Wonderland Trail, Part 1
Day zero, Monday, September 13th: 0 miles by foot, many miles by car
At 3:33 AM my alarm goes off, as does NoSeeUm’s in the tent next to me, and Sprout’s in her tent over by the picnic table. It seemed as good a time as any to get moving and get over to the ranger station, and three is Sprout’s favorite number, so hopefully a good omen. While we secured a backcountry permit for a 10-day backpacking trip in Rainier National Park back in April, our reservations weren’t for sites on the actual Wonderland Trail, which is what we really came here to hike.
We know the park holds 1/3 of available backcountry sites for walk-ins, so we’re doing our best this morning to get to the permit office first, in the hopes we can switch to our desired itinerary instead. We think we have a pretty good chance - one, it’s a Monday morning, two, it’s a little past prime hiking season, and three, it’s 3:33 in the morning.
We sleepily crawl out of our bags, fumble into the car and drive the few miles from the Cougar Rock Campground over to the Longmire Ranger Station, where… wait, is that a person on the porch? No? Is that someone waiting in their car? No? Then, are we the first to arrive? Whoo-hoo!
We find a table set outside the closed door of the Permit Office with all of the information we’ll need to re-organize our trek, so we grab our camp chairs, wrap ourselves in our sleeping bags and get to work calculating and re-calculating our days along the 93-mile trail that will have us circumnavigating Mt. Rainier, Washington State’s highest peak. We gather info from a binder that lists all currently available sites for the next 10 days, and pick starting points from various places around the park. We try a clockwise route from one location, a counterclockwise route from another, and finally land on three possible itineraries, all of which require a few “extra credit” miles to make it happen. Even though this ranger station opens at 7:30, and we are the first in line, in-person permits are also available from three other Permit Offices in the park, so that puts us neck and neck with whomever’s itinerary makes it into the computer first.
Our nerves aren’t quite settled yet, but we are feeling pretty confident, and our spirits are buoyed even more about an hour later when the next potential permitee arrives, seemingly surprised and possibly perturbed that he is not the first in line. The three of us high five each other with our eyes and are enjoying our instant Starbucks coffee (made right here on a camp stove on the front porch), unable to contain our giddiness…or is it deliriousness?
Two other women arrive about a half an hour after the first guy and around seven the Ranger arrives. She gives us the lowdown on how the permit process works and offers a few suggestions about alternates, should we need them. Surprisingly, she then lets us in early and lo and behold we get our first choice! We are stoked and pay the $6 fee, then skip merrily out the door. We can almost see the steam rising from the man behind us in line’s head, as the Ranger pauses for a moment to address the growing permit crowd gathering outside the office door before letting him in.
With our permit in hand we head back to our car campsite and start to pack up tents and gear. Now that we know where we are starting our trip from, we can get to work on round two — determining how many days of food we need to start off with on our backs and how many days we can leave in resupply buckets at other Offices and Campgrounds along the way. Having this rental car is key to us being able to drop off our resupply and getting us clear over to the other side of the park to our starting point of Mowich Lake. As it turned out, we will never be carrying more than three days of food at once, which seems amazing for hiking over 100 miles.
When we’re all organized, we had back to Longmire. Sprout heads off to the Permit Office to drop off one of our buckets, (we’ll be back here in 5 days) and NoSeeUm and I head off to the gift shop, in search of some fresh brewed coffee. NoSeeUm has the bright idea of seeing if a room is available for Saturday night at the Inn, since we have also learned a storm will be coming. There’s just one left and it’s only two twin beds, but no matter, nothing feels better than hot showers after a cold day and night of rain.
We drive for an hour and a half on the park road to the White River Campground, stopping at pull-offs along the way to admire some clear-ish views of Rainier. We leave our resupply in a bear box, then head out of the park around the Northside into the town of Enumclaw. We find a brewery, where I take advantage of the wifi, while Sprout and NoSeeUm go on the hunt for takeout lunch and pie.
At 5PM we begin our final leg of our long day of logistics up to the Mowich Lake Campground. The paved road soon turns into a washboardy dirt road that we can’t drive much faster than than 20 mph on, but we are rewarded with amazing views of Rainier, completely visible now that the clouds have dissipated in the golden hour light.
When all is said and done, we arrive to Mowich Lake around 7 PM, and find the lot surprisingly full and the available campsites slim. We smoosh our three tiny tents onto a tent pad built for one, and joke about how our tents are in three shades of gray, which could make for an entertaining Team Trail Name. We eat our leftovers from lunch in “The Claw” and go to sleep wondering what tomorrow will bring.
Day One, Tuesday, September 14th, 9.5 miles from Mowich Lake to Carbon River Campground
We eat oatmeals and bars for breakfast, pack up our tent site, and drop our non-backpacking items into the car. We head out hiking in a clockwise direction on the Wonderland Trail beside the beautiful and deep blue Mowich Lake, the deepest lake in all of Rainier National Park, I later learn. We rise up quickly along the left-hand side of the lake and can see down to the clear blue depths through the branches of the fir trees. As we climb, Sprout and Kelly quickly get ahead of me, as I suspected they would. We’re not at a super high elevation just yet, but it’s certainly thinner air than the sea level of Brooklyn that I’m used to.
After just a mile, we reach Ipsut Pass and are rewarded with a beautiful view out to many layers of mountains and down to the valley below, which we quickly start descending toward on switchbacks. It’s nice and sunny on this side of the ridge and as I start sweating, I wonder if I should have left my hiking skirt and short sleeves in the car after all? We’ll actually be back to Mowich to pick up our first food resupply in just two days though, so all is not lost.
As we descend, Sprout picks thimbleberries, blueberries and maybe even salmon berries, but we’re not sure. We taste them and spit them out, not because we think they’re poisonous, just because they’re past their prime. We continue descending until we get to the split for the side trail to the Ipsut Creek Campground, which was going to be our first night’s campsite prior to the switching of our itinerary. It’s 3/10s of a mile off track, but because we’re only hiking 9 miles today, we decide to head over there anyway to see what it’s like. We find a patrol cabin with a picnic table out back, but its already locked for the season, a bunch of tent sites and loads of gigantic downed trees. Apparently, visitors used to be able to drive to this spot until the Carbon River washed out the road a few years back, which is why there are so many campsites here. We have lunch at the picnic table and Sprout is feeling super sleepy so she lays down on the ground to take a nap.
While she rests, NoSeeUm and I go exploring the campground and we walk into the wide rocky expanse where Ipsut Creek meets the braiding Carbon River. We wonder if the river bed is ever completely full of water, or if it’s just changed course over time, as it deposits rocks carried down with the flow from higher above. We walk 100 yards or so, picking our way through small rounded stones and boulders to get over to where its flowing. It is roaring and it is white, and we’ve heard that it’s cloudy because of all the sediment in the water coming down off the glacier. So it’s probably safe to drink, but it would definitely clog our filters. I scoop some into my bottle just because it’s here, but then decide to get some from the nearby and clear-flowing Ipsut Falls instead.
Sprout gets up from her nap and we continue our hike South-East alongside the Carbon River, the trail now kind of undulating up and down around big trees and across creek drainages. The fall colors are starting to pop, some plants have yellow and leaves and some red and as we see the last remnants of summer wildflowers, we imagine what this trail would have looked like just a month ago.
On the informational sign by the patrol cabin, we learned at that Wonderland Trail used to take an alternate route up the South side of the Carbon River, but apparently that trail has washed out, so we have to cross to the North bank and then re-cross to get back to the South bank and to our camp for the night. I round a bend and suddenly see an open expanse where it looks like a completely different planet, and down below in a pile of rocks just across the river are Sprout and NoSeeUm. It is amazing how tiny they look from here, and it’s also amazing how this replacement bridge seems to be at least 100 feet long and made from one solitary tree trunk!
I make a big wow face hoping they can see it from far away and they video me as I come across the log. From here it’s a quick mile and a half on the north side of the river, under a very tall rise on our left, before we reach a suspension bridge and cross again to the south side. After the suspension bridge we have just a few tenths to go to the Carbon River campsite, our first night in the backcountry.
Each campground has a specific number of sites, but having a permit means that one of them is reserved just for us. Because we’re here early (before 5 PM), we get first pick and start heading uphill to try to find the best of the bunch. Site one looked like it had room enough for all of us and a nice tree stump that could be used as a backcountry dining table, but because it’s right near the group site, we wonder if other nearby campers might be loud. As we’re still recovering from yesterday’s logistical gymnastics, we want to prioritize sleep and decide to pass on it.
We settle on site three, which turns out to be the highest on the hill, a nice bi-level spot with a log bench, but when it comes time to head back down the steep slope to the privy, I wonder why we picked a spot so far away? In the morning, we find out that only one other group camped there anyway, so we were likely the loud ones in the end.
Even though we only hiked just over 9 miles, we’re all pretty tired, so we cook our dinners and as they re-hydrate, I relay the greater plot points of “Reality Bites” to my younger millennial friends, who I am kind of surprised have never seen this gen-x classic! I feel relieved, and not so old, when they at least know who Ethan Hawke is. We’re in our tents by eight, and feeling ready for tomorrow.