Mt. Rainier - Day 27

On our way to back country camp...little did we know
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After getting lost the night before we finally arrived at the Sunrise Visitors Center, the highest point you can drive to in the park.  The Sunrise Campground was closed to drive in camping due to flooding last year, so we decided it would be a good idea to hike in and go "back country" camping.  The ranger said it was a "flat" one mile hike so we figured, sure, why not!  Ok.  So flat means flat terraine, but lots of hills.  Oh, and given that there was no water and you had to boil water from the lake so we had to lug in things like a stove.  And tent.  Which weighed about 40 lbs.  And warm clothes, rain gear, propane, cooking supplies, air mattress (ok we didn't NEED it, but we didn't know at the time what we were getting into)...I could keep going, but let's just say that we probably hauled in about 120lbs of stuff about 1.3 miles of NOT flat terrain.  We made it maybe MAYBE .2 miles before Dove was like Ok this isn't happening.  So we ditched the hiking pack and Josh went back for it later, but it was the most hellish hike ever.  We were exhausted.  It was very, VERY unfun.

Our campsite - sort of made the hike worth it
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The next day we got up early and decided to go hiking.  We took the Sunrise Rim Trail up to First Burrough.  Wow.  It was...gorgous.  There is this one place where you are hiking, and you turn a corner, and all of a sudden WOAH, there's Mt. Rainer right in front of you.  It looks like you can touch it.  Amazing.  It totally took our breath away, and not just from the hike :o)

We kept going and hiked to the second burrough.  Then we decide, well, since we're already this far into it...let's hike another three miles to third burrough!  Well...so here's the thing about third burrough.  There is no real maintained trail to third burrough.  Actually it's not on a map.  It's just this sort of path going up and down and around, and through rocks and then...then you almost get to the end and its a HORRIBLE hike...and THEN you get to the top and you're looking over a glacier.  Wow.

This is what happens when you don't have access to water a shower or a mirror...oy, my hair
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The whole day we hiked about 9 miles, but it wasn't nearly as tiring as we thought it would be.  Except then we had to hike out the 1.3 miles again, which was worse the second time obviously cause we'd already hiked 9 miles and were exhausted.  Sooo exhausted.  Oh and we'd run out of water too, so we were dying of thirst by the time we got out.  Phew.

So the moral of the story is that we will NEVER go back country camping again :o)