…beyond nice.

It’s rough making a trip to climb a mountain and to return without ever seeing the mountain. The weather this past weekend was just unforgivably bad. There were short moments where the sun broke through the fog and we could see ten feet beyond where we stood, but we never caught a glimpse of Glacier Peak and only got as far as White Chuck Glacier.
On Friday, we got off a slightly late start because Fraser and Daniel had to work, but they did leave early enough that we were on the road by 4. Traffic was already building by then but the sun was shining and we were damned happy. Then after an hour and a half, the clouds started rolling in, and by the time we stopped for food before heading to the trailhead, the sky was dumping rain.
We got to the trailhead around 7:30 and groaned because the rain was not letting up. Just getting out of the car, to grab our packs and put on our boots, got us good and soaked.The chilly night air wasn’t exactly bringing joy to our lives either.

It was completely dark out by the time we got on the trail. We knew our destination, Mackinaw Shelter, was 5.3 miles away with a mere 1000ft elevation gain, so we estimated it would take us 2.5 hours to get there. It took us exactly 2.5 hours. It was a little after 10 p.m. and everyone else was in their tents fast asleep so we tried to be somewhat quiet in the drunk bastard sneaking in the house sort of way, which is to say we stumbled around in the dark, tripped over some shit and cursed loudly. There were pots and pan strewn all around the shelter and inside the shelter hung what looks like a hundred food bags. I told my buddies that there had to be an Ewok village camping in the area.
We tried to find a spot furthest from all the tents to set up camp and ended up in the middle ground. Fraser dropped his pack and found some rum to help warm us up. We drank a bit and started pitching our tents. Fraser rummaged through his stuff, gasped in surprise and said something to Daniel who started laughing his ass off. Daniel came over and told me Fraser forgot his tent so there’s a possibility that the two of them might have to share Daniel’s tiny 2 man tent. I commented that if they wanted to have gay sex, they should just go right ahead and not make up shoddy excuses for that.  Luckily Fraser brought his rainfly which could be pitched as a freestanding shelter, which didn’t help as much in blocking out the cold and would be worthless if rain started collecting underneath him, but it held.
Fraser is our most veteran backpacker, but in his recent effort to go extremely lightweight backpacking, he keeps leaving important things out, one time it was gas for cooking…another time it was water, now he forgets his tent altogether.
The rain slowed to a drizzle and I slept like a rock. I slept so well I didn’t want to get out of bed the next morning.

I stayed in until I heard Fraser and Daniel chatting with the leaders of the Ewok village. It turns out they were part of a wilderness school (NOLS), with 2 people leading a pack of 9 boys. There were a couple other smaller parties at this small camping area which lead to the ending of Star Wars feel.
We ate some breakfast and packed up. The rain had slowed down considerably, which made packing much less painful but a wet tent does add weight to my already stupid heavy pack. I had around 39lbs at the start of the trip, with the extra rain weight; I probably carried 40lbs for most of the trip, which was back breaking. From that camp we started climbing toward White Chuck Pass, and what a climb it was. The weather started like it could be sunny, but as we climbed, it turned to rain then around 5000ft, the rain turned to frozen pellets. Depending on the moment, sometimes we could see a bit across the valley other times we could barely see ten feet in front of us.

As we got closer to the pass, the wind started picking up and it hurled ice pellets at our face while trying to topple us over constantly. We got to the top of the saddle where we had to drop down into to get to the basin (our next camping destination) before White Chuck Glacier. We stood at the top of the saddle for a moment wondering if we read the map wrong because the path down was ridiculously steep and we couldn’t exactly see that far ahead of us with the thick fog. We eventually figured that we were on the correct path and we simply had to drop down the steep path made up of loose scree (I think we all thought about what hell it would be to try to go back up this scree, but didn’t want to give it too much thought).
After we got in the basin, we wandered around to look for a good camp spot. Everything that was damp from the rain the night before was now frozen solid. I was feeling extremely cold and instead of properly fighting it off by cooking some warm food, I set up tent, had some drinks and cookies and went to bed. Snow was sticking due to the coldness.

Warm bed…nice. Fraser was a bit annoyed that both Daniel and I decided to bunk down early instead of staying up to eat and chat…we were hoping to get some rest and if the weather was decent the next day, we could make an attempt for summit.
The weather was far from decent the next day. It was soooo cold I did not want to crawl out of my warm cocoon.

It snowed on us on and off throughout the night and that stayed with us late into the next morning. Randomly the sun would peek out for a minute like it would make a break for it, then the fog would roll back in for a good ten minutes. It continued like that for the remainder of the day. None of us knew the route or mountain well enough to make a summit attempt with that kind of weather. We sighed a lot, made some breakfast and discussed our options.

In the end, we decided to do a little day hiking up to White Chuck Glacier to at least check out the path for our future trip out, then pack and leave.
The day hike was a nice stretching of feet without a pack. Visibility remained an on/off issue during our short hike which made us happy with our choice to not make a summit attempt.

I was still a bit miffed at the weather backhanding us like that, but what can ya do?The area around the glacier felt like we could have been on the moon…there were just ice, foggy lakes, gushing rivers and rocks.

After wandering around for a couple miles, we went back to our camp and tried to motivate our frozen asses to pack.
Then we had to climb back up that wall of hell that we fell down from.

Ugh, did that wall ever suck.

Still, after that wall, it was only 11 miles or so of running back out. We took a short sugar break back at the shelter, I checked my watch, it was 5:57p.m. I figured it would take us 2 hours to get out. The last mile out was so hard, I was slowly going crazy with only my watch to keep me in check. We got to the trailhead at exactly 2 hours.
God that was a good trip, but I definitely need to work on getting my pack weight down. Ideally a person should carry 1/4 their weight…maybe 1/3 at most…I weigh 108-110, so I should try to keep it 36 lbs or below. The idea is that your leg is used to carrying your weight, so you shouldn’t go too much more than a certain fraction of it. Trust me, every single pound beyond 36 lbs was felt.

It’s too bad it’s already fall and the weather has not been improving, else I would probably call in sick just to make another attempt at this…alas, this probably will not happen until next summer. Still, if you like a good dose of pain, I highly recommend this place.

Slide of hike here.

It hurts to be back this early, both in the physical beat-down sense and mental failing-to-hit-a-summit sense.  Being at the mercy of the weather gods can be rough sometimes.  Still, it’s nice to be freshly showered with a solid game plan for round 2.  I’ll post a write-up of the place when I get some rest.

Soooo…it’s the big weekend of making an attempt at the most technical climb I’ve done to date…which actually isn’t all that technical (hopefully), but I’m busy pretending I’m a total bad-ass, so leave me to it for a moment okay? There are many ways up Glacier Peak but the short routes all require quite a bit of technical knowledge in glacier traveling, so we’re taking the long painful 34 miles round trip route up.
The weather seems marginally better than last weekend, but I’m hopeful it’ll be decent all weekend. We’re expecting some rain on Saturday which I don’t know what that will mean for us sitting on an exposed rock field, but I’ve spent an entire weekend in town last week in company of many humans, so I’m definitely ready to get back on the trail.
Our tentative plan is, on late Friday, hike in 5 miles then set up camp. Saturday, we’ll take our time to trek in 5-6 miles more in campsite #2. The on Sunday, we pray very hard for good weather and we’ll do the 14 miles roundtrip to the summit. On Monday we’ll run the 10 miles back out. That’s just our “plan”, we’ll see how it goes. This is going to be the longest backpacking trip I’ve done with my buddies Daniel and Fraser, so I might end up killing them on Sunday then I have to do some extra hiking to find a good remote spot to bury them.
Wish me good-luck with the weather…and I hope everyone have a safe and wonderful weekend.

Edit: I just weighed my pack after packing it all nice and tidy-like this morning and the fucking thing is 38lbs.  There were a couple little things that I thought maybe I should bring…like an extra shirt and extra food, but now I figured extra food and shirt will do me very little good if I break my back first.

It’s been a while since I wrote about volunteering at the hospital.  I was starting to feel that perhaps I’ve gotten jaded to the sight of human suffering…that perhaps suffering has become a banality of its own and that it’s everyone’s own lot in life to deal with…I figured I finally learned how to draw boundaries.
Tonight, I saw a mother pass out from being too distraught by the harm done to her daughter at the hands of her kidnappers.  I watched her sob as her husband held her when she came to while he wiped back his own tears.  I watched the girl’s sister cry along side her family.
I’m not sure it’s possible to draw boundaries when you see people hurting people.  It’s not something I think I can get used to…and more importantly, I don’t think I want to get used to.

My weekend was so nice and uneventful.

On Saturday, I had a wonderful girl’s night in with Jessica and Alexis…something I hadn’t done in literally years. We drank a lot of wine and ate a lot of desserts while laughing about life and relationships. We laughed so much my cheeks were hurting by the end of the night. It’s nice to recharge my estrogen batteries after overloading on testosterone.

On Sunday, my mom’s new restaurant opened and I stopped by to see what I can help with. Holy sheesh, the place was nice and busy. Her old restaurant seats around 300 people, while her new place seats around 500. We’ve gotten so used to serving about half the number of people that suddenly doubling it, made service a bit of a cluster fuck, but we still managed decently and we all had a good time working together. Oh, and I think my plans on becoming a closet gourmet vegetarian chef will be short-lived, because my mom’s new place is less than 5 minutes from my home, so yeah…there goes the need to cook again, ever.

The weather has been so crappy that one could almost forget that it’s still summer in Seattle except it’s clearly labeled on my calendar that it’s still summer. It has been raining and raining, and mind you it’s not the nice summer rain that is pleasant and warm, it’s the bitter cold digging into your skin kind of rain. Of course this serves to reinforce how happy I was to be at home with the heat turned on instead of sitting on a glacier, but really, we still have a good week of summer left, I would really appreciate some decent weather for next weekend. I know I whine a bit too much about the bad weather, but this year has been terrible at best and this is the first year that I’ve wisely decided dragging me up a glacier with teeth on my boots and an ice axe to cling on for dear life is a good idea…so weather matters more so than times when I needed to figure out which chaser makes cheap tequila taste less like ass.

During the last couple weeks, I’ve made time to sit down and watch a few movies so that can watch the sequels and I highly recommend these:
-Borne Identity + Supremacy
-Harold and Kumar Goes to White Castle
I don’t think I need to say much about the Borne series, everyone I’ve spoken to that has seen this said it’s great. Harold and Kumar is a movie I’ve heard so much about from my guy friends and they swear up and down it’s great, so I assumed it’s a movie filled with dumb guy humor that I won’t get (like I did not love Superbad)…but I was oh-so-wrong. The movie was fucking fantastic, I laughed my ass off and it gave me a bad case of the munchies.

I was checking out YouTube for videos to an old Hong Kong show that I loved as a kid. It’s called The Bund (aka Shanghai Beach) starring a very young Chow Yun Fat about life in the Shanghai mafia, and I noticed China did a remake of it recently. I clicked on the link to see who they would pick to fill in such big shoes and my god did they ever find the world’s hottest Chinese guy to play the leading guy. I didn’t think they make them that hot in China even though numbers are in their favor that one or two of them would smoke the planet. Normally, I’m not one to go for a pretty face, I have a weakness for geeks and climbers/mountaineers. Yes, when I’m hiking up a mountain and I see some guy pass me by carrying 70lbs without wheezing, I fall in love every time. What? You say he looks 60? Don’t be such a hater, he’s totally hawt! So when I say a guy is hot by looks alone, he’s smoking…some people are hot for having very strong ethnic features, but this guy is gorgeous internationally.

I’d like to note also the quality of China shows are finally catching up and perhaps surpassing Hong Kong quality. They used to be such poor quality that it’s like watching bargain bin porn without the hump-hump.

Bleh, the weather is looking bad this weekend.  I guess it’s too much to hope that we might get three good weekends during SUMMER in Seattle.  I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out that standing on a sheet of ice while it’s raining/snowing (and also the ice is tilted at a steep angle) is a bad idea.  As much as I hate to postpone this trip for a week, the idea of staying home this weekend doesn’t seem bad at all.  I look forward to doing some yoga and a lot of cooking…and my mom is taking over a new restaurant while her old place is being rebuilt, so I get to play a good daughter and swing by.

Oh, sleeping in my own bed is going to be so sweet but I’m scared that given more time to plan this trip, the gear whore is going to sneak up on my credit card and…oh god too late, she bought a new backpack.

I’d like to take out a moment to complain about how much it sucks to be short, because in addition to not having the long leg stride, the same backpack sized “Small” also carries less.

Now I’m really glad I went out last night and partied my ass off instead of staying home to pack.  There was a party that was thrown as a preparty to a fashion design convention happening this weekend, so obviously there were beautiful men galore there.  Of course 99% of them are probably gay, but hey, a little eye-candy never hurts.

During lunch today I called in an order at one of my local favorite Thai restaurant…it’s such a favorite of mine that the lady knows me by my voice and she knows I like my order with 2 stars. Scary how predictable I am.

On my way to pick up my order I stopped by REI to return a messenger bag that I bought at the beginning of summer, back when I had hopes and dreams of becoming a road biking bad-ass. It’s almost first day of autumn and the tags and everything are still attached to the bag, so I figured it’s time to surrender myself to being a couch surfing bad-ass.

When I got to REI, I checked my bag for my wallet and found the thing missing. Apparently I forgot to put it back in my bag when I took it out…last night…when the gear whore in me needed access to my credit card so that she can jerk off to a fancy new altimeter. Damn you, gear whore! You ruin my life!

Still, I had a food order sitting at a restaurant with staff that greets me by my name and I have not a dime to my name. So I had to drive my sorry ass back home to get my wallet. Damn you!!!

I need to get my whoring habits in control or somehow consolidate them to one because this A.D.H.D. whoring is leaving me with too little time to spare. I’ve got plans to climb the most difficult mountain I’ve climbed to date starting tomorrow, and the universe caught wind of that so it has sent me activity invites galore. I promised my rock climbing friends I will go climbing with them tonight…then I have to go to a fashion show with my sister, then I have to go clubbing with Jessica. It would be easy if I’m not a party girl at heart too because I can forgo the partying, but I can’t. Damn you, party whore! And damn you, rock climber wannabe whore!

I’m very excited about this trip tomorrow. Trekking 17 miles and climbing 10,000+ft to get to the top of a volcano will be the most grueling thing I’ve done to date, but like the raver girl that I once was, this is something I need to keep chasing the high. Wish me more luck with the wonderful weather we’ve been having.

I’ve heard such great things about Spider Meadow and Spider Gap that I tried to solo backpack to it last year. Unfortunately the weather had other plans for me, so I was quite thrilled to be offered another go at it this year.

The drive to this trailhead is quite possibly the worst bumpy ride I’ve come across in all my treks. Still, because I got some one and a half hour of sleep (going to a birthday party, getting sloshed, then going home to pack while drunk is a bad idea) before getting up to meet up with my friends, I managed to sleep through most of that storm.

The first 6 or so miles of the trail was very nice and flat which was great for my cranky still slightly buzzed ass. Having Spider Meadow come into view after slogging through endless forest does wonders for one’s poor disposition.

Then after our legs are nice and tired from dragging our packs across 6 miles of terrain, we had to climb 1000ft in .5 miles to get to a campsite that Daniel promised to be heaven on earth. Because we got to the trailhead decently early and we were pretty fast as a group, we managed to snag the Daniel’s dream spot which is a huge camp space sitting on top of a knob with breathtaking views from every angle.

I found a nice flat spot next to a ledge and started setting up shop.

The view from my tent was insane.

The weather was gorgeous and we were in damned fine mood. We had a quick lunch, then set off to explore Spider Gap. The rock scramble up to Spider Gap was a bit rough, but minus the pack it was very easy. Despite the great weather, it got pretty chilly up at Spider Gap, we kept moving to stay warm.

Soon as we crossed over the gap, Lyman Lake came into view and it looked like a mini-paradise down by the lake. We wandered around until Lyman Glacier came into view, and goofed around a bit more until we got cold, then set off for “home”.

When we got back to camp, we bundled on more clothing and started cooking dinner. After dinner we made hot alcoholic beverages and waited for dark to watch the stars. This is the first weekend we were out without a moon, so the sky was lit only by stars and it felt like we could see every star in the universe. I don’t think I’ve ever clearly seen the band of Milky Way like I did that night…nor have I ever understood more that we were indeed part of this galaxy.

While we were watching the stars, someone pointed out, “Can you imagine that for all those stars that we’re seeing, we’re just another tiny star to them?” It’s strange to come face to face with that. I felt simultaneously insignificant and significant at the same time. I felt small compared to the universe, but important in knowing that I am me and that I exist.

Our buddy, Sto had a cellphone with speakers, he played us music from his memory card and we drank and chatted while staring at the sky. At one point, someone with a headlamp came up to our camp. We asked the person who he/she was and the person never said anything which creeped us out. Then the person came into our light range and it was an Asian lady. She told us she was lost and didn’t know how to find her camp. Sto walked her out to show her the trail back to the general direction that she said she was from. We expected him to be gone for a while, but he returned shortly, “I think I scared her because I was so drunk…but I did show her the main trail and she seems happy enough.”

That night, despite a day of great weather and no wind, a random windstorm struck us. It wasn’t exactly like your standard windstorm with continuous wind, but more of 15 minutes of calm followed by 5 minutes of squall. During one particularly bad squall, I had a terrible image of my tent being blown over the ledge with me in it, so I got up, added extra anchors to my lines, went back in my tent and put on my earplugs.

Next morning we all woke up covered in a layer of fine dust. The gear whore in me is seriously thinking I need to buy a nice single-wall 4 season tent. I don’t even want to think about how much sand I’ve ingested through the night. The wind stopped when the sun came out and the new day was just as glorious as the day before.

We took our time in making breakfast and sitting back to take in the view for a long time before slowly packing.

The place was so beautiful none of us wanted to leave.

I highly recommend a trip to Spider Meadow if you’re looking for a sweet backpacking spot. I’ve heard the bugs can be horrendous there when in season, but since we were there in late summer there were hardly any bugs.

Slide of hike here.

I’m tired and achy. My hips are chafed from all the long backpacking trips carrying a pack more than one third my weight. The bruises on my legs from climbing Mount Adams and having the strong wind topple me over onto a rock have yet to disappear. I’ve spent the last three weekends with sweat-matted hair covered in dust blown in from windstorm after windstorm. Still, it’s always worth going back if only in hopes to wake up to this:

I will do a proper write-up of the last hike when I have a moment.