Day 126-129: The Many Faces of Washington

September 8-11
Day 126-129
Mile 2174.2-2274.3
Rock Creek to Goat Rocks Hill

Day 126-A bit of a Tunnel

We camped with a lot of people last night! More than we have camped with the whole trip. We got hiking at a decent hour and made good miles today. We were in a tunnel of trees today with limited views. On days like these we listen to podcasts and audiobooks a lot. Right now our audiobook we are listening to is " A Dance With Dragons" book 5 of the song of ice and fire series. Some of the podcasts we listen to are Planetary Radio, Radio From Hell, Geekshow Podcast, the Instance, Mysterious Universe. They are all pretty entertaining to us. We set up camp near some weekend backpackers who want to hike the pct in a few years. We made our dinner with them and chatted with them late into the night. They gave us a bottle of Nutella that we were very grateful for. Realistically we would carry 1 bottle a day of that stuff for us but that's just to heavy. We went to bed as some of the stragglers we have been hiking near came into camp. Great day! Sorry didn't take many photos today for some reason. We did cross mile 2200 today!




Day 127-Welcome to Washington

Last night we woke up to the sounds of thunder and lighting and the soft patter of rain on our tent. When we finally got up for the day it was foggy, cold, and rainy just like we expected Washington to be.




We hiked on through the mist that looked really cool through the trees. After a few miles we came upon a candy cache in buckets. We were both very excited and happy to take a bag of candy. Very unexpected. The hike the rest of the day was cold and we barely took any time off for lunch. We saw what we thought was a fire off on the distant Mt. Adams. As we were hiking we met some trail crews that confirmed there were some fires on Mt. Adams and that the trail may be closed. We didn't worry too much because that was a few days hike still.




Near the end of the day we got to a dirt road and there was some amazing trail magic. Some former through hikers had set up camp to help out hikers for a night. We had a fire to get warm by and ate Chili dogs and bananas with marshmallows cooked in tin foil over the fire.




It was a great night and we ended up stopping for the day. We camped with magic bag, Uhaul, Tangent, Holstein, and Tank.

Day 128-More Cold Weather...and magic!

We woke up today and Toby, Casey & his wife ( the trail angels) had made some coffee, eggs, and bacon. It was really yummy and a great way to start out the day. It had been a very wet night so the shell our tent had been soaked. Everything else was dry though and for that we were grateful. We hiked on through forest all day catching glimpses of Mt. St Helens and Mt. Adams occasionally.








We dried our things out at lunch and pushed on toward Mt. Adams.




As we were hiking along the trail up towards the mountain Jenna stopped and hushed me. In front of us on a log was a cat standing up on its hind legs. It stared at us curiously for a few seconds before running off. It looked just like a kitten but we are not exactly sure if that's what it was. It sure was cute though. We took a few steps around the bend and off to our left was a bear cub sitting eating berries. We sat and looked at him for a second before some other hikers came along. He ran off before they could see him. We hiked on and camped beneath the base of Mt. Adams with Magic Bag.




We had a great sunset tonight and an ominous view of the clouds.




Day 129-10 AM

We woke up at 9 am today and got hiking at 10 am...not bad. It was so cold we simply could not get out of the tent. When we got up we had amazing views of Mt. Adams without any smoke or clouds. The hike today was pretty simple mainly through trees. The rivers by where we camped had all frozen over in the night. We also had some amazing views of Mt. Adams and the distant Mt. Rainier.








There were a few section hikers we chatted with and some other day hikers. We entered goat rocks at the end of the day too.




It was a fairly uneventful day until dark came around. We hiked on till dark to get in some miles and to try and get to a camp site. When we got to the supposed site there was no good spot like the map said. It was dark so we may have missed it but we just kept going because it was too cold. We ended up hiking on a few miles till we found a spot that would work. It was not a great spot so we ended up digging out a spot for an hour so we could set up the tent. We went to bed very sleepy and somewhat grumpy. The cold is kind of getting to our mental well being. But we are staying strong.



It is a cold night again. It is an interesting observation that our first two nights in Washington were two of the hottest nights we have had so far, the next two nights were two of the rainiest, and the next two nights were two of the coldest. Washington weather can change so quickly and we feel like we have gotten a taste of that in this section.

-Natey