We are not even a week into our trip, and its already an adventure.
"Heavy late spring snowfall last week combined with expected sunshine and warm weather at high elevations will create the very dangerous conditions this weekend, especially in terrain above 8,000 feet on volcanoes. Hikers should particularly avoid Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens, Glacier Peak and Mt. Baker. “It is dangerous now, but we expect it to get worse this weekend with the warm temperatures and highest freezing levels since last summer,” said Kenny Kramer, avalanche meteorologis"
We have hit an impass: less than 5 days in we have had to pull out and reconsider our plans. When we got this news about the impending weather, we decided it would be foolish to endanger ourselves and try to push through. Our other choices were to wait a week (or more) in Stehekin until the snow level went down, but we really didn't have enough food and that would cut a few weeks from our itinerary, making us have to hustle to get through the Sierra before more snow. After a day of public transportation and getting acquainted with eastern Washington, we are back in Seattle. We are really bummed that we have had to abandon our thru-hiking goals, but we are going to salvage as much of this trip, and the hiking season, as possible. Our current idea is to bus south to Northern California, and then hike north to Canada. This has a few positive aspects: we will get to read the guide books as they are written (for northbounders), we will get to see Washington in its prime season, and hopefully we will avoid a lot of the snow.
Our first few days on the trail were really great, though- we headed out from Rainy Pass on Saturday morning, on a beautiful, sunny day. We started out in a bit of snow, but after about a mile we were hiking on solid ground. We hiked 15 miles to the Bridge Creek Campground and it was a luxurious first night: bear box, outhouse, river and picnic table! Then we coasted the 5 miles into Stehekin on Sunday, catching a ride into the Landing with some nice National Park workers. They warned us of the high snow levels around the Hemlock Camp region (where we were heading the next day), but we shrugged it off. Then we caught a glimpse of the weather report: snow for the next three days above 5000 feet. We were slotted to spend the next week hiking around 6000 feet, so this really made us worry. After some serious talks and phone calls, we decided to pull out and reconsider. While we are starting to feel better about our decision to re-plan, we are also feeling rather foolish.
These recent events mean we will need to re-do our itinerary, and our resupply boxes. Hopefully it will be a bit easier the second time around, hah.
