With last year's epic LGA-EWR dash a distant memory things were looking good this year with all five hikers in the air and miraculously almost on time en route to Seattle-Tacoma. That was until a mechanic with a few loose screws himself decided to commandeer a spare Q400 turboprop for a joyride and a couple of barrel rolls. With SeaTac locked down and the NORAD F-15s scrambling from Portland things were looking dicey there for a minute or two as the drama unfolded in real-time via Twitter. Best 20 bucks spent on inflight wifi ever.
Luckily, in the end the delay proved surmountable for all but the hapless mechanic, if you can call a 2am arrival and 5am wake-up a success. At any rate, you can tell you're in the outdoor-obsessed Pac Northwest when you arrive 45 minutes before the ranger station opens for your backcountry permits and that's only good enough for number 14 in line.
Ok, seen the wildlife, shall we head on home now?
Looks like perfect hiking weather boys, good call on this year's trail.
Last minute gear check lads. Forget the compass and map, can we confirm the poop shovel and brandy flask are secure?
The lush lupine-lined meadows of the foothill provide a gentle warm up for the arduous journey ahead. Or it would be a warm up if it wasn't pissing down rain. Good call on the trail again boys.
Guys, try to mark your territory away from the pristine snow banks please. It's the right thing to do, and also it might be our only source of drinking water tonight.
Nothing beats spending a summer weekend trudging through snow drifts.
Gosh darn it, I knew the Trump Administration was underfunding the National Parks!
Make sure you point towards the National Forest not the National Park. In the former anything goes these days, roll up your Big Logging trucks and let's show those Liberals that you can't have Little House in the Woods without some sawdust.
Camps don't come much better than Camp Barrell Roll, perched precariously on the only flat patch in miles of jagged scree. If you were looking for glamping you came to the wrong... well let's be honest, 99% of the time you came to the right blog.
It's premature to call it a victory until you manage to get the dinner stove lit. I mean you probably thought you had it in the bag 20 minutes out of SeaTac too?
As luck would have it the fog starts to burn off by late afternoon, revealing what should be REI's next Instagram campaign. You know, to show people that occasionally their gear does in fact make it beyond that demo "mountain" in the SoHo showroom.
A icy glacial stream and the Platypus water filter is the IV drip of champions.
Hidden Lake must have been named before the social media age, because nothing stays hidden these days. Not even Rock's long johns.
So boys, there's no ESPN on in the background and there's no barbeque to silently poke at over Buds, so we might have to, you know, make conversation or something.
Day Two dawns early when you've got 10 miles of brutal slog ahead of you. Dawn is a theoretical concept up here at altitude where it's impossible to tell what time of day it is anyway.
The descent down from Hidden Lake is just the appetizer for Day Two's real challenge: the near-vertical climb to the foot of Sahale Glacier, clocking in at 7,500 feet above sea level.
Once you hit the Misty Mountains keep an eye out for CGI-ed spiders.
Forget those aspirational REI ads, what you really need is a battered black Big Bay cap to confirm your hickster status.
See that patch up snow up there on top of the mountain? That's tonight's camp. If anyone wants to turn back now you can, but your abject failure will be recorded for all time across the interwebs. If you want to bail at least let the big black bear down in the valley take you so you can be eulogized appropriately as your portion of freeze-dried lasagna is eagerly divvied up.
Doubtful Lake. Which needs to be renamed because after four hours on the trail there's just no doubt at all: there's no way in hell we're doing the optional side-hike down there and back.
Anyone else reckon this trail doesn't appear to have an end? It's almost like we should fire up the Return of the King soundtrack and just embrace the fact the ending credits are never, ever gonna roll.
We'll take it as a good sign there's mountain goats around. That must mean we're actually cleared the foothills and made it to the mountain proper.
The last tree was more than an hour ago, that's got to be another good sign.
Victory is sweet. Or it would be, if the last bag of trail mix hadn't been demolished 2,000 vertical feet ago.
Now that is a fine spot for a campsite folks.
You don't need to time how long it takes the water to boil to know you're up high. Just look down.
Pad thai at 7,500 feet. Who said globalization is dead?
Hope you're ready to snuggle up boys, could be a nippy night.
He must be a mountain man. You can tell by the fact he crafts his beard with a straight razor and swigs small-batch Japanese whiskey from a vintage hip flask.
That's Doubtful Lake down there. The route from here is a bit easier than that nasty hike from half way. In fact you really just need to take one step...
You could pitch a lot of tents and never find a better campsite than this. Rightfully lauded as one of the finest in the entire National Park system, if not the world.
So lads, there's still two hours of daylight left and football season hasn't started yet. Anyone got any conversation starters stashed away with their waterproof matches?
Day Three dawns with a early-rising visitor. If you move fast you might be able to hitch a sure-footed ride back down to the bottom.
Looks a lot like sunset, except the sun is on the other side and Jared's hipster single-origin pour-over coffee sachets are proving they're well worth the extra pound in the pack on the way up.
One of the world's great toilets, not that anyone is probably rushing out to draw up such lists. Out here the climate is so inhospitable that the only way to dispose of the waste is by periodically airlifting the whole darn thing, cistern and all, back down to civilization. So don't cut National Park funding or the poop will quite literally hit the propeller.
Day Three is hike out day. The good news is it's all downhill and there are giant burgers waiting at the end.
Keep thinking burgers and onion rings boys and those ten miles will just fly right by.
Victory is so close even a maundering black bear below the trail can't slow things down.
