Central Washington

My good friend/ travel buddy joined Dumptruck and I on the hike from White Pass to Snoqualmie Pass. The 100 mile section flew by with the new company. It was great to hear new stories and to be distracted from the routine of hiking.

The weather was GREAT other than about a day and a half of rain. It was cold and everything was wet… We were sooo thankful the sun finally came out to dry us and our gear off. This gave me mad motivation to get to Canada!

When we reached Snoqualmie Pass the three of us were starving. Dump and I finished off everything in our packs and were hungrier than ever. We headed straight for The Pancake House for a warm breakfast.

After eating pancakes I went to the lodge to pick up our food drop. The lodge charged $16.20 for just a small box! I was disappointed to have to waste the money, but I didn’t have a choice at that point.

As we were looking through our food and the hiker boxes, SWEEP walked in! He is one of our dearest friends from the trail last year. We leap frogged with him throughout the desert, Northern California and Oregon, and knew he was in the area. It was sooo great to see a familiar face- someone we can relate with. All these thru-hikers up here pass up so quickly doing 35’s that we don’t get the chance to spend much time with any of them. We have been doing 22-27 the past week and still aren’t hiking at their pace.

We had a great couple hours catching up with Sweep and hearing about his experience on the trail this year. He is ROCKING IT! Almost made it all the way to Canada already! We enjoyed a couple rounds of beer and hoped to meet each other out on the trail. Sweep was staying the night at the lodge and Dumptruck and I were heading down to North Bend to stay with a Couchsurfer for the night.

Before we even made it to the freeway we were picked up by a couple headed to Seattle. We spent the evening eating ridiculous amounts of cookies and pizza from Papa Murphy’s.

– Ryan made breakfast and dump made a couple more batches of cookies. I started downing coconut water w some strawberry lemonade I added as soon as I woke up. I could feel the effects of the beers in snoqualimie with sweep. – packed up and walked 1.5 miles to the post office. We tried hitching through town because every mile added to or day made an impact… Especially on the concrete. We had 75 miles to go to hit Stevens Pass and we had hopes of getting there in three days to catch Sweep and Red Beard. We hiked with Red Beard in the desert last year and are hoping to see him!

-After a quick stop at the PO and a mini mart we walked another mile or so to the on ramp back to Snoqualmie Pass. We were hoping for a quick ride, because it was already eleven o’clock.

– It seemed like most of the people passing by wanted nothing to do with us. A few smiles and waved, but only those with fully loaded vehicles. I was getting impatient right as a truck full of college aged guys slowed down. The guy in the passenger seat hollered, “you wanna ride?”

No quicker than a was able to smile the guy pulled out his squirt gun and sprayed me right in the face. Dump got wet too and we were both shocked & speechless for a solid minute. This discouraged us even more and it was difficult to keep a smile on my face.

Not more than ten minutes later a kind woman in a motor-home pulled over and told us to hop in. She had just set out on vacation to go fishing with some friends of hers and was nice enough to give us a lift.

The upcoming section had a few alternate route options. The first was a 25 mile detour to pass the Goldmyer Hot Springs, which would actually cut ten miles off overall. Hot springs and short cut? Sounds like our kind of detour!

The hot springs are on private land and ended up being full to the allowed capacity of 20 people per day. We weren’t too surprised because it was the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend after all. We didn’t start hiking until almost two o’clock, but we still managed to get 15 miles in before it was completely dark. The first 4.6 miles of the day climbed at least 1,500 feet and was PACKED full of day hikers from Seattle. I was so relieved to reach Sheep Lake, which was the turning around point for most people.

The next couple miles of the trail was not maintained whatsoever. The brush was taking over the trail as it descended very rapidly. Every couple minutes or so we were faced with a blow down (fallen tree), that requires going over, under, or around on steep terrain.

The miles passed very slow and we finally reached a beautiful lake at the bottom. We filled up on water and set off to make fast miles. It wasn’t until it was nearly dark enough to need a headlamp that we made it to a campground fifteen miles on.

We woke up before six the next morning to try and catch Sweep (a friend we hiked with last year). We knew the terrain was going to be more of a challenge, but we were still hoping for more miles. We busted out 13 miles before lunch time and were on track to catch Sweep by nightfall. We had 14 miles to go to a water source where we thought he might be camping. His wife, Trip sent us his plan/ schedule for the rest of the trail. That made it easy to track him down ;).

The 27 miles traversed thousands of feet throughout the day. It is the section known for going up 2,000 ft, down 2,00 ft, up 2,000 feet, down 2,000 feet… Which was definitely how it was! We took quick breaks and ate lunch quickly. We took water breaks faster than normal and were able to catch Sweep by dark.

Sweep, Dumptruck and I reached a river crossing that required us to jump across some rocks that were a little farther apart than I would have preferred. Ten minutes later we were all safely across and filled our water bottles without filtering the h2o. The beautiful fall of water was coming straight from the mountain and we knew we could trust the water. Sweep spotted a campsite just a ½ mile later and we were all thankful we didn’t have to continue on to the next listed campsite. We were all exhausted from the challenging, 28 mile day.

The following day we had just 24 miles to Stevens Pass. We were eager to get there, because we had a friend thinking to meet us there. The miles were even more difficult than the previous day, but somehow, the miles past just as quickly.

We reached the highway just after 6:00 and got a message from our friend from last year that said he couldn’t make it out. We were ready to head into town to GRUB and drink a couple beers with Sweep. The lady that gave us a ride into town let us know that there was nothing around open for dinner… And definitely no bars. We were bumming, but happy to be on our way to the Trail Angels home in Baring.

We were pleasantly surprised (blown away, really), when we arrive to the Dinsmore’s home. They are known as the PCT Mom & Dad, and they have a NICE set up for us hiker trash! They have a large hiker room full of bunk beds, recliners, a TV, an endless amount of dvds & videos, games, computer, microwave, hiker boxes and loaner clothes (for us to wear while Mrs. Dinsmore washes our clothes). They also offer showers and camping on their beautiful property.

One of the first things ‘Mom’ asked was “have you eaten?” We said, “no” in a depression tone, but our eyes lit up when she offered us spaghetti. YES! Town food!! I couldn’t have been more excited.

We set up tent and crashed out as soon as we finished eating. We have spent the day relaxing at the Hiker Haven and eaten our fair share of town food. ‘Dad’ drove us into Skykomish today, which has a better food selection. The gas station in Skykomish was limited & expensive, but we were able to get what we needed to make it to the next town. I’m thankful we had a food box sent here, because I wouldn’t have been happy with my food selection/ money spent on it!

We will head out toward Stehekin tomorrow morning. We have a couple boxes sent to Stehekin, so we are taking our time to arrive Sunday evening. We have to wait until Monday morning for the Post Office to open, so there is no reason for us to arrive Saturday afternoon… We would only end up spending money while waiting around. We have 175 miles to go to the border. It is a pretty surreal feeling… Bitter sweet it is. I have been dreaming of finishing the trail for years and I can hardly wait for the moment to come. It looks like Dumptruck and I will be finishing with Trip and Sweep… How wonderful it would be to complete the trail with our ‘team’ from 2011!! The trail works in crazy awesome ways!!!