So when you're walking up a steep section you're usually looking down, right? I usually do, too. But this time while I was looking down, something caught my eye up ahead. Just moments ago we saw some bear scat on the trail, too, so I was a little paranoid. I could have sworn it was some kind of movement, though, and John thought he saw something, too. Good thing, because we decided to stop mid-slope just in case...


Yup, it was a bear.

That was exciting. Here are some other pretty pictures on the way to Lunch Lake.


Hoh River from the High Divide (left), Tarns - looks like a golf course to me (right).


Beautiful, perfect, gorgeous Lunch Lake. Stayed two nights here.
 
 
6/14/2017 - Found this post sitting as a draft, so I guess it's all I wrote. Planning to do this hike in one day next month, July 2017.







Saturday, August 4, 2012

Rachel Lake to Alta Mountain

August 4 - 5, 2013

What can I say? Rachel Lake is gorgeous. We took an overnight backpacking trip to Rachel Lake the first weekend in August. Our legs were burning by the time we made it. Little did we know what was coming up.. After setting up camp, lunch, and taking a cold dip/swim in the lake, we headed out for a day hike. Plan was to hike to Rampart Lakes which is only 1.3 miles away, we accidently took a different trail - 1.8 miles of unyielding elevation gain (4,200' @ Rachel Lake to 6,100' @ Alta) but well worth the spectacular views and false summits! We were very close to actually summiting, but the sun was starting to set and we were hungry, tired, and had quite a descent ahead us. Maybe we will take this trip again in the Fall and this time go to Rampart Lakes :) Visible mosquito bite count: John - 100+ / Angela - 56 / Andy - 10. Andy has asked me to edit - his bites showed up later at 100+ LOL. My bite scars were visible until December.

Photo dump!