Hiking 23 miles is fun, but it hurts the next day
This weekend, Carly and I went out to Mount Rainier and did some hiking and camping (after months of talking about doing it).
The weather cooperated for us on Saturday. We struck out on the Wonderland Trail from Longmere around 8:30am, thinking we would go about 7 miles or so into the wilderness and then come back.
Well, we ended up going out 11.4 miles. Round-trip we did near 23 miles (with a mile of vertical thrown in): from Longmere to the Indian Henry Hunting Grounds, and then on up to Emerald Ridge, then all the way back. Needless to say, our bodies were both broken after the trip, and we didn’t go out on Sunday. And, the mosquitos were terrible.
Yellow: the trail, aka “death slog”
Overall the trail was quite good… the National Park Service has done a fantastic job rehabilitating the trail after the floods last November.
Also on the trip, we got to try out some new equipment. I bought the MSR WhisperLite Internationale stove, mostly because I liked the fact it would burn any kind of liquid fuel you put into it. It works very well, but it only has two settings: Off, and Jet Engine.
Sounds like a great hike! Remember, you made up for the mile up with the mile down! Did you make it to the glacier on the map, or has it receded since the map was done?
We went up there thinking there would be a sweet white block of icy glacier, but when we got there it was all moraine and dirt. There was a glacier underneath all that however.
LOL — perhaps a satellite map might have been in order. Sounds like a great hike anyway.