Day 137 - Saturday, September 11

Tenting above Milk Creek (mile 2525.5). Walked 22.6 miles today.

We actually slept fairly well last night despite the cramped quarters. I went back to my tent to find a nice puddle in the downhill corner. After emptying the water out, I slowly started packing up and beginning the miserable experience of putting on wet clothes. By this point, the rain had stopped, but it was still foggy out.

We got everything packed up and donned our wet packs. I feel like I've now gotten the true Washington experience: cold and wet in the Northern Cascade mountains. We set off through what must normally be great views and down into a meadow where the clouds started to clear slightly and we got a tiny bit of sun.

We dropped back below the treeline and made our way past several streams incliding one with a genius, modern bridge design to help hikers easily access the water.

It was here that the blow downs began. Tigger had warned us the other day that there was a long stretch of poor trail, blow downs, and overgrowth in this section of trail. We climbed over logs and down muddy, washed out trail to Kennedy Creek. Here, there was a sketchy log crossing across this glacial creek and then we began a very long, steep, climb.

At the top, we wound around a mountain side where we almost got views before dropping to Fire Creek where we ate some lunch.

Frank wasn't feeling well and we weren't making good time, so we decided to cut 5 miles off our day. We hiked up a few more hundred feet to Fire Creek Pass and then down a massive series of switchbacks toward Milk Creek.

Along the way, we passed Mica Lake which was one of the bluest lakes I've ever seen (and the pictures don't do it justice of course...).

At Milk Creek, we found some sheltered sites to camp for the night. The trail down wasn't too horrible, but there were some blow downs and overgrowth near the bottom. Comments in the app we use promise the same thing for the first three miles of tomorrow.

We set up camp and I helped warm Frank up as she was experiencing a couple of the symptoms of hypothermia. Once she was warm, we went to bed. With a chance of rain again tonight, I'm hoping it's not much and I can stay dry in my apparently non-waterproof tent.