I had to recover a bit before writing about this trip. (Well, that and my grad school courses started this week so that's taking up a fair bit of my time.)
On Wednesday, August 11th I conned my mom into driving me and Alison to the Graves Creek Trailhead out by Lake Quinault. It is a 2.5 hour drive (thanks, Mom!!) and the last bit is a dirt road. I wasn't aware of this, but I probably should have been as Mom did not take kindly to the surprise of a dirt road. At one point she was threatening to turn around and have us just hike around our neighborhood for 3 days, but luckily she pushed through and we were able to start the hike we had planned.
We didn't get a super early start that morning, which meant we started our hike at about noon on a very hot day.
Here are a few destinations accessible from this trailhead. The sign is a little old and there have been more washouts to push the trailhead back, so our destination of Dosewallips Trailhead was more like 36.6 miles, but you get the idea.
Our first destination was the Pyrites Creek campground (~11 miles). This is typically a popular hiking area and we had read horrifying trip reports of 100+ people at campgrounds and park rangers bringing extra privies up to handle the overload of people, but most of the people we saw were hiking out and most of them reported no problems with campsites or overcrowding. Could have been the middle of the week thing or the heat wave thing, but we were grateful for the news.
This is a lovely hike. I would have probably enjoyed it more if I hadn't made the very poor decision to limit my water intake so I wouldn't have to pee as often. Peeing in the woods several times would have been a far better situation than the nauseous dehydration I experienced in the higher-than-normal heat.
One of the great things about this hike, and one of the reasons we felt confident we could do it, was the almost continuous access to water. There was only a small section on the second day with no water access. Otherwise we could often hear a river and had several bridge crossings of creeks feeding into the rivers. Which translated into not having to carry as much water with us - always a win when you're counting every pound of weight. Day 1 and part of day 2 had us traveling along the Quinault River.
After rehydrating with a lot of water and some electrolytes, I was doing much better at the start of day 2 than at the end of day 1.
Day 2 definitely felt more like we were hiking in a valley. I am not sure where in that somewhat hazy distance we ended up, but our trail was taking us up and over the mountains.
Our first milestone of the day: Enchanted Valley. This is a popular end point for hikers on this trail. There were a few people here camping, but as we hiked further we saw fewer and fewer people.
And now we started going uphill. We were always glad to find water from here on out, though the water made for some interesting hiking in some sections.
One hiker we gleaned information from earlier had told us that the hike up to the pass was "very doable" (though he also mentioned he did it without a pack) and to remember to take the opportunity to appreciate the views while "appreciating" the elevation change. So we did.
There were some lovely views; however, my slogging pace put us on the steepest section of the hike at the hottest time of the day so my appreciation was a little hampered by that.
I am not so good with heat.
The views were also hampered by the excessive amount of FLIES (some biting, some just swarming) that call Anderson Pass home. As we hiked upwards in the heat, I often needed to take a breather, but the flies were excellent motivation to keep moving.
We made it!!
I did not find the pass itself to be visually all that interesting, but I did find the idea of now finally going downhill very appealing.
We have been biased by the downhill nature of the hike or just more opportunities to look around, but the second half of the hike was lovelier than the first section.
After about 9.5 miles or so and after fording a river in our flipflops (this part of the trail was not described in any of the trip reports!), we eventually made it to the Honeymoon Meadows campground. The place was empty except for two people who were taking soil samples of the area. The layout of this campground was a little confusing, so in my exhaustion and overwhelming desire to get away from the bugs, I accidentally set up my tent not on a campsite but just a flat spot next to the trail.
At this point, I. Did. Not. Care.
As I mentioned, this side of the pass was not busy with people at all so it didn't really matter. After a quick rehydration of our freeze dried dinner, we both were in our tents for the night at about 6:30p. Day 2 of hiking and the ubiquitous bugs left us tired and needing a break from the swarms.
Day 3 started downhill. Glorious, glorious downhill.
We also had more interesting bridges to cross.
As we headed towards the Dosewallips trailhead (~16 miles), we came upon a campsite roughly every 2-3 miles. This made a great way to break up the hike mentally and stop for a minute to get water if necessary. Our favorites were Big Timber (seen below)
and Dose Forks (seen below).
We pushed forward until we made it to the Dosewallips Ranger Station campground. We had about 6.5 miles to go, but this is where we did our backpacking trip earlier with the kids so we were familiar with the rest of the way. We were making good time, so we stopped here for an hour to eat lunch, pee, and fill up with icy cold river water.
The break was amazing, but every time we stopped it got increasingly difficult to put that 25lb pack back on. Again we were hiking at the hottest time of the day while still in a heatwave, but this last section was blessedly shaded.
The only surprise (for me) on the way back was a little section I had not done before as I had taken the alternate route with my friend and her daughter. The alternate route included switchbacks and a longer distance so we opted for the river route that Alison and the boys had taken last time. With all of the elevation change, this was the only part of the trail that required the use of a rope!
It was a little dicey, but this route saved us some distance so we were quickly in the home stretch. I had told Jason we were aiming to be at the trailhead between 5:30-6pm and we stood in the parking lot at 5:17pm - we were feeling pretty good about that.
Sadly, the parking lot was full and cars were parked along the road (both sides -grrr!) for a ways. Since the van isn't the most nimble of vehicles in tight spaces, we started hiking down the road to a good spot for Jason to pull over and be able to turn around. We found an open patch of dirt, threw down a foam pad, and took off our hiking shoes. I'm not going to lie - I haven't worn them since.
It may be a while.
Jason arrived with Gatorade, cheese, and grapes and air conditioning. He kindly turned a blind nose to our aromatic selves and drove these two tired ladies home.
Lessons learned:
-Peeing a lot is way better than dehydration
-Electrolyte powders are da bomb
-Bears poop on the side of trails, horses poop ON the trail
-There are worse things than pooping in the woods, like pooping in a privy
-36.6 miles in 3 days was incredibly ambitious, will not repeat
-If you are going to do a crazy trip like this, pick an awesome friend like Alison to go with you
