Today we would hike to Mystic Lake, the sun was up and warm. I was hopeful of some good views at the top of Skyscraper ridge.
Trail junction
Looking back towards where we'd come from.
Wildflowers and blue skies before us.
Just before we got to the ridge a Marmot was on the trail in front of us.
Little Tahoma and Mount Rainier behind me in the photo below.
I took a photo of Rainier without me in it, not long afterwards we heard a loud sound and looked at the mountain and saw an avalanche coming down from a higher glacier. Lucky me, I got a "before" and "during" photo.
After we took our photos of Rainier we sat and ate a snack. As my husband was looking back towards Berkeley park he saw something dark moving on a lower grassy slope. We got out the binoculars out and sure enough it was a black bear, as we looked again later we saw a much smaller one. Apparently there is a resident Sow and cub in the Sunrise area. Yay two bear, last year we saw zero.
On to Granite creek for a lunch break and water bottle fill up and filter time.
Granite creek
We hiked down hill alongside the Winthrop Glacier for a while.
Crossing the White River bridge
Travelling the spine trail on the glacial moraine.
Then it was time to cross a small stream and side hill before heading up into the forest.
A nice bridge with handrails???
Finally we made it to our camp for the night. We were excited because we had a group camp site all to ourselves. Room to spread out!
After we got camp set up a man and a boy came into our camp and asked it they could stay at our site. They had a permit for Dick creek, they were doing the Northern loop and he didn't think they would make it there that night. If it weren't for the young boy I would have said no, but because of the boy we said yes. Crazy guy, it seemed to be a spontaneous trip, I don't know how much backpacking he'd ever done, it was the first trip for the boy. Everything was new and they had way too much food in their packs, he started just dumping their food out all over the ground. He asked us if we wanted any, we took a few snacks that he offered. Just before bed, he put his very large trash bag in the tent with them. A back country - bear country no no. Oh well so much for a nice time to ourselves.
Relive video of our route:
Garmin stats:
9.18 miles
1965 ascent
2999 descent
Elevation profile:
Trip summary:
12.99 - miles
3979 feet - ascent
3084 feet - descent
Elevation profile:
