Day 6: July 18 - Carbon River to Mystic Camp
We woke up after a good night sleep to a sunny cool morning. Randy took the remaining canned fruit - peaches - and mixed it up with our pancakes. We had our shortest, yet one of the steepest days ahead of us and it was the halfway point of the trip. I never thought I'd make it this far but I was feeling pretty strong by then.
The itinerary for the day called for just four miles uphill through Carbon Valley but full of much adventure. We came across a National Park Service volunteer who told us about a black bear that had been reportedly seen below our camp earlier that morning.
We crossed the Carbon River suspension bridge - with Carbon Glacier to the right of the bridge and looking much different than in March. The photos below are of the glacier - July (left) and March (right). In March, we were able to get to the mouth of the glacier (the dark spot on the lower right corner of the picture), whereas in July, that was not possible - there were rocks falling at least every five minutes. Mt. Rainier looms above.
Before starting the uphill climb, we were crossing a log bridge over a creek when I happened to look up to my left and there was a black bear! I stopped and wanted to yell out because I was so excited but I just turned to Randy behind me and whispered furiously, "LOOK! LOOK! A BEAR!" It was all we could do to keep from falling off the bridge, we were so excited. The little cub was probably about 150 feet upstream from us and was just walking across the rocks to get a drink of water. He looked up and saw us but paid no attention and went back to his business while we fumbled with our trekking poles and cameras. We watched him get his drink, then turn around and head back into the woods.
The next big adventure of the day was going through Moraine Park, another open green space with Mt. Rainier looming over it. I think the right picture is neat because of the faint silhouettes of the northern range of the Cascade Mountains.
We were hiking along when I heard Randy stop and call out to a marmot he saw scurry off the trail and into the meadow. He then dropped his pack and gave chase. The marmot eventually stopped on a rock underneath a tree and pretty much let us creep up within five feet of it. It just sat there, watching us, and didn't seem too fearful after he realized we weren't going to harm it. Randy got some cool video on his camera of it. We finally had to go because the mosquitoes were eating us alive but that made our day - a bear AND a marmot in one day.
The hike to Mystic Camp was less eventful - the clouds had come in by the time we hit camp and the mosquitoes were bad, but the park and camp sites were pretty.
We rested a bit in the tent before getting antsy and decided to explore while we still had daylight. The campground area was unusually big, with about 8 sites. We saw "Jersey" as well as a few others that we'd get to know pretty well later in the trip. Randy became fascinated by a rocky peak we had hiked by, Mineral Mountain, so we went to check it out. And we finished off the Gentleman Jack whiskey.