PCT 117 – Mt Rainier Views and Trail Magic on a Sunny Day

Daily Miles: 21
Total Miles: 2355

Last night was probably one of the coldest nights in a long time on the trail. Perhaps because the clouds blew away, the temperatures dropped even lower. It was nice to wake up to clear skies and dry tarps…this definitely signaled a “turning the corner” of the weather.

With the skies clear, we were able to get nice views in the morning. Mount Rainier was even visible, and we realized how much we missed seeing yesterday with the foggy weather.

The trail was quite nice and smooth today. We knew that there was a cabin coming up ten miles into the day and we planned to eat lunch there. We arrived earlier than expected, so we ended up eating lunch at 11:00am…over an hour earlier than we normally eat. There were several other thru hikers there and a few locals who spend a month each summer at the cabin.

We took an extra long lunch since we were enjoying talking with Navigator who is from Ireland. He was telling us about some of the trails he has hiked in Europe and New Zealand. It certainly makes us think more about hiking trails outside the US.

Shortly after leaving the cabin, we came across MagicMan who was doing trail magic. He had driven in from the coast and brought great treats for the thru hikers. He had hot and cold drinks, donuts, chips, snickers and apples. Even though we had just finished eating a big lunch, we were excited for the trail magic and probably downed another 1,000 calories or so. MagicMan started doing trail magic when his daughter hiked the AT, and has been coming to this exact spot for the past five years. He was incredibly nice and generous, and we felt lucky to be passing through when he was there.

The afternoon was spent leapfrogging with five other hikers. We seemed to all have the same designated campsite in mind for our final destination for the day. Once we realized that, we figured we should start looking for a campsite a bit early if possible…we didn’t want to end up arriving at the campsite, only to find that there was no more room.

So, we found a pretty nice spot which is out of sight from the trail. It is a bit windy, since we are on a knoll, but it is quiet and we had some nice color from the sunset.