Elevation Gain: Approximately 1400 ft.
Time: 4:50 pm - 9:05 pm
Weather: Overcast, cool, rainy then turning to snow as the evening came.
This was a totally crazy hike.
First, I hike mostly on the weekends, since I have a job that requires a lot of work in the week. For those of you who know me, or have read most of the blog entries, you know I teach high school math. My weeks are pretty busy, so I normally hike on Saturday or Sunday. That's the goal anyway, to hike every weekend for a year. There have been some circumstances, Christmas for example, that had a few hikes fall on Friday or Monday. One hike, week 18, was a Thursday because I wanted to count the hike with one of my best friends from high school. For the record, I still hiked that weekend too, i just didn't blog about it.
This hike, however, was totally inspired by my best friend at work. He has been on a lot of these hikes with me. He was a co-leader in Dark Canyon, he went to Blanka Lake in week 4, he took me out to Big Heart Lake for the second hike in week 2, and he was my friend that spent a few nights in the hospital three weeks ago.
As part of his recovery, he has been hiking a bit, and he came up to me Tuesday at work and said, "let me pick up up tomorrow morning, and we will go straight to the Carbon River Ranger Station in Mount Rainier and go for a hike." I was definitely excited by the possibility but worried about the time. He convinced me that it was only an hour away, and we could easily get a good hike in before dark, now that the days are getting longer.
True to his word, he picked me up this morning for work. We loaded the car with our gear. I brought a change of clothes to school, and right at 3:30 pm, we were on our way to the trailhead. With traffic, we did not get there until about 4:45 pm. We geared up, as started walking. Now the Ranger Station at Carbon River used to be an entrance to the park, but back in 2006 the road past here was washed out. As a result, you can no longer drive past the ranger station. We began our walk on the old road. We walked a good 2 miles, when we came to the Green Lake Trailhead. The little sign said Green Lake was 1.8 miles away. It was 6:00 pm. We decided to go for it.
As we got off the road and on to the trail, I was immediately happy to be hiking on a Wednesday. The trail was gaining elevation bit by bit, and eventually we were seeing snow in the forest around us. As we kept moving up, snow would be in small patches on the trail. Then there would be long stretches of snow. There was a little amount of snow at first, but as the trail climbed, the snow got deeper. Forty-five minutes from the Green Lake trailhead, the snow was pretty deep. We made due, and reached the lake at 7:10 pm.
It was beautiful. The clouds began to part; blue sky and sunshine broke through while we stood there. We had a small snack and started our walk out. We were at the road by 8, and back at the car by 9. Around 8:30 pm, it was too dark to keep walking without our head lamps. We put them on and finished our hike in the dark.
Orchid: Amazing, magical, wonderful midweek hike.
Onion: I didn't wear gaiters... socks were soaking wet.
Picture:
Google Map
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