Day 150 – Alpine Lakes

Sep 7th

Neither of us slept very well last night. I was watching TV until 1:30 AM and Tomtit couldn’t fall asleep until three. We were awake by 7:30 though : /

The chores we didn’t do yesterday were still waiting for us — throw away trash, sort resupply, repack our bags. We finished at ten and walked to the Chevron to buy a few snacks. Checkout was at eleven, and we stretched our time in the room to the last ten minutes. Breakfast was had at the diner attached to our hotel and then we headed back to the trail.

  
The weather was much better today with only partly foggy skies. We had a choice of direction once back on trail — take the PCT or the Goldmeyer alternate. We decided to stick with the PCT, and I am sure glad we did!

Our life now!

  

There was a 2400 foot climb out of town which actually wasn’t too bad. Tomtit and I crushed it up the hill to the Kendall catwalk and some fantastic views.

The road we walked under.

Then we had a bit of up and down once we reached Alpine Lakes Wilderness. This wilderness is the reason I am glad we didn’t take the alternate. The skies stayed clear and we were just blown away by how beautiful it was. We can finally see Washington!

We had a thousand foot climb to the end the day. The trail was pretty rocky and we slowly made our way up to the cheerful whistles of marmots and dog toy squeaks of pikas.

After fourteen miles we found a cozy spot to pitch the tent. We did 5700 feet up and 3800 feet down in a half day of hiking today! Tomorrow looks like more crazy elevation change.