I got an early start even though I did not to. Having tuned my body into the schedule of waking up early, I was now on that schedule for good or for bad. My foot was pretty sore still, but I was going to use a routine of taking it out of my shoe each chance I could to massage it. I was still kind of worried about it. It was now August 1st and I had been on the trail for 16 days. This was going to be my chance to escape for the day, though, because my dad and his wife Laura were meeting me at Stevens Pass. It was hard not to get too excited for a chance to sleep in a bed and relax for a little bit. I couldn't get too relaxed, yet, though because with a sore foot, I still had 21 miles to hike through difficult terrain.
The trail went uphill right from the start. There were lots of mosquitoes around to keep me company and unfortunately, many of my electronics were on the edge of dying. My inReach was dead, so my wife could not track my every move today. My cell phone still had about 60% charge left and my mp3 player was down to its last bar. That was okay, though, as being out here was what I enjoyed. The trail climbed toward Pieper Pass with the Deception Lakes coming into view to provide a break from the big views of far away mountains. I seemed to be moving pretty well on this day with a lighter pack than usual and the mosquitoes to motivate me to not stop for very long.
I gained over 1500 feet to get up to Pieper Pass, then quickly lost it. The trail seemed rather quiet for being so near to a major road, but maybe not as many people came this way from Stevens Pass. I am not sure why not, though, because there were lots of interesting mountains to climb and amazing looking lakes. I talked to a few people, but mostly it was me out there putting in the miles. The trail seemed to either be going up or down on this day. There was no long stretches of flat terrain. I spent a lot of the day on ridges with large sweeping views that I thoroughly enjoyed. One of the best views of the day was Trap Lake. It seemed like an awesome place to spend some time with large mountains all around it.
It was properly named as the water seemed to be trapped right on the edge of a big valley below it. The trail was even more quiet after this lake as there was an easier way in to this area than hiking the PCT. I wondered if the blue liners all went out that other way and only red liners were out here with me. After Trap Lake, it was downhill to Hope Lake, which wasn't much. Then back uphill. It didn't seem like much when looking at the map, but it felt like I was going over three passes today even though officially there was only one. There were soon salmon berries along the trail and they were getting bigger and redder as I hiked further north. The trail seemed to want to avoid Stevens Pass as it came ever so close to the road, but seemed to hook around to avoid it.
Soon I found myself in the ski area. It kind of wound around the power lines and chair lifts through open meadows filled with berries. There were a few people out here picking huckleberries and a lady laden with a large pack started to chat with me. She asked if I was Peter. I knew then that my dad was not too far away. It was only a few more bends in the trail before I ran into him. He offered to take my pack, but we walked the 2 miles back to the parking at Stevens Pass together. It was good to catch him up on all the happenings on the trail and I really appreciated the lift. This was not a short trip for him because it was 4 or 5 hours from his house to get to Stevens Pass. From there, we drove past the expensive tourist town of Leavenworth to the much warmer town of Cashmere. Here we had a hotel room for two nights. We got ourselves some pizza and had some ice cream and I settled in to catch up on the Mariners games and get some rest.
