Monday, July 9 2018
Mile marker 2635.42 – Mile marker 2646.43: 11 miles / 26 total miles walked
Had a pretty good night all in all. I had my bug net up and thank god I did, the mosquitoes are nasty up here. Other than some more weird dreams I slept pretty well and got up around 6.
The others were all rustling around in their tents, but I decided to sit on a log around the fire pit and make my first oatmeal breakfast. It was edible I guess. We all packed up and headed towards Rock Pass at 7:45 on a pretty good uphill climb. On the other side of the pass you could see Woody Pass and the trail switchbacking down the valley and back up with a bunch of smaller snowfields.
The actual crossing of the snowfields was a lot less scary than I expected. If you step carefully and plan your traverse it doesn’t pose a problem. At least with the amount of snow that has already melted, it felt pretty easy. I only used my microspikes once.
After passing the snowfields and walking up the switchbacks to Woody Pass we took a one hour lunch break. I had a Mountain House meal with added cheese and bacon, which came back to haunt me all afternoon. I pretty much felt queasy for the rest of the day. And I had to make a few unexpected bathroom stops along the way, which is not easy to do when you’re ridgewalking along a mountain range. 😅
The views were absolutely stunning and only kept getting better past Woody Pass. We reached the highest point of today with around 7000ft at 2:30. Right after that the most exhausting descent started, with a bunch of really scary steep snowfields and a lot of walking on rough rocks.
The original idea was dropping our stuff at a campsite about 3.5 miles before the border and slackpacking there and back. But we were all pretty wiped out already and decided to do it early in the morning.
I really have to pick up the pace, otherwise I will run out of food before I make it back to Hart’s Pass.
Whoever said that 15 mile days in the Cascades are easy was lying….
Keeping you posted…