Sept. 22-26 - Sophomore Outdoor Ed.

With the exception of one weekend that I was very sick, I have hiked the 4 out of the last 5 weeks.  This last weekend was the start of my 8th outdoor education trip at my school.  This is the program that introduced me to the world of backpacking.  At the age of 24, I took off into the woods on my first backpacking trip. From that moment on, I was hooked.  Although I did not do it enough, I was in it. As many of you readers might know, the weekly streak began right after my first marriage fell apart.  It lasted a little over 2 and a half years. But now, here I am fresh out of the PNW woods after a spectacularly rainy and wet 5 day trip in Mt. Rainier National Park.

More soon...

Sept. 7 & 8 - St. Andrew's Lake

A couple quick updates:

• I have been hiking, but not as much as I like.
• I did a 47 mile loop over Labor Day weekend. It kicked my butt. I did 18 miles in 12 hours (that is 1.5 mph, pitiful).
• I hiked this weekend, that makes two weeks in-a-row, I am thinking of starting a streak back up... at least one of training.

So I am two weeks away from the Sophomore Outdoor Ed trip, and the route I am doing is completely new to me. This weekend I needed to get a look at it, so I took off on an overnighter.  I was lucky enough to bring three friends from work with me too.

We took off from the end of the Westside Road at 9:15am Saturday.  We hiked 3.8 miles up the road, then took off towards the South Puyallup River camp on the Wonderland trail some 2.2 miles away.  From there, we took a right and went to St. Andrew's Lake 3.2 miles away. We hiked in cloud cover almost the whole time.  It was kind of nice since it was a decent climb, and I had worked up a good sweat.  We were at the lake around 1:30 pm, then we wandered up to the cross country zone to set up our camp.

This is where the trip became something I wanted to write down.  Since I am trying to see my 27 mile route, and I had only done 9.2 miles of it. I took off up the trail in my running shoes and with a small day pack.  My goal was to get to Golden Lakes (8.8 miles from our camp, plus the trail has a good amount of up and down).  

At 2:22 pm, I was running down to the lake and then to Klapache Park.  Then jogged down the switchbacks to North Puyallup River.  This was brutal down hill.  I made decent time, it was about 3:30 pm when I began the 5 mile climb back up to Golden Lakes.  No running here, but I was maintaining a fast-ish pace, telling myself to go quicker anytime I felt myself settling into my natural gait.  At 4:30, I stopped for water at a stream.  I told myself I had to be moving by 4:35, which I was.  Shortly after, I was breaking out of the forrest and I was up on a ridge (but still in the clouds).  I was soon losing elevation again, and then all of the sudden, the ranger patrol cabin and the Golden Lakes sign was right in front of me. It was 5:10.  I chatted with the ranger (a beautiful woman) for a few minutes and took off back for camp.  I walked back to the top of the ridge, then took off running. I maintained a good running gear for about 45 minutes.  I walked into North Puyallup at 6:30. This was a huge highlight, that marked 10 miles in three hours.  That has been a thought of mine over the years as a theoretical pace for thru-hiking the PCT. I was so excited that I was able to do that, but I also realized to maintain that over weeks, or even a whole day, my training needs to step up. I took another break at 6:30 but this time took an extra 10 minutes, making my charge up to camp at 6:45 pm.  I decided the best thing to do was to move consistently and as steady as possible.  By 7:55 pm, I was 2.8 miles up from the North Puyallup river.  I met two wonderful people and spent a good 10 minutes chatting with them.  As obsessed as I had been with time, I was so thankfully to give that away as I met these amazing people.  The husband walked up for about a half mile with me.  I was in camp at 8:22 pm, exactly 6 hours after leaving for a 17.6 mile round trip. 

My friends, being amazing as they are, had seen my headlamp approaching and had a hot dinner ready.  I slept well and hard.  Today was amazing too, in a different way. We woke up had scones (freshly baked in my oven), played cards, and relaxed all morning. We were walking by noon. We saw a bear :). We were at the car at 4 pm.