Today I’m walking around Mt Adams. Kind of excited about this, because the trail is finally going to get up to 6k. But first, I need to do some climbing. The morning starts off normal.
Then passes through another old burn
Then it turns into a wildflower windfall. Honestly I just kept taking pictures. Reds, yellows, blues, whites, oranges. Butterflies of various colors flying around. It was gorgeous. Here is a bunch of pics.
Starting to get some good views of the surrounding area. Here is Rainier off in the distance
Then some more flowers
I passed a popular camp site that was loaded to the gills. Nobody was there, I think they must be climbing some summit trail nearby.
Run into some lava poop mixed in with the fields.
Papa and John and I have been lapping each other all day. They take a break and I pass them. I take a break and they pass me.
Eventually, I just fall in behind them and we hike together for a while. They are a little slower than me but not so much that it throws me off. We spend an hour chatting a bit. Papa is from a little town North of Sacremento. John is from Cost Mesa in Orange county. They are cousins who did a big chunk of the PCT in 2019. They plan to finish Washington, then go down to the high Sierra and do the chunk they skipped because of snow in ’19. They are solid hikers.
So it turns out to be serendipity that we were hiking together, because up ahead is a nasty water crossing called Adams Creek. We talked to a SOBO hiker who told us there are three sets of logs upstream that we can stitch together for a dry crossing. Here’s what that bad boy looked like.
Looking at the video, it really doesn’t capture how deep and fast running this thing was. Honestly it was scary. I was clearly off my game, because I thought I was taking videos of the guys crossing, but failed to press the button. Only thing I got was John leading the way across the first log. That water under his feet is about 3 feet deep (I checked with my poles). Falling on any of these spots would probably have resulted in a SAR call.
After that, we paused for a bit to let the adrenaline rush wind down. We were all laughing and relieved. Hope I never have to do this again.
I walked with the guys for a bit longer. Then they stopped for a break. They said their goal was Lava Spring at 2250 which is short of my goal. So I said goodbye and kept charging on my own. Rest of the day was mostly good views, flowers, and nice trail.
Made it into Goat Rocks Wilderness and camped in a mosquito infested nightmare of a tent site at around 8pm. I figured this one would suck, but it puts me in the right position for the big climb tomorrow.
While I was drifting off to sleep another section hiker showed up asking all sorts of questions about the trail to Walupt lake, how heavy my pack was, and various other random things. I’m sitting in my tent doing my best to help this guy, who must have donated a pint of blood to the mosquitoes while we were talking. FInally he asks if he can setup near me….which is a silly question to a thru-hiker. If there is room, then the answer is always yes. I fell asleep to the sound of him slapping mosquitoes inside his tent.
Did 28 miles and almost 5k of climbing today !