After a slow start to summer weather and time spent on house projects, we committed the first three weekends in August to complete our summer bucket list.
Mount Storm King, Olympic National Park
The Mount Storm King hike has been on my list for a while, but I knew it was going to be a bit of personal challenge. Only a 4 mile out and back hike with 2,106 in elevation gain it was a bit of steep up and steep down. This hike has a sign that says "this trail is no longer maintained" which obviously makes one pause for concern and I knew the trail would be mentally challenging for me and my fear of... well not quite sure. But essentially walking on a narrow path with little to know room for error (in my opinion) and just seeing clouds and or rock... Anyway, it's a hike that I was mentally preparing for to get over the fear hump.
I was able to power through the ropes section and then started the ascent to the overlook. That's when I decided to pause and out of no where a leg shake and tears started rolling down my face. In short, I decided not to make it to the overlook. It's the descent that was more fearful than the ascent in my opinion. And the fear of not knowing what was a head. Ropes Section - Win. Final Ascent - Fail. Until next time.
Rafting the Deschutes River, Oregon
The Deschutes River originates high in the Cascade mountains. The river carves its path through 250 miles of eastern Oregon before flowing into the Columbia River. The Lower Deschutes River offers a beautiful desert canyon filled with sagebrush, osprey, incredible basalt rock formations and plenty of exciting rapids class III+ rapids.
This was our second rafting trip of the season, but first true solo rafting trip! We rented a full outfitted raft from High Desert River Outfitters out of Maupin, Oregon and it was amazing! Everything from water, to tables and sun shelters to a spice rack for cooking! Dave-O hooked us up!
We had great weather and because it's high desert we didn't have to worry about bugs or bears! Winning. Ted and I started this game called Hawk hunt in Wisconsin. A game we started to play on our drive to Badger games which carried over to any travel! A hawk is work one point and a bald eagle is work ten points, but they cannot be in the air. To easy to spot. This game then transitioned to a point system for our National Park trips, the bigger the animal the more points. Moose ten points, elk seven points, mountain goats three points, etc. Well in the state of Washington.... big game is hard to come by, so hawk hunt resumed, but this time, bald eagles became more frequent than hawks and point totals started reaching 60+. On the river... the point system took on a whole new meaning and we added a new bird to the game, Osprey! Osprey took over for hawks with one point and bald eagles remained at ten. On the Deschutes we kept track of our points and over three days our Osprey total was 119!
We had a great time on the river, even though Ted ran us into a rock that almost flipped us.... The rapids were great and the water was refreshing for our 90+ degree days.
Mount Fremont Lookout Trail, Mt. Rainer National Park
There's a ton of amazing hikes to do at Mount Rainier National Park, but two that we've had on our short list have been Mount Fremont Lookout Trail via Sourdough Ridge Trail and Grand Park via Lake Eleanor Trail. With summer Friday's in play we decided to make Mount Fremont a sunset hike, camp, and get up to hike Grand Park via Lake Eleanor Trail on Saturday. Only if the weekend had gone to plan....
Mount Rainier is huge. Think about a big mountain and double it. It's always an awe-inspiring view. We started with great weather and views. This was our first time to the Sunrise entrance to the park and it won't be our last! There are so many cool hikes and amazing views that we need to spend a lot more time in the area!
The views from Mount Fremont look amazing. I say look, because we didn't see them.
From the National Weather Service Glossary: A temperature inversion is a layer in the atmosphere in which air temperature increases with height. Essentially a ground inversion develops when air is cooled by contact with a colder surface until it becomes cooler than the overlying atmosphere; this occurs most often on clear nights, when the ground cools off rapidly by radiation. If the temperature of surface air drops below its dew point, fog may result. Yep.... that's exactly what happened, our view turned into fog. Though the sunset view we had hoped for didn't happen, there were still plenty of hikers heading up the trail at 8:00 at night which was odd to think about starting a hike at that hour, but really cool at the same time.
Though our our sunset dinner fell through, we will be back. And we/I saw mountain goats for a total of six points and an elk heard for an additional seven points. Ted, no points! Not sorry Ted.
Unfortunately we couldn't locate our Hip Campsite location and decided to drive home. This meant we wouldn't be hiking Grand Park via Lake Eleanor Trail on Saturday. Until then, pack it in and pack it out.
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