White Pass

**We’re back!! It’s the one-year anniversary of our reaching the Northern terminus (spoiler alert) and it turns out that this post has been hanging out in my drafts folder for months now. It’s honestly been such a gift to have these posts to return to whenever I want to re-live a moment on the trail (which is more frequent than I’d like to admit); I don’t want the record of our memories to remain incomplete! And, it turns out that I have a collection of fully-written and half-written blog posts that are still waiting to see the light of day (along with a few days with just mileage notations and pictures… and may remain that way). I guess that it’s better late than never to finish this up!**

August 15, 2017

Total daily miles: 21 miles (19.8 PCT + 1.2 to/from White Pass)

Total PCT miles: 1892.6

Start: Lutz Lake (mile 2279.7)

End: Pipe Lake (mile 2299.5)

Total elevation gain/loss: 3508.2/3385.8 ft

We only had 12.5 miles to hike this morning before reaching While Pass. Normally we plan to meet up at some point in the 6-8 mile range, but the call of real food and cold drinks was strong so we decided to hike straight through to “town.”

It turned out that we weren’t the only ones camped at Lutz Lake last night, a saw another tent as we turned the corner around the lake this morning. Still amazing that there weren’t more people around!

The trail this morning did not disappoint. The vegetation has really opened up. It’s not like there are no trees anymore, but all of a sudden we’re back to getting views again! We were treated to great views of Mt. Rainier because the trail took us along a ridge line for a while. After barely having seen Mt. Hood due to smoke and rain, it was nice to get a clear view of Mt. Rainier. Even after the trail left the ridge line it continued to hug along the side of the mountain instead of tucking itself away in the trees. I’m definitely loving Washington these last couple of days!