Walupt Lake Part II

So I've kept you in suspense long enough. Here's what happened after we started back down the trail:

We decided to follow some tracks down the snow left by some previous hikers. Simple enough. They were headed back down the hill. I figured they must have better route finding skills than me, so we'd find the trail in no time. Well, they didn't, and neither did we. We lost the track, and then couldn't figure out exactly how we had managed to climb up the hill in the first place. We were lost. Shortly after this revelation, we found bear scat... We stopped and prayed.

I knew, that if we stayed to the right, we would eventually come across a trail. So I kept us traversing along the hillside. Soon, I heard voices, and then I even saw people walking on the hill above us! I headed up and to the left, because they were on top of a cliff, so we had to get around it to find the trail. Soon, we found it. In fact, the picture of Mt. Adams that you saw in the last post was taken right where we found the trail again.

So we hiked the rest of the way down, warning other hikers of the risk. :) Needless to say, we were exausted. We went for a brief swim in the lake though, because we were quite dirty from the hike.


Well, there will have to be a part three later, because Blogger is not letting me upload pictures right now. So, pictures will have to come tomorrow. I guess that explains why I couldn't load them at Andrea's.

Walupt Lake

Andrea and I went up to Walupt Lake for 4th of July weekend. Don't know where Walupt Lake is? Good. ;) My Uncle and his family go up there every year for the 4th. There's no crowds, good fishing, great hiking, and no fireworks! It was really good to just relax and take it easy for a few days before diving into my new job.

Walupt Lake is about 3 hours northeast of Portland. It's in the mountains above Packwood, Washington, due north of Mt. Adams.

Day 1: We packed up and headed out of town. We stopped about four times to pick up supplies and lunch. Then we could officially get on the road. We went through Trout Lake, and stopped at the local grocery to pick up some huckleberry syrup. yum... We drove on gravel roads for a solid portion of the drive. Since Andrea has a Subaru, the going was quite nice. :)

Once we arrived at camp, we set up camp, and went to see my Aunt & Uncle, and my Mom & Dad. We visited into the night, and then went to bed tired but happy to be there.

Day 2: The plan was to hike to a place called Nanny Peak. This was better said than done. The hike is all up hill, and we were tired to start with. I don't really know why though, because we ate a good breakfast, and even had some decent coffee (the most crucial ingredient ;). We soon began to hit paches of snow. Kirby was especially happy to see these. It was a hot day, and he was a hot dog!































The snow began to cover the trail for short stretches, but we could always see where it came out again. However, when we neared the top, the trail disappeared into a snow field. Fortunately, it wasn't hard to simply go up and find our way to the top. We eventually made it to the top, and saw some spectacular views Of Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens amongst other things.





































Of course, what goes up must come down. Remember the part about the disappearing trail? Well, we thought it wouldn't be too hard to find it again. Wrong. Stay tuned. I'll tell you what happened in a couple of days. ;)