It rained all night so we had a hard time getting ourselves up this morning. I finally rolled out of bed due to the double call of nature. The outhouse in South Puyallup is in an interesting location next to a wall of Andesite columns. These are honeycomb columns of rock. Since there was a line forming, I was able to get pictures and talk to a few people. I kept myself to the back of the line so I could take my leisurely constitutional (even in the rain, I don’t like to be rushed).
The group that came in after we went to bed had come all the way from Mowich Lake—22 miles. They got their permit and didn’t check it when they got it. The date was wrong for what they thought they had so they just hiked on through to get into camp on the right night. They were supposed to be in Maple Creek tonight which meant another 21.2 mile today. They had lost an entire day in their itinerary. I suggested they stop in Longmire and correct their permit.
The alcohol stove is my preference on mornings like this. I found a protected area under some fallen trees to set up the stove and boil water while we packed everything up in the tent. We just got everything dried out and I didn’t want it to get soaked again. I accept that I’ll be carrying a wet tent and the extra couple of pounds of water that means.
We follow the Hiking Vikings and decided to try one of their ideas today. We bought cheap throw away ponchos to put over us and our packs to keep the water from running down our backs and keep the straps from getting soaked. Even this trapped too much additional heat for me. Another mistake we made on this trip was not bringing water repellant gloves. With the constant rain, we were just getting soaked. If we stopped for any length of time, we would get cold and start shivering. The word for today was “miserable.”
Thankfully, it was a short day. Less than 5 miles with less than 2000’ of gain. We passed a guy that was doing the loop in 6 days. He asked us how far we were going today. He told us we were smart. With a 6 day itinerary, he feels like he’s always having to check his watch to make sure he makes his mileage. He’d like to be able to sleep in on a crappy day like today.
By the time we got to St Andrew’s Lake, we were miserable, cold, and shivering. We found a clump of trees and decided to have a hot lunch to try to bring our core temperatures back up. Both of our hands were not working properly and we had a hard time even striking the lighter. We still used the BioLite so we could warm up our hands and not worry about using fuel. We had hot soup and hot chocolate but by the time we packed back up after eating, we had already lost feeling in our hands again. We were on the verge of hypothermia.
Fortunately, it’s well under a mile to Klapatche Park from St Andrews Lake. Even with our late start this morning and stopping to cook lunch in the rain, it was around 3 by the time we got into camp. We were the first ones there so we got to choose out spot. It was a hard decision since they all had lakes in them and none had any views because of the fog. We chose a site on the north side of camp which, in theory, has a view across the North Puyallup River Valley.
Our tent was soaked, our packs were soaked, and our clothes were soaked. We were cold and miserable. Our hands weren’t working. We set up the tent. Pam inflated the mattress and set up the sleeping quilts. While she was putting on her dry sleeping clothes, I hung our bear bag and stowed everything outside before I crawled in and changed into my dry sleep clothes. We were in bed by 4.
