After a day of just travel yesterday ending with us staying at the Gateway Inn at the entrance of the park, we are finally here to try our luck getting a permit to hike the Wonderland Trail. This makes our fourth year in a row of applying for a permit by mail with no luck, but with a new twist thrown in this year—the reservation system was completely down over the winter so no one got advance reservations. Our reasoning got twisted into this being a good thing causing fewer people to travel across country to try their luck with the walk up reservation system.
A couple weeks ago we got our new “Backpacker” magazine. I was reading my copy in the library at our house (very comfortable porcelain seat) when I saw that “Backpacker” had named the Wonderland Trail the best loop trail in the country—oh shit! (pun intended). I started having a mini-panic attack. We have purchased all of our food and gotten everything ready to go. Pam told me to calm down and check the NP website. This did not help. Mt Rainier had a warning posted—due to unusual crowds on the Wonderland Trail, for the first time in its history, every back country site was full. Attendance was breaking all records (it also didn’t help that this is the 100th anniversary of the NPS). I was despondent. We had already bought everything we needed including plane tickets, rental car, and hotel reservations. We thought we’d go ahead and try—worst case, there are two other National Parks in Washington with tons of backpacking opportunities. I started picking out some alternate routes in the North Cascades as a back-up.
Let’s get a little deeper into our thought process. We thought our odds of getting a permit increased if we showed up in the middle of the week and also chose the least popular, hardest to access trailhead—Mowich Lake. Our dream itinerary was a 13 night 14 day clockwise loop. Pam had bought me an excellent book for Christmas a couple years ago; “Hiking the Wonderland Trail” by Tami Asars. Everything you need to know about the trail is here including itineraries starting from all trailheads in either direction. This really is one of the best guide books we’ve ever bought. Unfortunately, a lot of other people are thinking the same thing with the book’s popularity rising every year. We were facing a perfect hiking storm: 1) reservation system down which encouraged everyone rather than discouraged, 2) Backpacker Magazine naming the trail the Best Loop in the Country, 3) the NPS 100th Birthday, and 4) an excellent popular book about the trail. Our plan was to go into the park, get our itinerary, drop off our food caches, drive out to Mowich Lake trailhead, hike a couple miles to Eagle Roost campsite. We had a full day if we could only get a permit.
We had gotten all organized again last night: laid out our trail clothes, packed our food cache buckets, repacked our packs, and reloaded the car. The backcountry office opens at 9 and we planned to be there the minute the doors were unlocked. At 7:30 we were driving into the park. An added bonus, today is actually THE 100th Anniversary of the NPS so free admission to the park. It was a beautiful, clear, sunshiny day with awesome views of Mt Rainier. We had plenty of time so we took some pictures along the way.
We got to Longmire before 8 and parked the car, but the backcountry office was already open with people inside sitting down looking at maps to figure out routes and mileages—not a good sign for us. We walked up to the counter when our turn came and asked the ranger what he thought our chances were. He pointed to a list on the counter showing all the backcountry campsites that were full for the night—almost all of them. He said he made that list when they opened at 7:30 and it was even worse now. Our best chance would be to forget getting a permit starting tonight and try for tomorrow. He told us to read him our itinerary and he’d stop us when we got to a problem. I started in: Eagle’s Roost, Cataract Valley, Mystic, Granite Creek, Sunrise, Summerland (a little typing here, I thought we had hit our wall—he said “keep going”), Indian Bar, Nickel Creek, Paradise River, Pyramid Creek, South Puyallup, Klapatche Park, Golden Lakes. I stopped. “How bad is it?” I asked.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t even bother buying lottery tickets, because you just won. You got them all.” He printed out our itinerary and explained the backcountry rules to us. Pam attributed our luck to this being our 7th anniversary of being together. We gave him our food cache which we would pick up in 10 days and started to head out. When we had mailed in our application in March, we wanted to step up our chances of getting a permit, so we added an extra incentive—if we get a permit, we will name our next dog after the ranger that gets us a permit. We went back and asked him his name: Daniel Keebler. We told him to come visit his namesake in the future. Pam thought Daniel was a great dog name, but I think Keebler is better. I was just relieved we didn’t have Ranger Rufus help us.
Now we had an extra day in the park we hadn’t planned on so we could sightsee some. We decided to head to the lodge for breakfast and decide what we were going to do with our extra time. I ordered biscuits and gravy and peppered them down like I normally do—I wait for Pam to get done with the pepper and then take the lid off and poured it on. I like pepper! While we were eating, we planned out our day. Some people stopped by on their way out and told us they had never seen anyone eat so much pepper.
After looking at the exhibits and talking to a few rangers, we decided to head on up to Paradise to look around. We stopped at some overlooks along the way and ended up picking up an Englishman that had just finished his portion of the Wonderland Trail and was trying to get up to Paradise. We had a great conversation with him and talked about our hiking plans and what trails he had hiked. We were thinking of doing the Cotswold in England next spring, but he said to skip that and do the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path in Wales instead. We dropped him off in Paradise and looked around a bit, but by now it was way too crowded for our liking, so onto Sunrise.
Among other things to do today, we had to drop off our other food cache at Sunrise. Once we got there, it was crowded beyond belief. Doesn’t anyone work anymore? We looked around for a bit but decided to head out. We still had a couple hour drive to get to Mowich and we had to figure out where we were staying the night. As an indication of how crowded it was, they were getting ready to cut the birthday cake, but Pam said she wanted to get out of there and Pam LOVES cake (a sweet tooth she got from her dad who, to the best of my knowledge, has never actually driven past an ice cream shop).
The only town of significant size along the way is Enumclaw, so we stopped for our usual supper of pizza before going primitive and maybe look for a hotel. Pam decided that we should push on which really surprised me. I had told her about Steve and I camping on the side of the road when we were here 10 years ago, but I didn’t think she’d go for it. It’s an interesting drive into Mowich Lake which explains why it’s the least popular trailhead. It’s easy to see the park’s boundary because the logging companies are clear cutting right up to it. We thought there might be camping available at Mowich Lake, but weren’t sure. I kept wanting to turn around but PAM kept insisting we go check it out. Turns out, she was right, I was wrong (that’s for you dear—cherish it). We were able to get a campsite with a picnic table and a new latrine all for free. Free admission to the park, no charge for walk up permits, and a free campsite! Our luck is holding true.
We set up camp and explored a bit before going to bed. Because we had originally planned to hike into Eagle’s Roost today, we kind of screwed up on our itinerary, but in a good way. We only had 2 miles to hike tomorrow to our first camp and we were already in the park. We didn’t get our packs out of the car, just the tent and what we needed for the night.
