I got up at 5:30, turned on the coffee maker, and started cutting up fruit for a breakfast fruit salad. (The fruit came from a little produce stand out front–a great setup, where all the different fruits ‘n veges were the same price per pound, so I just grabbed one each of a whole variety of things!) I sprinkled the salads with huckleberries that Wyoming picked along the trail yesterday and very kindly gave to me! At 6 am, I strolled down the hall to get the complimentary muffins and orange juice, so we had a very nice, very civilized breakfast. Looking out the window, the weather was very gray, rainy and cold.

We loaded up our packs and headed for the lobby, where Bill spent some time on the computer trying to organize our trip home. He has a somewhat complicated plan in mind. Most all the other hikers are planning to head straight from Manning Park to Vancouver, hop on a plane and go home. Bill’s plan involves walking back into the USA at Sumas, WA, then taking a lot of different local buses to Seattle, then Amtrak to Portland, then rent a car and drive home. While he was working on all that, I was hanging out with other hikers, who were trying to bring themselves to leave the nice warm hotel and and head back into the cold and rain.

Bill finally finished up at 8:30, and off we went. The rain had stopped momentarily, hooray, but it was a cold 44 degrees. The trail is very nice and well-maintained at first and it starts right away to climb up high. In 2005, I loved the views, but we could see nothing this time but the trees by the trail. And eventually the nice smooth trail morphed into rough and rocky, so we were basically hiking on miles of rocks, in the rain. The guidebook had warned of many miles with no reliable water sources–not today! There was water running everywhere, dripping off the mountainside and running down the trail.

But the wildflowers were very nice, especially the “Canterbury Bell” blue ones, plus a lot of very intersting alpine-type plants. Good thing there were plenty of them, because there wasn’t much else to see, with the clouds and rain. I used my umbrella a lot, even for the times when the rain stopped for a bit, because of the very strong, very cold wind. It felt like ice blowing on us, but the umbrella broke its force and made hiking much more comfortable. Put down ANOTHER use for the umbrella–wind shield! And during the few times when I wasn’t using it, I discovered that it tucked very nicely under my left shoulder strap in back, where I could get it easily. (Normally I stow it in a special little pocket on the back of my pack, but then I have to ask Bill to get it for me.)

It was so cold at noon that we ate lunch as fast as we could, and at our “Snickers breaks” we ate standing up, with our packs on, because if we stopped for very long, we were freeeeezing! But in the afternoon, the clouds began to lift a bit, and we started to see the lakes down below. Since this is the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, that was a great sight to see! And around 4 o’clock-ish, the clouds lifted some more and wow! Some views at last! We could see Spectacle Lake down below and the mountains all around us, some with snow patches on them. It was beautiful!

We tramped along the zillion switchbacks down toward the valley, stopped for supper along the trail, crossed the bridge at Delate Falls (wow! amazing and beautiful!) and finally reached the valley floor. The whole area is very alpine and very pretty, but unfortunately also damaged by a fire last fall. We were a bit concerned about finding a campsite outside the fire zone before it got dark, but we did succeed, and were even able to set up our tarp under trees. The biggest challenge was to find bare ground that is not covered with huckleberry bushes! It began to rain again as we set up the tarp, and it got dark fast. I’m writing this by headlamp–it’s very cold and drizzling and tree-drippy, but we are quite comfortable. But I am VERY glad to have hiked through here before, when we could see all the views, and before the fire–so that I KNOW what it looks like!