Hiking the Wonderland Trail

The Wonderland Trail!

This was the most amazing backpacking trip that I’ve ever had (so far) and while it’s several years later as I write this, many of my memories of the trip are still very vivid. This is my first post of an adventure from before I started this blog - hopefully one of several to come.

To start, I thought some background on the wonderland trail would be useful. The trail is anywhere from 93 miles to 102 miles (depending on route choice and detours) and a cumulative 22,000 feet (6,700 m) of elevation gain. It was first built/hiked by the mountaineers in 1915 and was considerably longer (130-140 miles) but took hikers an average of 3-4 weeks to hike it. For us, it took a total of 10 days and our final distance was a little over 100 miles.

NPS has a useful website for this.

We did quite a bit of prep - both in terms of thinking/re-thinking our packing choices and practice hikes. By the time we left I felt like we were both physically ready - although the trip was certainly trying at times (for both of us).

I created an itinerary online and we had a small cutout for each day. It ended up being super useful because inevitably the sheet was destroyed by the end of the day, but the remaining days were safe in a plastic bag.

My dad drove us up to the mountain to drop us off and bid us farewell (for the next 4 days anyway) and got some “we’re off” pictures for us to compare against when we get back. After a minor back and forth on where the trail started, we were off…

Alright, so day one. Our first day was a relatively average day in terms of distance but with a bit more elevation gain that other days. The thing that made this day challenging (other than it being the first day and us needing to get the kinks out) was the snow - reaching as deep as 6-10 feet by the time we got to the camp on day 1.

The first several miles were a slow incline - beautiful mix of dense vegetation and open sub-alpine fields and, as we went up, patchy snow.

Things started to get challenging when we got to the dense snow and a steep climb up a ravine. The park ranger suggested we not follow the switchbacks up where the trail went and instead continue up the valley one more ravine, which was easier to hike up in the snow. Turned out to be great advise as we passed several parties that were heading back down after getting stuck on the switchbacks. Still, it wasn’t easy and while the pictures don’t fully show how steep the ravine was - they do give you some perspective.

After the climb, the terrain became much more open and wonderful. We took a lot of pictures on day one and scrolling through them now you can see the tremendous variety from our start at White River (dense vegetation) up and over the Panhandle Gap (alpine views) and back down into Indian Bar (dense snow).

Another highlight of day one was seeing 2 mountain goats on our way down from Panhandle Gap. We saw signs of them for the rest of the trip (scat, tracks, bits of fur) but these were the only two we saw live.

Another highlight of day one was bride over Wauhaukaupauken falls (Ohanapecosh river). The snow was 10-12 feet deep on either side of the bridge and climbing down the snow to the bridge was definitely a adrenaline producing moment. But with some careful planning and prep, we crossed safely. When we finished the trip, there were pictures of this bridge and the snow with a blurb saying that indian bar was “currently impassible”. :)

I was fully expecting us to sleep on the snow that night, but we lucked out and found a small hikers shelter that we could just barely get into (sliding through a tunnel in the snow). Definitely lifted our spirits after a hard day’s hike. We set our tent up inside and had a wonderful night.

For most of the trip (all but the last two days) we did an end of day recap video. Here it is for day 1:

The following morning we woke up, had a delightful oatmeal/coffee breakfast, and climbed out of the Indian Bar campsite/valley. We stayed in the snow for most of the morning but, progressively, emerged from the snow. The last section before we got out of the snow completely was light forest with deep snow and the trail was particularly hard to follow. A true test of my navigation ability, we emerged from the snow right on the trail (off by less than 5 feet). This was a good sign of what was to come - lots of trail finding through erred trails and deep snow that comes with early season hiking.

By the late afternoon we emerged from the deep backcountry and into the box canyon/highway 12 area on the southern half of the park. It was a bit strange to see people again (it had been ~36 hours since we had seen anyone), but this ended up not being the most remote section of the trail (strangely enough).

We ended the day at Maple creek camp - which was tucked deep in the woods, but only about 1-2 miles from the road. Here was our video recap of the day.

Day 3 ended up being a lighter day - both in terms of distance and elevation - and paralleled highway 12 at the southern end of the park. This was the biggest detour of the trip, there was a big washout on the trail and rangers told us they were sure if it was passable or not. It was, but it involved a lot of scrabbling up and down big bolder fields. We walked past reflection lake and headed into camp at paradise river (scratch that - cougar rock).

Morning hiking was beautiful - but warmer than it had been on the east side of the park and much dryer without all the snow.

The boulder field we had to climb up, where we emerged, and taking a quick break after the scramble. It’s hard to see from the pictures, but this was about 1000 feet of elevation gain up the bolder field to get back on to the trail (plus pushing our way through bushes to get to the top).

We continued our steady climb over a couple of smaller streams and bridges - and one cool water fall - all the way up to Reflection lake.

Reflection lake was beautiful (although not the most beautiful lake on the trip) and offered a chance to refill our water and rest for a minute before continuing. The trail runs along the road for about half a mile here, which was the only time we had to walk on the road (I believe). Not a huge number of people here, but we saw a steady flow of day hikers and driving tourists throughout the day. A stark contrast to the first couple of days of our trip.

After reflection lake, we descended down into our camp for the night. We had heard rumors that Paradise river camp was closed due to tree fall and found that it was (signs and tape everywhere). We were pointed towards Cougar rock (which is a car camping campground) and was about a half a mile down the trail. While backpack camping in a car camping lot isn’t super fun, we did ok given our excitement around refit the next day. The park service also did a pretty good job of separating the car campers from the backpackers (we were the only ones) and it wasn’t as inconvenient as I thought it would be.

This turned out to be my toughest day. My knee started hurting during the climb to reflection lake and I got in my head about not being able to do these kinds of backpacking trips in the future. Angela brought me out of it and I did end up feeling a lot better the next day (and my knee did get progressively better througout the trip. And, of course, the day would not be complete without the video recap…

Day 4 was our halfway check-in - we meet my parents (and our daughter) at Longmire to fill our packs back up with food and take a half day of rest before we got back on the trail. It was a short two miles to Longmire and I don’t think I took a single picture on the way.

We got to Longmire before my parents and grabbed some breakfast while I charged my GPS/Camera and extra battery packs. Coffee and fancy breakfast was amazing and we were very excited to see Sara. We did a bit of playing around and shopping at the NPS gift shop there. My parents were going to do some day hiking with Sara and my dad had her backpack all ready to go.

Mid-afternoon we had to get back on the trail again and my parents gave us a send off (and hiked the first mile or so with us) as we finished up day 4. We didn’t know it at the time, but this ended up being the last time we saw people for the next 3 days - all the way to Golden lakes.

The remainder of day 4 was a steep climb up to Devil’s dream camp. Lots of dense vegetation and much more of a forest hike than previous days. There were some interesting stream crossings, but other than that it was a peaceful forest hike.

Devil’s dream had a bit of snow given how much it was in the shade, but mostly it was just soggy from all the recent snow melt. We found one dry campsite out of the half dozen or so that were there, so can’t complain too much. And our video recap of the day:

Day 5 saw a spectacular climb back into the deep snow and all the way into the high alpine at Emerald ridge pass. We also saw the first suspension bridge at Tahoma Creek (which was impressive given it’s location) and the oldest patrol cabin in the park at Indian Henry’s cabin (built in 1915).

This was a long day, but a beautiful one. While Devil’s dream only had patches of snow, we immediately hit snow as we left camp. We had 3 separate high points today, each hitting snow before coming back down into lower valleys. On our first climb, we passed Squaw lake along Devil’s dream creek. Most of this was covered in snow, so there wasn’t much to see. Once we got to the high ground surrounding Indian Henry’s cabin, we saw open snow covered meadows that were quite beautiful.

The history of the patrol cabins around mt rainier is interesting - they were primarily used for fire lookouts, with rangers regularly hiking the wonderland trail between cabins to spot fires. Eventually some fire lookouts were built in the 30s and 40s, but the patrol cabins remained. They are used by the NPS rangers today and blend nicely into the wooded terrain, adding a bit of history to the beautful scenery. Indian Henry was an interesting character in himself - moving to the Mt Rainier area in the late 1800’s he lived a comfortable life with both the Native american’s and settlers alike.

Continuing on from Indian Henry’s cabin, we continued down the valley to the Tahoma creek, passing over a number of small streams and creeks before we came to the large glacial valley that held Tahoma creek.

The Tahoma suspension bridge is a foot bridge that extends over Tahoma Creek. It’s quite impressive given it’s location - at over 200 feet long and 165 feet high, it’s the largest of the two suspension bridges along the wonderland trail. The closest road is 6.5 miles away - so quite a hike just to get to it (even if you aren’t doing the wonderland trail). I’ve looked all over to see if I could find the history of the bridge, but I haven’t found much. It sounds like it was built around 1995 and it replaced a drooping catwalk-style suspension bridge that was anchored on different foundations (which we didn’t see, but apparetly are still there further down the canyon).

The bridge was too spectacular to not take a video of the crossing.

After Passing over the suspension bridge, we had a long hike up to Emerald ridge pass. This was a particularly stressful section as we pass over steep snow moving laterally to the face. We had to move away from the trail several times to find a better route that wasn’t as exposed as we crossed the often very slippery snow. When we arrived at the pass, we found marmots & high alpine flora for a totally different feeling that the bridge and lowlands that we just crossed. There was a big fog rolling in just as we walked over the ridge, making for an erie experience.

Passing over the ridge, the fog cleared and we were treated with some specacular views of the next valley.

Coming up the next valley we reached our third highpoint for the day at St Andrews lake followed by a mile or so of slow descent into Klapatche park - our campsite for the night. This was a long day, but very rewarding.

This was the 2rd day of not seing another human and we had one more to go before we saw another person on the trail. As always, our video recap:

Day 6 was a bit of a lighter day at 8 miles starting off with a downhill and coming back up a long steady climb to our camp for the night. Some interesting sights like the N Puyallup brige and the approaching westside road and some beautiful snow banks.

We started off the day hiking through some large snow backs - I got a great picture of Angela hiking across just below a massive snow field. The first quarter of the day was a steap downhill out of the snow and down into the N Puyallup river valley.

Continuing down into the valley, the terrain changed to sparse and then thick forest.

Popping out of the thick forest, we saw a small stone wall that made up the end of the Westside road. Apparently, the original plan was for Westside Road to reach all the way to Mowiich Lake (two days from now on our trail) but construction was stopped in the 1930’s after reaching Klapache Point because the road kept washing out at Tahoma Creek. You can still see where the road once went - leveled terrain, stone borders, etc with forest growth still encroaching into the old road bed. Another fun little moment of history…

Leaving the N Puyallup river valley, we started our long uphill all the way to golden lakes. It started raining on this section and picked up so it was raining in earnest throughout the rest of the day. This was Angela’s low point of the trip, it rained for so long that it was basically impossible to stay dry. Combining the rain with a rough climb, I took alot less pictures on the uphill for the rest of the day. :)

At the end of day 6, we broke our streak of not seeing other humans when we ran into a ranger setting the trail near golden lakes (and staying in the cabin there). We saw some people tracks as well as we came into camp in sneakers - which we assumed was the ranger (but didn’t ask). We spend a while chatting with him - this was his first season on Mt Rainier, but he had spent the last 20 years working as a park ranger at Glacier NP before moving to Seattle. He was on a 2 week cycle - spending 2 weeks in the backcountry and 2 weeks back home for the entire hiking season. Great guy. Video recap:

The next morning we ran into the ranger as we were departing camp and he told us a story about running into a guy in front of his cabin at ~3a. Apparently, this guy had run from white river (~30 miles away - where we were heading) and was basicaly spending the entire weekend running (sleeping 2-3 hours here and there). He was heading back today and will have run over 90 miles (basically the equivalent of the whole wonderland trail) over the course of 48 hours. I was filled with a sense of wonderment, confusion, dread, all a the same time. What a crazy individual!

Day 7 saw the end of the rain about mid-day and we got some much needed sun to dry things out, Angela started having some foot trouble (probably driven by being wet for the last day and a half), and we ran into another set of hikers going the other way (and just starting their trip).

Day 7 started off in the rain - having rained all night as well. I have found that once you are hiking the rain isn’t too bad, but packing up in the rain - putting on clothes, packing up a soggy tent, is the worst… It requires a lot of fortitude to get up out of a cozy tent/sleeping bag and go through all the morning motions of getting on the road. The first half of the day included some beautiful meadows and thick forest before

Angela had a rough time with her feet this morning. Finally when the rain abated a little, we stopped and bandaged up all the hotspots that were bothering her before continuing. As the rain continued to abate, we got our motivation back and Angela’s feet started to feel a lot better - dry socks can do wonders!

The S Mowich River was a crossing we had heard about before starting. It’s a big stream, but it’s really spread out where the crossing occurs. You basicaly scramble across logs/fallen trees to get to the other side. We ran into some folks at camp that night that did it without any wading, but we were not so lucky and ended up crossing up to our ankles in a couple of places. Thankfully, the rain had stopped at this point and we were able to lay our stuff (and ourselves) on a couple of logs to dry things out before continuing. It was a glorious break - sunny, warm, and refreshing after the rain. This break was certainly one of the highlights of the trip.

After a last long, steep climb, we arrived at Mowich lake camp. This is a small car campin lot that had not yet opened for the season - so it had picnic tables and flat tent spots but no people around. About an hour after arriving at camp, two people (a father/daughter) arrived having just come up the trail behind us. They were quite the pair, with the daughter being chipper as can be and the father landing somewhere between super exhausted and dead :). It was about 30 min before he was personable and we all had a great time sharing trail anicdotes/intel and talking about some of the past hikes we had done. This encouter also filled me with a tremendous sense of motivatin as to what Sara and I could be like in another 15-20 years. I was bound and determined to take her backpacking as soon as I could (which I finally did 2 years later when she turned four - see the post about that later).

The end of day 7 was a high note - we had accomplished a lot and both had some big ups and downs. We felt accomplished and excited for the next 3 days ahead of us and the final stretch back home. And the video recap.

Day 8 saw the last of the 2 suspension bridges and ended at the most epic campsite of the trip at carbon glacier. We also had our Jurassic Park morning - with thick fog and rocky cliffs made you feel like you were in prehistoric times. I think I took the most pictures this day, so hopefully I can narrate them well after so many years. We had two options for how to proceed here - either Spray park or Ipsut pass. Spray park tends to have a lot of snow pack early in the season, and having seen a lot of snow this year we though Spray park might be challenging (or even impassible). Later in the season, Spray park is the place to go for wildflowers - so we made a mental note to return in a future year (we haven’t done it yet, but hopefuly soon!

The first part of the day involved a quick walk around the beautiful Mowich lake and followed by a steep (but short) climb up to Ipsut pass. We packed up a bit slower this morning (relishing the sun and taking the opporunity to dry out our gear a bit more). We saw a couple of day hikers as we went around the lake (cars were able to park for day hikers right outside the campsite), but we were back to seclusion as we started the climp up to Ipsut pass.

Going through the pass, we landed in the rocky canyon we dubbed jurassic park. It was beautiful (although a bit cooler) and the switchbacks coming down the mountain feeling very high and exposed. I took a lot of pictures as we decended - relishing the beautiful morning.

I took a video from near the top of the pass on our descent to make the “jurassic” park aspects come alive a bit more:

As we decended out of the clouds of jurassic park, we arrived back in dense forest and headed down to the base of carbon river. On the way, I saw a Helium baloon that had deflated and decended into a creek bed. I climbed down to go get it, but it was the first time I had seen a “free” baloon that had fallen back to earth in such a beautiful place.

We arrived at a cross-roads between carbon river and Ipsut pass trail. We dropped our packs here and I hiked the last 1.5 miles down to the trail head to toss some trash and see the carbon river trailhead for future years. The road up to this cabin/trailhead has been closed for over a decade, but it’s open to biking and I’d like to come back here with a bike and camp at the trailhead (or do a hybrid and hike after biking).

The next leg of our trip was to hike up the carbon river (crossing several offshoots and tributaries before crossing the carbon river suspension bridge. The ranger we met a couple of days earlier mentioned that this was a challening crossing and still needed to be fixed up before the season really started. There was also a detour that pushed us a little out of the way to take the suspension bridge instead of a bridge lower down the valley.

The Carbon river suspension brige (built to avoid washouts that were experienced with previous itterations of the bridge). This was built around the same time as the Tahoma bridge (1994/1995). It’s consierably lower than the Tahoma bridge, but equally impressive.

We continued up the carbon river valley crossing several more sections of the carbon river before begining the climb up the side of the Carbon river valley. This area was definitely in early season and I expect a lot of these crossing were to be fixed by the time the hiking season was in full swing.

Our campsite for the evening was perched precariously on the edge of the carbon river valley, overlooking the carbon glacier. We had a steep climb up to reach it, overlooking the carbon glacier and the large glacial valley. Most of the glaciers on Mt Rainier have receeded considerably over the last 20 years, but Carbon glacier is one of the outliers having only receeded a half a mile or so in the last two decades It’s an impressive, although a very dirty looking, glacier and it was a cool experience to hike above and around it on the trail.

We were warned by a ranger we met earlier in the day that the campsite was loud, with chunks of the glacier falling off throughout the night. We didn’t experience that, but the campsite was somewhat epic - perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the glacier. The toilet had an epic view - they must haul it out via helicopter so having it easily accessable by helicopter offers and advantage. For us however, it made for an epic view for a constitutional. This was a small deviation from our planned itinerary, we stayed at a camp called Dick creek instead of carbon river to avoid quite a much of a climb the following day

And our video recap for the day. This was our last one of the trip as we forgot the following day and our final day was the day after that.

Day 9 saw the most beautiful campsite of the trip (although we didn’t camp there), an interesting hike through a glacial moraine and a hike up and a bit of nostalgia as we cross the path that my brother and I took the year before on a failed attempt to climb liberty ridge.

They day started with a continued climb up Moraine creek to the Mystic lake meadow/lake/campsite. The hike up the valley started steep but leveled out as we got closer to the plateau. We were in good spirits this morning - 80% complete with the trail and only one more night before completion - but not at that point at the very end of a trip like this where you resist re-entering society. :)

The approach to Mystic lake left us wondering what was to come - the approach included some beautiful meadows and small creeks running through that inspired my taking a lot of pictures. As we got closer to mystic lake, we could see not only epic views of the mountain, but also views out either side of the saddle into beautiful valleys on either side.

Mystic lake was the most beautiful/serene area in the park - it was a beautful meadow with several smaller lakes and one larger one filling the space. It was a beautiful day and the reflection on the lake was magical. We stopped for a long break at this lake - soaking it in and partially wishing we had an extra night to stay here.

We left Mystic lake in the early afternoon and finished our hike over to Granite creek. My pictures got a bit mixed up here and some of my mystic lake photos got intermixed with pictures earlier in the day. I don’t remember much about the granite creek site - it was tucked in the trees and staged right before the pass into the Sunrise area of the park.

As I said, no video recap from day 9. We slept soundly in the granite creek campground and reflected on the amazing trip we had just taken (and at least on my part, both dreading the exit of the park and excited to see our daughter again).

Day 10 finished up our hike through the Sunrise area and back down into White river. Aside from some gentle uphill to start the day, the trail was mostly flat acros a gentle plateau before dropping steeply into white river. We took a slight detour to the sunrise tourist site (and buildings) and saw workers getting the buildings ready for the season.

Our final day started much like the others, with a sparse forested hike crossing several streams. We hiked through a smaller glacial morraine before heading up to Skyscraper pass and into the Lodi creek meadow. There was a gentle climb that became a bit steeper the first part of the day before we crested the hill.

Before we headed into Lodi meadows, we headed through Skyscraper pass and along the ridge opposite Skyscraper peak. There were some amazing views here, but it turned out to be just a teaser for the meadows we had coming.

The Lodi Creek meadow was surrounded by mountains on all sides and was quite inspiring. I was confident we would see some mountain goats here, but none were to be found. We did see some Marmots playing in the distance, kinda hard to see but as they started to run about all over the place they became obvious.

Our next landmark was the frozen lake trail intersection - one of the hikes leaving sunrise camp traveled up to the frozen lake saddle and multiple trails left from here heading around the park.

Continuing from frozen lake, we headed down to sunrise lake - where we were slowing introduced back into society, seeing more and more people and more infrastructure (flushing toilets!?!). We continued along the ridge until we found the sunrise overlook - with some larger buildings, helicopter, and maintenance people getting ready for the summer. From here, we dropped down some steep switchbacks into white river - our final (and starting) destination.

And we did it! We returned back to the same sign where we started our trip! Such ended one of the most epic trips I have ever done - we experienced so much beauty over the course of the last 10 days. I was a strenous, demanding trip - pushing ourselves to the limit and learning about ourselves and this wonderful piece of nature that it right in our backyard.

We also found out something truely amazing when we returned, we were the first to complete the wonderland trail that season - in retrospect this wasn’t super surprising given we hadn’t seen any footprints on the snow in many places and we saw very few people, but knowing that we were the first ones felt special - we were the first ones to see the beauty of the wonderland trail in 2018 and we set the stage for everyone else that season.

I pulled out some of the pictures from the day to day narrative that were worth a section on their own. This was the first trip where Angela fell in love with wildflowers - something that continued to be a passion for her over the next several backpacking trips and other adventures we have done together. I’ve put all of these flowers together below.

My passion on these trips has always been wildlife - and while we didn’t see very many larger mammals, we did see a lot of tracks. Here’s some bear, moutain goat, fox, and elk/deer.

And I’ll leave you with a quick video of Angela hiking away - on to the next one!