As Emily mentioned, her brother, Owen, his wife, Anna, Mark and Julie Taylor, and I headed out for a backpacking extravaganza on the Olympic Peninsula. Originally, we planned to hike through the Seven Lakes Basin and the entire High Divide; however, as you will see, our scheme was a tad ambitious for the conditions on the ground. Even Plan B, Central Wilderness Beach, proved to have a few unanticipated hurdles.
But I'll save those details for later; let's start from the beginning.
After grabbing a burger at Frugal's and picking up the obligatory set of bear canisters, we stashed a car at the Boulder Creek trail head and shuttled another car to the Deer Lake trail head. Around 3PM, we hit the trail.
The hike to Deer Lake was typical for western Washington. Rain forest. Water falls. Moss on trees:
At Deer Lake (4 miles, elev: 3600 ft), we started to encounter patchy snow:
Shortly thereafter, the weather turned nasty. The patches of slush soon turned to deep, continuous snow on the trail. Fortunately, someone had left some footprints behind which made route finding straightforward. Most of the terrain was too steep and the snow was too slushy for snow shoes:
By the time 9PM rolled around, the sun was setting, and we still hadn't made it to Lunch Lake. Not knowing how much further we had to go, we carved out flat spots into the steep incline and pitched our tents (avalanche shovels turn out to be quite useful):
After making sure all tents were secure, I carved out a shelf in the snow, huddled down at the bottom of my bivy and prayed that the morning would bring better weather.
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