Greetings, dear Pickles and Passionfruit followers!

We landed back in the USA mid-December 2021, overwhelmed repatriating to a country that is different than 6 years ago, attempting to see family between covid surges, and hustling to get a new roof on our 96-year-old house, so our insurance company wouldn’t drop us.

Just some of the reasons we haven’t shared our bittersweet farewell to Taiwan blog post yet. We promise to get to it. In the meantime, we got inspired to share a recent USA adventure, like this one!

In mid-April I got a call from Kari B. / @womenstravelguide. Kari and I met living in Boston 20+ years ago and have had many adventures together, some of which have been published in her work. She was then and still is an Adventure Travel Writer and Photographer, writing regularly for the Boston Globe and Washington Post. We were due for another adventure which was seredipitously sparked by her name being selected for an early-access lottery wilderness permit to hike The Wonderland Trail in Mount Rainier National Park, located in Washington state.Like all her other invites, I immediately said, “YES?”

The Wonderland Trail is 93 miles (150 km) long and encircles Mount Rainier. It is known as a strenuous hike with lots of climbing or descending the ridges around the mountain. It winds through old growth forests (which is stunningly the entire park because no commercial logging has ever taken place within its boundaries), big valleys, wild flowers, black bears, lowland and sub-alpine forests and meadows, crystal clear cold rivers, massive waterfalls, snow fields, glaciers, and darling chubby marmots!

This would be the longest backcountry hiking trip we’ve ever embarked on. We started training in the Columbia River Gorge, with weighted packs and hiking poles, got a sort of, “OK” from my physical therapist (hip & foot woes), and then did a deep dive into making our gear as light as possible for what would be a 4-day, 5 night hike in one of the most beautiful places in the PNW. We officially had a …

Summer Vacation!

The trailblazers included: Kari, Grace (her 13-year-old daughter), Sam (her 11-year-old son) and us. While we committed to hiking 1/3 of the trail, they were going to circumnavigate all of Mt. Rainier, hiking the full 93-miles (it will end up being over 100 due to the route though). Those three are still hiking as we write this, on day 8 of 10 nights. Total badasses. Weeks prior to this trip, Kari told us she “broke the kids in” on a 4-day remote, backcountry hiking trip, which included gnarly river crossings in the North Cascades. As promised, these kids were ready to go, with A+ attitudes, smiles, and young knees and backs that can hike for miles! Uncle Scott and Aunt Sarah are proud of these two, and we hope they’ll drag us along on their next adventure.

Logistics

After you are selected for the early access lottery for the Wonderland Trail, you are provided a time slot to go online and feverishly piece together an itinerary that hopefully won’t kill you. This takes both time and research; connecting available campsites going either clockwise or counterclockwise around Mt. Rainier, counting miles between camp sites, learning if certain areas are safely passable due to snow, if any foot bridges are out which would then require timing river crossings early in the day, so water flow isn’t high and dangerous (a concern for Kari later on the hike), understanding the elevation gains/losses per day that will hopefully leave your knee tendons intact. Kari did all this, and we greatly appreciated all of it.

Our Route

Starting at the GREEN pin: we hiked from White River, to Summerland, to Nickel Creek, to Snow Lake, and finished at Longmire. Kari, Grace, and Sam’s itinerary continued on, circling back to the beginning at White River. The itinerary included some long days, and some of the most beautiful camp sites!

Gear Party

Kari’s trail name is Turbo, something she earned on her previous Wonderland Trail circumnavigation with nine other feisty mamas in 2016 (that adventure was published in the Boston Globe, February 2016). On this trip she earned the surname Lux for Luxury because she’s a serious gadget head. It comes naturally with her adventurous career, so it made sense she and her daughter Grace would make a trip from the Seattle area to talk about gear, review gear, approve gear, reject gear, research new gear, debate pros and cons of bringing deoderant, and eat yummy PDX food truck grub. Oh, and catch up after 6 years! We both made exciting adjustments to our gear, setting us all up for success and comfort, although we drew the line at carrying TWO hammocks.

Scott earned his trail before we even hit the trail, in our living room, when he proudly showed us his small crinkly camp pillow. Hello, Crinkles. This crinkly camp pillow decided to fail on day zero. Guess who had a backup pillow? Turbo Lux.

DAY 0

Hike preparation for many hikers often includes putting together what are called “food and fuel caches” and delivering them in person or by mail to a couple designated locations around the park. These are supplies one may need to refresh/restock while on trail because carrying 9-12 days worth of food is sort of miserable. Items are placed in labeled 5 gallon plastic buckets and handed to a park employee. Since Kari and the kids were hiking the entire trail, they prepared 2 cache drops of food, fresh clothes, socks, and cooking fuel, and would leave stinky clothes and empty fuel to pick up later. Kari and the kids spent a very long day delivering these caches, driving on the one small and winding park road. We met up at Longmire where we left our car (our end point) and all of us got in Kari’s zippy Mini Cooper and headed to our camp site located outside the park in Gifford Pinchot National Forest, called La Wis Wis. Ideally, we would have camped at our start point in the park at White River, but no spots were available. La Wis Wis is a pretty campground nestled among old growth trees, next to the Cowlitz River. Highly reommend.

DAY 1 – July 24

White River to Summerland
9.7 miles
2,232 ft. of elevation gain
6,207 ft. max elevation
4.5 hours hike time, 5 hours on trail

Fueled up on cheese the night before, we hit the trail in good spirits on Sunday. It was surreal to finally be ON TRAIL after talking and planning for 3 months!

DAY 2 – July 25

Summerland to Panhandle Gap to Nickel Creek
14.8 miles
2,577 ft. of elevation gain
6,961 ft. max elevation
9 hours hiking, 11 hours on trail

The views on this leg were phenomenally moonscapey big and snowy! These were LONG slow-going miles, step by careful deliberate step in our micro spikes, and often staying close together for safety. We were slowly climbing to the highest peak on the trail, Panhandle Gap at 6,750 feet (2,060 m). Afterwards, boobs and buns came out for our first glacial cold dip at Indian Creek. It was exactly what we all needed before we continued on in the heat for a 7-mile climb towards Nickel Creek. During this week there was a heat wave in the Pacific Northwest so even though you see lots of snow, it was unusually warm and rivers were flowing! The solar glare was intense so full sun coverage was necessary.

DAY 3 – July 25

Nickel Creek to Snow Lake
12 miles
2,802 ft. of elevation gain
5,104 ft. max elevation
6 hours hiking, 6.5 hours on trail

DAY 4 – July 26

Snow Lake to Longmire
10.2 miles
802 ft. of elevation gain
5,234 ft. max elevation
4.45 hours hiking, 5 hours on trail

Thakfully, we woke up to fewer mosquitos than the night before making our hike out of Snow Lake and back to the Wonderland Trail more pleasant. Fortunately our climbing was done early in the cooler part of the day and then it was just a long gentle decent to the Longmire Inn where we had a soft bed awaiting us for the night.

DAY 5 – July 27

Our last night together we had a reservation at the National Park Inn at Longmire which meant showers + burgers + celebratory beers + beds! In total we hiked 47 miles and climbed a total of 8,400 feet over 4 days.

Inspiring Shout-Out

The Hungry Hiker blogger was a positive influence on some of our gear upgrades (our super light water filtration system was great!) and what we ate on trail (delicious, healthy, lightweight homemade meals). These ALL hit the spot!

1. Holy Molé Bars
2. Dehydrated Backcountry Spaghetti
3. Dehydrated Pasta Penne Alfredo

And while thinking about backpacking food I’m also daydreaming about dessert, so I made this. Not only is it lightweight, very sharable, not messy, it was served warm like a brownie fresh from the oven… I mean ziplock bag. BACKCOUNTRY WIN!

DAY 6 – July 28

The send-off! Kari, Grace, and Sam recruited a new friend, Pauli, to fill our hiking boots for the rest of the journey. After they packed up for this second phase of the journey, we had fun weighing everyone’s packs on the lodge’s front porch. For context, I started out carrying 25 pounds with 1 liter of water and Crinkles weighed in at 28 pounds with water.

We sent Turbo Lux, Mountain Goat (Grace), Walkie Talkie or LBBP – Little Boy Big Pack (Sam), and Doctor Chill (Pauli) off into the wild, but only after we doused them with bug spray and hugs. Turbo Lux’s parting words… “What’s our next adventure going to be?!”

That was our big summer vacation adventure!

Love and adventures to all, Crinkles & Lady McGyver (who cracked our house’s plumbing code and got our cold “glacial” shower water flowing again).

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