After leaving NY and MA we came back to a week of work and then another weekend of play. The forecast was great - warm and sunny with clear blue skies. Sure sounded like we should head to some big volcanoes! So Nickie, Carol
é, Jay, and I decided to hike in the Okanogan Wenatchee National Forest just outside of Mount Rainier National Park (we wanted to have their dog Beebee join us, hence no hikes in the park). We read about a trail to a lovely alpine lake called American Lake and we hit the road!
We spent Friday night at their place near Seattle and woke in the morning to a very hazy sky. It was supposed to be clear! As we drove closer and closer to the trailhead, we concluded correctly that the winds had shifted and we were going to spend the weekend hiking in the smoke from the wildfires that were raging around WA and OR. We checked with the rangers and made sure there were no active fires near our planned hike and decided to go for it! It was like hiking through a campfire - it smelled lovely and only made me cough a few times.
But the smoke totally obscured our view of Rainier. If you read my blog a bit, you know that Nickie and Carol
é just moved to the USA from South Africa (after living in Cape Town for 12 years). This was their first time near Mt. Rainier and I was stoked to see their reaction when they saw that volcano up close and personal for the first time. Here is the view of Mt. Rainier! Amazing! Note the sarcasm. No jaw dropping experience for us....but it was still an awesome hike.
I found this satellite image that was taken over WA on the weekend we were hiking - you can easily see the Olympic Peninsula on the top left corner and you can actually see the white dot of Mt. Rainier (why couldn't we see it on the ground!??). The smoke covers almost all of Puget Sound and there is a little gap over the Cascades. That is misleading, because we were in the middle of the Cascades and we couldn't see very well at all. But this image was taken on Saturday when the smoke wasn't too bad - it actually got worse on Sunday when we hiked back out.
Jay and Nickie try to hitch a ride out of the smoke??
Awesome camp near the lake
American Lake through the haze
Beebee and I went for a swim!
What would a hike be without some downtime by a lake with good food, good friends, and a bottle of wine?
We even got to watch two female common goldeneyes fluff their feathers
Serious smoke on the hike out
Goofballs.
No hike is complete without a beer at the end of the day!
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