Wonderland Trail: Part One

When I first got the job out here, my dad did a bunch of research, as Meleedy’s do, and forwarded me some articles and websites about the Wonderland Trail. It looked cool enough, but I pushed it to the back of my mind until I was settled into my new job and apartment. I revisited the idea in May and became obsessed. What better way to wrap up my time in Washington than to hike 93 miles around the mountain that I’ve worked on every day for the past 7 months?

Day 1! Excited to get moving.

Day 1

I set out on the Wonderland Trail on Friday September 9th, around 4:15pm. I had been anticipating the moment for months. Something drew me to the trail. Maybe it was the just long enough distance of 93 miles, the 22,000 total feet of elevation gain, or the fact that I’d be walking around the biggest volcano in the lower 48. It might have also been in part because I knew I’d see a bear on the trail at least once, and I hadn’t seen a single one all season.

I began hiking clockwise from Longmire, 5.7 miles to my first campsite at Devil’s Dream. When I arrived, all the sites were full, cueing one of my largest anxieties about backcountry camping. I ended up walking into site 4, where a nice older man had set up camp. I started to explain my dilemma- that despite having a permit, I was site-less. Before I could finish, he let me know that he was the one without a permit, and that he’d leave if need be. Turns out, his plans changed a bit, causing him to link up with another group for the night. That group changed their minds once they arrived at camp and told him to find somewhere else. Rude.

I set up my tent and chatted with him while making my dinner of tuna tortillas. Maybe sharing a site wouldn’t be so bad after all- although I did set out on this trip solo, I was hoping to make friends. I borrowed a sharpie from him because, like a weenie, I brought my journal but no pen. I settled into my sleeping bag around 8 and wrote a little before falling asleep.

Waking up with my hiking partner.

Day 2

My 6am alarm woke me up. I slept well that night. Little anxiety and only woke up when my campmate had a sneezing fit around 1 am and my ear plugs kept falling out, but I was nice and warm in my bag. I boiled some water for my morning oatmeal while I broke down camp. I had 10.9 miles to go and wanted to get to camp relatively early. I was headed to Klapatche, where I had been twice before. I really wanted site 1.

I filtered water on my way to Indian Henry’s, and stopped at the cabin, where my roommate was sitting on the porch. We talked while I repacked my pack for the 7th time that morning. The subject turned to bears. I’d lived in the park for 7 months, hiked tons of trail in the area and hadn’t seen any bears. I wasn’t bitter or anything. I was just convinced that I was the anti-bear. Maybe my sweat glands produced bear repellant, rather than sweat.

I looked out into the meadow and saw something black. I didn’t want to get too excited so I looked over and said “Hey Sarah, is that a bear?” while pointing in the direction of the indistinguishable black blob in the meadow. She looked, gasped and said “And it has a cub!” before darting into the cabin to grab some binoculars. We sat and watched the mama and cub eat berries until I decided to head out. I made my way through Indian Henry’s and down to the Tahoma Creek Suspension Bridge. I noticed some clouds forming, including a lenticular above Rainier (a telltale sign that it’s going to rain in the next 24 hours), but the forecast was promising and I wasn’t worried. 

Just before reaching my destination, I passed a male and female pair. The dude proceeded to warn me “Hey, there’s three bears at Klapatche. Be really careful. There’s three of them”. This rubbed me the wrong way. I knew there were bears. It’s the wilderness after all, but I soon forgot about it upon the sight of Saint Andrew’s Lake. I soaked my feet and was far too lazy to filter water, so I continued the .8 mile up to Klapatche Camp, where I came across not one, but two, notes written into the dusty

 trail, again, warning me that there were three bears at Klapatche. 

Bears in the woods? No way. I was kind of irked again. I kicked dirt over the writing.

I somehow ended up with site one, which is by far the best site at Klapatche. Probably because this site is the closest to the meadows... where bears usually hang out. But you get a killer view of the mountain through the trees, and it’s closest to the trail. I made the best trail dinner I had all trip, mashed sweet potatoes with yellow coconut curry tuna on tortillas. 

The clouds began to roll in around 6, so into my tent I went. I journaled and listened to some podcasts. I’m not sure if it was the bear concern (despite not seeing any near Klapatche all afternoon), or the wind and rain that pounded my tent all night, but I didn’t end up falling asleep until 4am.

View from site 1 at Klapatche.

Day 3

When I woke up at 6, I felt like garbage. My body wouldn’t let me get up, so I closed my eyes and fell back asleep for 3 more hours. When I got up, I haphazardly tossed my gear into my pack, ate half a poptart and started on the trail. I ran into a fellow parkie and her partner, who told me that they had seen a mama bear and some cubs on the switchbacks out of North Puyallup. It was misty and cold and I just didn’t have the energy to worry about them.

I made it down to North Puyallup and had all but forgotten about the bears. I took a break at the camp, ate some real calories (probably about 700, considering I’d just hiked 4 miles on 100 calories) and started up the switchbacks towards Golden Lakes Camp. I was about 4 miles in and I was feeling good. About 20 minutes later, I rounded a bend and saw a black bear about 75 feet in front of my on the trail, staring. I froze. I knew I was supposed to do something- yell, look big, hit my poles together- something... but instead, I locked eyes with the bear and took a single step back, before it bolted off up the slope. 

I approached cautiously, as I couldn’t see how far the bear went, while talking loudly and asking the bear how it’s day was going. No more sign of it. I wasn’t necessarily scared... I knew bears were just big raccoons, wanting your food, not wanting confrontation. But I was a bit spooked after seeing a bear, alone, for the first time while on the trail.

By 2pm, I knew that I had to be getting close to Golden Lakes. I passed a group of four, who told me that they had seen a bear just off the trail “about 200 feet back”. I hiked on apprehensively for about 10 minutes. No bear. I was pretty bummed, but figured I shouldn’t test my luck and that there would be other bears on the trail for me to see. Maybe a minute later, something stopped me in my tracks. It’s like I knew it was there before I saw it. I poked my head around a small tree, into a clearing and there was a bear, not 10 feet off the trail. I hid behind the tree for a moment (and took a photo real quick) before taking a deep breath and yelling “Hey bear, how ya doing?”. It wasn’t startled. It didn’t even look up. It kept munching on the berries in the meadow. I stepped out from behind the tree, waved my arms and yelled again “Hey bear, get out of here!”. He looked up this time. I made myself look big, just like all the pamphlets and blogs tell you to do. I can only imagine what the bear was thinking.

“What does this girl think she’s trying to accomplish?”

After a few minutes of talking loudly and waving my arms, the bear made a few steps deeper into the meadow- not because of me, but because he ran out of berries- and I shuffled quickly down the trail, facing him until he was out of sight. This was the last bear I would see all 93 miles.

I reached Golden Lakes, adrenaline still pumping a bit and set up for the night. My dinner of mashed potatoes and snickers didn’t sit well. Maybe it was the weather, and that I hadn’t seen the sun once. Or maybe it was the bear encounters. I dozed off and hoped tomorrow would be better.

On the way to Mystic Lakes.

Day 4

I woke up feeling a lot better on Day 4, glad to see the sun again. I started hiking around 8:15, excited to get to Mowich, where my first food cache was. It was a bit of a climb out of Golden Lakes, with a steep downhill leading into South Mowich River. I filtered water and ate a granola bar and drank a liter of water before heading to South Mowich Camp, almost exactly halfway through my day. I stopped here for lunch, which was a depressing combination of mashed sweet potato and sweet chili jerky on a tortilla. I hiked the last uphill section to Mowich Lake Camp, meeting lots of day hikers shocked that I was hiking the trail- and that I was hiking it alone. I don’t exactly know what I was expecting out of Mowich, but this was not it.

I knew it was a drive up site. I knew it was a popular area. But after days of not seeing a single car or having a conversation longer than five minutes, the sight was stressful. The campsites were gravel pads in a parking area. I could see the parking lot from my tent. The bees were annoying as hell. But there was a bathroom (with toilet paper!!), and my food cache was here. Plus it was nice to know that if I wanted to bail, I could.

I got my food cache and sat with my bucket of dehydrated food on the picnic table at my site. I made myself a tuna wrap... Two actually. This was my second lunch. Or my first dinner. I ate, then took a nap in my tent. It was only 2:30 and it was chilly out. I woke up at 6 or so, emerged from my tent, grabbed my stove and heated up some water for tea and dinner. I had a questionable mountain house type dinner that I got from the hiker box at Longmire earlier in the week. I ate the semi-rehydrated goop that was supposed to be a chicken enchilada. It was gross. And wasn’t fully hydrated after 20 minutes, but I was hungry. At least it was warm.

I retreated back to my tent and listened to Serial and drifted in and out of the coldest night sleep I had all trip. It was tough to sleep when I heard car doors slamming and someone playing an acoustic guitar well into the night.

Indian Henry's on day one.