Today we clean up and move out of our cabin and into our tent. We made sure to find all of our items we had found a place for during the past week. The clouds are covering Mount Rainier and we are thankful for the week of sunshine and warm temps we have experienced.
I will start today’s blog with a story from the morning we hike over at the Boroughs. As we followed Volunteer Ranger Dave’s suggestion of hiking clockwise we began to pass by an assortment of disheveled teenager trudging up the trail. As we met each teenager it was a different arrangements of how they packed their gear. Some hand carried their sleeping bags and a duffle bags, some with plastic shopping bags, some with a sling bag, one boy had his sleeping bag just wadded up and was carrying the wad. . But by far the winner of the teenagers was a group of three kids who had stopped to rest on their three mile hike out. A girl with a white sweatshirt on carrying a huge duffle bag that must have had some good heft to it, as she had a difficult time picking it up, not to mention the hug-lug and carrying it. What could possibly have been in that bag?
We did a quick hike out to Snow lake. The trail is rated good for families and kids. We were there early enough that we had the lake to ourselves. We sat at the tip of a rock outcropping and read our books for an hour and a half. What a perfect way to conclude a week of day packing.
We then drove down to the Grove of the Patriarch to see the old growth forests. They are indeed much larger than what any camera can shoot.
We arrived at ohannapecosh campground at 2:45 and met Jen and Carrie our leaders. Dave and Judy from Pennsylvania had already arrived in the mersadies Cargo van that was all decked out for car camping and caravanning across the USA. They had left their home on July 8 and visited multiple national parks all across the USA.
Ramana, Heather, Aaron and Shelly all arrived by carpooling from Seattle. Ramana is from Seattle and is a software expert for AT&T. Firs time backpack’er. Aaron is a recent college graduate and works in Sacramento designing bridges. Heather is an environmental biologist working on the rivers around Toronto helping restore the salmon fish colonies. Shelly from Stillwater, MN is a social worker helping with foster care school aged students in surround support. Hmmm, let’s not forget Judy is a retired family Doctor and Dave is a retired mechanical engineer. Our leaders do not get paid for leading this adventure, but they do get reimbursed for expenses. Leader Carrie is from North Carolina (lives in the mountains and was not affected by the hurricane). She works for Outward Bound raising funds for that organization. Leader Jen runs a year round Girl Scout Camp in the Seattle area.
We had a few group detail to go over and understand. Sharing group weight was an important topic that needed to be discussed. Everyone chose a red food stuff sack. Each sack was close in weight with all other sacks. Meals were not all in the same bag due to trying to even out the weight. Everyone had to take turns carrying the: 2 cook sets, 2 Camp stoves, bag of kitchen utensils, 8 - 30 ounce white fuel cans, water bag, bathroom trowl, 2 over head tarps. Each morning the food bags weight was evened out and you had to take something different from the group gear. Each person could pack their own snack bag from the snacks provided. You had to carry your own snack bag in addition to the group gear.
After Kathi and I added the weight of the group gear to our gear we decided that we would only take one pair of pants and not two. If I had known what was in store for the future of our adventure I would have left even more behind!
We had to sign up for kitchen duty for two meals, one breakfast and one dinner. The sign up sheet was font .2. Kathi and I signed up for our breakfast and dinner meals , but someone is going to have to read the sheet to me so we know what to prepare!
After dinner we had campfire and s’mores for dessert. This is the only fire we will have this week. The warmth was nice. We had our Sierra Club safety rule talk around the fire.
One such safety rule was the whistle rule. We were each provided a whistle along with the story behind the whistle. The story is about a lady who was on Sierra trip. She fell off of a cliff and was hurt badly and unable to self rescue. She had stepped off of the trail to either go to the bathroom or site see, I can’t remember that detail, but she fell. No on in the group knew where to start looking for her. It was 9 days later before she heard someone close to her vicinity she started blowing her whistle. Her story caused Sierra club to provide a whistle and survey tape (light neon colored plastic tape surveyors use) to mark where we step off the trial to all participants AND to keep these items on your person at all times. Also use the buddy system, stay with a person.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t need to step that far into the woods to go the the bathroom...
Breakfast was scrambled eggs mixed with hash browns tossed into a tortilla shell. We also had cowboy coffee, but I think the others drank most of it so Kathi and I each had about 3/4 cup of chunky coffee. Which when your drinking causes you to have to spit out a lot of coffee grinds.
We then drove 45 minutes up the road to Sunrise ranger station and trail head.
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