Week 45 Jul. 7-11 - Enchanted Valley

Total Distance: Approximately 35 miles
Elevation Gain: Approximately 3000 ft.
Time: Thursday noon - Monday 11 am
Weather: Partly cloudy and sunny for 5 days and 4 nights.

More to come later, but...

On Thursday, I left on a 5 day/4 night trip up the Quinault River. I took a colleague and 8 boys from my school. Our ultimate destination was the Enchanted Valley.

Highlights include the valley itself, great dinners, multiple bear sightings, 4 am hike to Anderson Pass to see the sunrise, herd of elk at 430 am, and more.

And here is the later...

Back in late March, I had a brilliant idea to hike the Wonderland Trail in Mount Rainier National Park.  The trail is approximately 93 miles and circumnavigates the base of the mountain.  I also figured I could get a group of students from my school to pay me to take them.  Well, while I had planned for just about everything except the winter weather that lasted well into May.  As a result, the trail was covered mostly in snow.  We left on Tuesday July 5th for a plan B trip in Mount Rainier, but we were thwarted by snow the first day and could not make it to our first campsite.  My co-leader and I called this trip, and we hiked out.  By the time we got back to the trailhead, the rangers had left, and there was hardly anyone left in the parking lot.  We camped at the trailhead and called the next morning.

My co-leader and I spent the next day scrambling to come up with an alternative hike.  We called the Olympic National Park, which had two options for snow free hiking, and we were able to design a 5 day/4 night trip and a 7 day/6 night trip, back to back.

We left Thursday for the Quinault River valley.  We hiked 6.6 miles the first day to O'Neil Creek.  The site was a little full, but I met some great people.  I fixed a delicious meal of grilled cheese and soup.

The next morning we were up and hinge by 10 am.  We were in the Enchanted Valley by the mid-afternoon.  We saw a juvenile black bear on the way, about a mile north of Pyrites Creek.  This is only the second trip on which I have seen a bear.  I loved it.  That night I prepared a great Thai Peanut Noodle dish with vegetable stir-fry.

The next day was going to be a short day, so I planted the idea of an early morning sunrise hike in the kids' heads.  Four of the eight boys joined me at 4 am as we hiked to Anderson pass.  We saw a herd of elk around 4:30 am, which was magnificent.  When we hit a huge snow field around 5:45, we decided to just head for a saddle above us.  I am pretty sure we were not going to the pass, but instead just climbing up between LaCrosse Mountain and White Mountain.  After a good hour and a half of climbing up the snow, I thought we had gotten high enough and that the decent would be an adequate challenge.  We all slid down on our butts or did a large step running variation.  We had a blast, and we all came down safely.  We got back to camp and ate a huge breakfast.  We moved camp down the river back to Pyrites.  On the way I met a cool ranger who had a Phish hat on.  Phish happens to be my favorite band, so we chatted a while.  I eventually caught back up with my group and was in camp by 4 pm.  The dinner this night was a delicious Alfredo pasta with salmon and basil.

The next day, we hiked our biggest distance with packs.  We did about 8 or 9 miles down to Pony Bridge.  We had a sweet and sour rice for dinner.

We were out the next day.  We were picked up at 11 am, and we spent the afternoon in Port Angeles getting our next set of permits and resupplying food stuff.

Orchid: The early morning hike.

Onion: None, seriously.

Picture:

Google Map