To follow-up on my Paolo vs. Wild post, let's just say Wild won by KO.
I won't repeat everything that's been said at AM|PM by Amanda, but I'll provide the Cliff Notes version here.
We left way too late on Thursday and took Scott's advice to camp at a closer location than Dewey Lakes. The forest service road to the campsite was too much for the Ford Focus and my blood pressure so we turned back. We tried a close hotel, but it was full so we tried another campsite along Hwy 410.
By this time it was pitch black out and we got lost in the camp site, if that's possible. We ended up stopping across from an abandoned airstrip and pitched a tent using the car headlights.
Little did we know that we were at a horse camp site. We slept terribly. Lesson learned.
We woke up early on Friday morning to avoid a ticket for camping without a pass and went to Sunrise at Mt. Rainier instead of Dewey Lakes. We weren't really prepared for another night at a camp site, so we figured we'd hike for the day and head home.
We weren't really prepared for a full day's hike either.
Amanda and I are collectively stubborn. We think we should do things that we probably shouldn't. In this case, we hiked WAY too deep into Rainier. We started at 8:30 a.m. and didn't get back to Sunrise until 4:30 p.m. We stopped for a combined total of one hour between breaks and eating. We hiked around 10 miles and exchanged 3,000 to 3,500 feet in elevation.
The last three miles of the hike was a 2,500-foot elevation gain. I literally thought I was going to die. I couldn't even hold the camera, which is why there are no more pictures.
I write to you sore and tired. It was a totally satisfying experience, kind of like running a marathon... But you don't necessarily want to go back and run a marathon the next weekend, ya dig?