alpine lakes wilderness hike.
/pete and i headed out to the alpine lakes wilderness off highway 2 over labor day weekend for a backpacking trek. we hiked in about 6 miles with 3,000 feet of elevation gain. i've never hiked up that high with a gigantic backpack on, so it was a challenge for me.
we saw so many beautiful views. and it was our first glimpse of the year into the classic pacific northwest fall weather and changing leaves, so it was worth it.
we passed a few lakes on our hike up. its so crazy to just be hiking up a mountain and come upon a giant lake. but there are so many of them out there!
almost to our spot! my body was physically rejecting the idea of going any further, haha. hiking with a huge pack on is no joke!
this is pete's "hurry it up" expression. somehow he is like made of steel and has some insane endurance.
little heart lake!
our camp site we chose was very pretty and right on the lake. there were only a couple other people up there. i was glad there was at least somebody else around...we were pretty deep in da wild. at one point, i was so beyond exhausted that i mentally accepted the fact that if a bear started chasing me, i'd for sure be dead meat. i don't think my knees and ankles could physically run away from it even at a hobbling pace.
when we slept, we were both SURE there were bears roaming around our tent. but who knows. we were both just scaring each other. this damn chipmunk kept scuttling around right next to me outside the tent and making me think a bear was on its way. it also poured rain the entire night. there was a pile of slush outside our tent when we woke up, and snow had fallen up on the higher mountains that we could see from our campsite. we stayed surprisingly dry, though! i brought just enough layers.
soo, it was cooooold. its one of those situations where we really wanted to be sitting in our little fold-out chairs by the water and drinking our fancy boxed wine, but we were so cold we just went and and sat in our sleeping bags in the tent and cooked our food and played cards. we ate a whole bunch o astronaut food aka backpacking food. those dehydrated meals are pretty dang good, i say! we decided our fave that we brought was the cilantro lime rice burrito bowl. then we decided that we should bring tortillas to wrap the astronaut food in, and it would all be soo much more satisfying. lots of the meals would work well inside of a tortilla. like the breakfast egg, potato, & veggie scramble. wilderness breakfast burritos!
look how foggy the next day, oooooh:
making the trek back down // dreaming of cheeseburgers. our classic post-hike tradition. we usually talk about cheeseburgers the whole way down, haha.
coooooooooool.
hey, a bigass tree.
we made it!
and you best believe we got those cheeseburgers.
qp
