Wonderland trail 2019 Day one White River CG to Sunrise camp

Today was the day to begin our hike around Mount Rainier.

I awoke with butterflies in my stomach. Could I do it again? Time will tell..... for today and tomorrow and 11 more tomorrow's it will be one foot in front of the other until we are done. We began at noon in the White River campground, the trailhead was just across the road from our campsite. 

We began our journey hiking up to Sunrise camp amid blue skies and wildflowers.

An almost clear view of Mount Rainier.

Time to set up camp, filter water and eat dinner.

We walked to a spot near our camp to enjoy the sun a bit longer. I with my tea, and my husband with his coffee.

My husband walked around the area near our site after our "sun" time and noticed a big pile of bear poop just a few feet from our camp area. Nice! Our first night is to be spent where a bear likes to be. Oh well, all was well. We never saw a bear near our camp.

Before we went to bed in our tent we strolled down to Shadow lake. It was beautiful.

*Each night at camp in our tent before we fell asleep my husband read from the Patrick McManus book "The grasshopper trap" It was a wonderful routine each night. I mostly stayed awake through the chapters😉.
As I laid in my sleeping bag for the night I realized all was well, I am home❤

Relive video of our route:

https://youtu.be/lOn5fmdMl60

Garmin stats:

3.81 miles

2014 feet ascent

85 feet descent
Elevation profile:

Wonderland trail 2019 - Our walk up permit plan

After our Spartan event on Saturday the 10th of August, we headed to Mount Rainier. We hoped to get a walk up permit to do the Wonderland trail again this year. We did it last August (we got a walk up permit last year as well). You can read about that journey's first posting HERE. It rained on us a few days last year so we were hopeful for better weather at some of the key view areas this time. 

We drove to the White River campground to stay the night.

As we began to set our things up the sky opened up and boy did it rain.

I wasn't feeling too optimistic about hiking in the rain, but we got our things ready for the night and I set my alarm early enough for us to get in line when the Ranger Station opened at 7:30 am. The weather had calmed down in the night. Sunday morning we were the only ones in line waiting for the Station to open.

We told the Ranger our preferred itinerary, we were hoping to start at Sunrise and go to Mystic lake the first day. Mystic lake wasn't available for our first camp, so we would have to hike 14 miles on our first day to get to the next available camp. We weren't excited about that at all. So we went with an alternative start and just like last year we got every one we wanted. We would start at White River campground and go counterclockwise and stay at Sunrise camp our first night. Our itinerary was almost exactly the same as last year, except we wouldn't be staying at Dick Creek.We had hiked the pure Wonderland trail last year, skipping Seattle and Spray parks. I didn't want to skip those again they are just too beautiful. Our plan this year was to do the alternate Wonderland trail, which includes Seattle and Spray parks. We checked out the information board, there were no major alerts this year, so permit in hand we began the task of filling our cache and driving around to drop it off.

*the permit says Paradise River camp for our 8th camp, but it has been closed for several years. The computers at the Stations aren't catching this error and they don't  seem to be able to edit the permits. I'll share more about this in other posts. The rerouted camp is still Cougar Rock as it was last year.

Before we took off I saw the reflection of the camp in the window of our van.

Off to Longmire we went to deliver our cache. I spied dew drops on the cobwebs as we made our way to the Ranger Station.

After a discussion we decided to drop another cache off at the Carbon River Ranger Station, then our food and other items would be split up into thirds. My husband carries all of our food in a bear canister in his pack, so this would lighten his load considerably. We had brought an extra bucket and lid and tape, so we split up the rest of our things for one more cache. We drove towards the Ranger Station amid another huge rain storm. Needless to say I wasn't excited about this happening again. Also, we realized we were running out of time as the Ranger Station closes at 5 pm. We got there 1/2 hour before it closed.

They have a crew that delivers the buckets up to the lake a couple of times a week. We were assured our cache would be there when we needed it. Whew, major trust issues for us.
Anyway, we drove back to camp and had a good dinner and tried to sleep.
Monday morning we woke and began to pack up our packs. We were loaded and ready to hike by noon.

We found someone to take our start photo. Then it was time to go to the trailhead.

To be continued........