Fri. July 22     Miles today: 23.7          Total so far: 1,288 miles    Washington Section J

It was still warm this morning at 5:00 am, but RAINING!  Very strange. Just before we crawled out of the net tent, the rain stopped, and we could see bits of blue sky. It was as if the weather was trying to decide what to do.  “Should I rain?”  “Should I be hot?”  But it was nice to be able to pack up without getting wet!  After our usual look-around-to-make-sure-we-didn’t-leave-something at the campsite, we strolled over to the Waptus River to get water and admire the trail bridge.  Bill was impressed with the construction–he said it could take some pretty rough treatment from the river if necessary.  We REALLY admire the folks who build trails and trail bridges!

Then it was time to begin the 3,500 foot, eleven mile long climb up to Cathedral Pass.  We stopped for breakfast by a patch of ripe huckleberries, and had some with our granola.  Yum!  Shortly after that, the rain began again, but it was a WARM rain.  I got out my umbrella and on we went, climbing higher and higher.  You can tell that the forest here normally expect lots of rain–it’s very mossy and ferny and pretty, but the rain clouds obscured our view, so we missed seeing the “grand views” promised in the guidebook.  Cathedral Peak, toward which we were climbing, was mostly hidden in mist and rain. 

 We reached the top of the pass by noon, and the rain was slackening.  A small grove of trees gave us a bit of shelter as we cooked and ate our dinner.  I did wish, though, that those trees were Douglas Fir–we’ve noticed that firs really shed rain well and stay dry underneath for a long time.   Suddenly, a bunch of hikers showed up, all headed in different directions.  One group was three young (13-14 year old) teenage boys, very wet but very cheery.  Then came another guy we’ve been “leapfrogging” with all day.  He looked a little grim.  I don’t think he liked hiking in the rain. 

Aftr lunch, it was 3 and a half miles to a very nasty creek crossing, so bad that horses cannot make it and have to use another trail.  It’s a snowmelt creek off Mt. Daniel’s main glacier, AND it had been raining–sometimes raining hard–all morning.  As we came down toward the “crossing zone”, it looked like a mess–big rocks, huge logs flung about like matchsticks, the river foaming and roaring and plunging down the mountainside.  But whew, hooray, the river was divided into several smaller channels, rather than one big nasty one!  I waded the first channel, rockhopped the second, and logwalked (with Bill’s help) the third.  Bill, who does not like to get wet, just logwalked all three.

Now we were headed for Deception Pass, fortunately nowhere as big or as tough a climb as Cathedral Pass this morning.  We had a nice view of the valley before starting up, and another nice thing, too–it finally stopped raining!  The afternoon became simply cloudy and suddenly quite cool, but at least I could put away the umbrella.  Not the raingear, though–I still needed it for pushing through all the plants overhanging the trail, which were dripping wet.  Lots of toadstools were pushing their way up from the dirt and also many weird little saphrophytic plants in a range of bright colors.  We reached Deception Pass, then pretty Deception Lake, where there were a LOT of backpackers camped.  They are brave–the mosquitoes there were TERRIBLE! 

Our last big goal of the day was Pieper Pass, and we reached it by 7:00 pm.  Finding no possible campsite on top, we mushed on down to near Glacier Lake.  The last part of that involved a LONG set of switchbacks down a very tough talus slope, where some of the rocks were as big as a car.  This was really hard for our already very tired feet.  Sigh.  But we found a very nice campsite at the bottom among some of the huge boulders.  It was a chilly evening, but lots of mossies were out ‘n about, so up went the net tent!  Dry “bedsox” and a warm sleeping bag felt very good!