This was the day, our long day with no water on the trail. We woke at 5am to get an early start and to try to beat the heat. Not far from camp we came across a road, we turned left as we didn't spot the cairn showing where the trail was. As it turns out it's clearly in this photo. Wow how did we miss it? Anyway after walking about a tenth of a mile up the road I got out my Guthook app and saw that it was just across the road from where we'd come out of the trail. So back we went to the cairn.
My husband carrying our extra drinking water for the day as there would be no water for 11.8 miles.
A nice good morning peek from Mount Rainier.
Great views for our start.
Wildflowers along the trail.
Road crossing
Heart rock❤
Road crossing (as it turned out we didn't need to worry about how the author of the book talked about the confusing maze of logging roads to get through. The trail was always just across the road, so that worry was all a lot about nothing).
As we hiked through the Blowout mountain section of the trail we saw a lot of these signs posted. Even after four years they are still on the look out for him. Very sad.
I loved all of the PCT trail signs along the way. Although I have to admit they could really use some more in some strategic areas as well as camp site signs.
We stopped at this ridge view spot for lunch. The day was getting very warm and every breeze really did help. We placed our packs carefully so we wouldn't squash any wildflowers or plants and found a place in the shade to sit.
There were some amazing views from the spine ridge.
Spine walking❤
We had a section of the trail with quite a few blow downs to go around or crawl over on this day.
Heart rock❤
A very large bracket fungi or conk.
As you can see the water carrying pouch is now attached to his pack. If its too full it can't be attached because it's too heavy for the zip-lock closure and the water spills out. How do we know this? Yes, it happened to us on another backpacking trip. Anyway we'd had enough refills of our water bottles to allow it to be attached. Much easier for him to be able to use both of his hands for log climbing over and to use his trekking poles.
As you could see in the previous photos we did have a lot of blow downs to navigate on this section. We read in the book that when we began our descent it would be 6 switch backs until water. My husband counted each one aloud as we came to them. It helped for my forward progression. We finally came to this message on the trail❤, a large arrow and a stick message of H2O!
WATER!!
After 11.8 hot miles we finally got there. All of my worst fears back on the night of day three were for naught. We navigated the logging roads just fine, and thankfully even though it was a very warm day, most of the trail was in a shaded forest. Again, thank you to my husband for carrying water all the way from Spring camp, we never ran out and had plenty to drink all day.
Just a short hike more and we were at camp. The camp was just off of the Tacoma pass road.
We had a very loud low flying helicopter go over us during the night, kindof unnerving.
So glad we didn't turn around on day four.
We survived the day, a good lesson to me: don't allow the words I hear or read dwell in my brain and let them go to fear and apprehension. Trust that I have the ability and experience to get through, and if not there is always our Spot messenger!
Relive video of our route:
Garmin stats:
total miles - 12.34
total ascent - 1762 feet
total descent - 3100 feet
to be continued......
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