Day 3: Saturday, July 15 - South Puyallup to North Puyallup
Wilderness pancake chef extraordinaire!
This wall of rock was within our campsite at South Puyallup - I believe it is called the Devil's Pipe Organ - it is a wall of tall colonnades of columnar andesite - hexigonal columns of rock that formed when hot lava flowed into the valley - this rock wall pattern developed as a result of shrinkage during cooling (per my book).
The trail for the day was about 6.3 miles, with just one ascent and one descent, rather than two of each, which we had the day before. We got into subalpine level and our first real hike through subalpine meadows, which were just filled with a bounty of native wild flowers. We decided to take a break, have an early lunch and a power snooze - see, we're refreshed and ready to go!
At some point on our way up, we started getting into some bushy territory. Not all of the trail was like this, but when did come across it, it was the epitome of backcountry.
Once we attained the ridge, clouds rolled in fast, but it just turned out to be fog, creating an eerie atmosphere, especially while going through meadows and rock fields and it was just the two of us. Not even sounds of animals. We came across St. Andrews Lake. Ice that had formed on the surface was still melting and you could hear it crack. We couldn't tell how big the lake was as it just disappeared into the fog. If you look closely, you can see me, in the yellow shirt (on the left).
We also hiked through our first "park" on the trail - Klaptache Park. You expect the mountains to be filled with just hills and harsh terrain, but we came across quite a few of these parks, which were large open spaces with small trails winding through them. It made for a nice change of scenery.
Randy kept finding all these bizarre sculptures of Mother Nature, such as trees rooted on the side of large slabs of rock and forests of dead tree stands. Or so they seemed dead.
The descent into N. Puyallup camp wasn't favorable - lots of rocky terrain and blowdowns and a decline of 2,500 feet in 2 miles. The camp itself was odd, like it had been developed with the expectation of being used often but it felt very abandoned. I think because the nearest access road had been washed out and closed for some time but prior to that, it allowed easy access to good day hiking. We also realized that we hadn't seen anyone for at least 24 hours either, which was sort of weird. I think it finally hit that we weren't just out backpacking for a few days, like we were used to.
The evening concluded with the ultimate wilderness romance dessert: Gentleman Jack whiskey and dark chocolate cheesecake (of course, dehydrated - just add water!). The texture was more like a mousse and surprisingly yummy.
