July 13, 2014
Wedding festivities are over and now Andy and I can be married which means free weekends for hiking!
Back in April we received confirmation that our Wonderland Trail itinerary was approved. We'll be hiking it in six days with no resupply starting from Longmire and heading clockwise. I'm nervous, but we will be doing some conditioning hikes before the big trip starting with Surprise Lake.
Andy made me a cool, new, safety-orange backpack and he made himself a nice new one, too. Yeah, 100% custom-made (Andy's MYOG post
here). My husband is awesome. We loaded our packs with just under 20 lbs of gear and they held up wonderfully during the hike. My new pack shaves off a pound from my Osprey pack which means I'll be using it for Rainier.
The
last time we were here Surprise Lake was frozen over and there was so much snow! On Sunday, the weather was warm/perfect and the lake was all thawed out. There were bugs, of course, and only patches of snow on the trail, but no big deal. It's a pretty gentle climb up to the lake until the last half mile. The trail is mostly in the forest and shaded by trees so it is a good hike for such warm weather. Feeling good about our energy levels we headed to Glacier Lake but due to a lost water bottle incident and not remembering how much farther the lake was (only 0.5 miles, doh!), we decided to turn around and head home. We will make it up there one of these days.
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At Surprise Lake. Pardon the frown - I was chewing my Cliff Bar and didn't want to stop eating for pictures.
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| Shortly after he lost his water bottle. Always has a positive attitude! |
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| Looking back up the trail. I still can't get over how awesome the staircases are here. |
The last time we were here Surprise Lake was frozen over and there was so much snow! On Sunday, the weather was warm/perfect and the lake was all thawed out. There were bugs, of course, and only patches of snow on the trail, but no big deal. It's a pretty gentle climb up to the lake until the last half mile. The trail is mostly in the forest and shaded by trees so it is a good hike for such warm weather. Feeling good about our energy levels we headed to Glacier Lake but due to a lost water bottle incident and not remembering how much farther the lake was (only 0.5 miles, doh!), we decided to turn around and head home. We will make it up there one of these days.
