PCT Mile 2506 – 2522
Miles Hiked = 16
The weather changed during the night and we woke up to cooler temperatures and clouds on the horizon. We had camped at about 5600 feet just southwest of Glacier Peak and today we would spend the day traversing around the western flank of this large mountain. Here was our early morning view looking north shortly after getting back on the trail.
The trail would descend for the first five miles. Almost immediately we were back in the forest. There are a lot of streams and creeks that flow down from the glaciers on Glacier Peak. Today we would cross over quite a few. Sometimes we had a bridge like this one over the White Chuck River.
You can tell the rushing creek in the following video is melt-off from a glacier by the “silty” or “milky” color. This one drains from the White Chuck Glacier.
As we continued down the trail we experienced a typical forest trail – smooth, compacted dirt – nice to walk on!
The footbridge over Baekos Creek had failed and was broken in half but it was still passable.
As we continued down the trail there were more bridges crossings.
We were walking through a cloud as we approached the bottom of our five mile descent.
When we arrived at Kennedy Creek there was a large log over the creek. The creek was rushing along pretty strong. The choice was to walk across the log or to scoot across it on your bums. We decided to scoot across the log on our bums. A slip here would not have been good! I went first and then recorded Sydney as she “inched” her way across.
After we both were safely across I shot another video of the rushing “creek”.
At the bottom of our descent, the elevation was about 3700 feet. We would then go uphill for the next five miles. We mostly climbed through the forest in damp and foggy conditions.
We continued to hike and stopped to have lunch after 2pm
After our short break for lunch we continued northward around the western side of Glacier Peak. It was still cloudy and overcast.
Later in the afternoon we stopped and watched the marmots as the they stopped and watched us. I don’t know who was more curious???
We never experienced any rain today but it did stay cool and damp and either foggy or overcast all day.
Late in the afternoon we crossed over the top of Fire Creek Pass at an elevation of 6311 feet. We enjoyed the views and took some photos.
Here’s a view looking back at Glacier Peak from Fire Creek Pass. We were now northwest of the peak.
More views from Fire Creek Pass
Late in the afternoon we hiked through this rock field as we approached Mica Lake
Mica Lake is a beautiful glacial lake right along the PCT and makes for very scenic photos. There were a few campsites but they looked exposed and the weather was foreboding enough that Sydney and I decided to continue on to a more protected campsite.
The trail descended from Mica Lake and we soon found a more protected campsite. There was a stream close by so this seemed like a good place to spend the night.
There was a family of Grouse living nearby – a mother Grouse and her chicks – this is a photo of the Mama Grouse as she supervised her chicks feeding on the grass near our tents.
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One Dream, One Path, Four Feet 