…and that’s just what I got! Necklace Valley and Tank Lakes have been on my list for a while and I was planning to go with JK, but considering the luck we’ve had with scheduled trips this year I figured we wouldn’t make it up there. When Karen and Anne invited me along on a three-day midweek trip, I was more than happy to ditch JK (moahaha) and join them.

The trail is as good as flat for the first five miles, then heads steeply up up up for a couple of miles until you reach the first lakes of the Necklace Valley. To be honest, the valley itself was a bit disappointing – I had pictured an Enchantments-like granite landscape dappled with lakes, but it was all below the timberline and not very impressive compared to the lakes I’ve become accustomed to seeing (I know, I’m spoiled). It’s still very pretty, but in my opinion not really worth it considering the b*tch of a hike in. The gorgeous stuff that makes it worth it is off-trail, up above the valley.

We hiked up on boulders and pretty granite to get to our destination, the ridiculously purdy Lower Tank Lake. By this point I had started gaining a new appreciation for my husband – this was my first backpacking trip without him and I’m used to him carrying all the heavy stuff!

All thoughts of sore legs and aching backs were forgotten when we reached the lake. This place is too pretty for its own good:

After a beautiful sunset and a huge dinner (I forgot that JK and I usually split a bag of those freeze dried meals – I had to force myself to eat a whole one so I wouldn’t have to carry all that weight back out. Ugh!), we settled down for the night and I had an excellent night’s sleep. While husbands are good for use as pack mules and general amusement, it’s definitely easier to sleep when they’re not snoring right next to you!

We spent the next day getting acquainted with the area, exploring the numerous lakes and tarns on the plateau. The girls convinced me to scramble up and along Otter Ridge, which looked terrifying to me from afar but turned out to be pure fun and with excellent views – it felt great to challenge my fear of heights just a little bit.

We moseyed on back to camp and spent a lazy afternoon swimming (ok, jumping in and immediately clawing our way back out, brrr!) in Lower Tank Lake, taking pictures and walking around on the plateau before turning in for the night.

My back was not happy about all the rock hopping I had done, so it kept me awake most of the night – I’m glad I brought a book and my Zune (and some codeine, ahem)!

The hike out on the third day felt like a bit of a death march – the sun was baking us to a crisp and the elusive woodland gnomes had been hard at work both elongating the trail and adding more ups and downs than we had on the way in. Stupid gnomes.

The hike was made easier by keeping this image in my head:

After 173 miles (or so it seemed), we finally reached the trailhead – I don’t think I have ever been so happy to see a car before! After a stop to replenish our bodies (mmm, potatoes), I went home to find poor JK still sick. He was impressed by all my badass-looking cuts and bruises (the joys of off-trail hiking!) and my mosquito bites.

I had hoped, rather naively, that the mosquitoes would have died by now, but the evil little buggers came out in full force on the second night. I HATE THEM SO MUCH. Oh well, at least I’ll have a multitude of sexy scars (it is physically impossible for me not to scratch a bite) to remind me of this trip for years to come.

Despite the death march, the heavy pack, the bloodsucking vampires, my disapproving back and some gnarly blisters, I think this was my favorite trip of the summer. We went to a beautiful place, I had great company, and I got to challenge myself by inching my way out of the protective little box where I usually live my life. I want more of that.

The official trip report is here – Karen and Anne’s photos are far superior to mine, so I recommend taking a peek!

So we seem to have had a bit of a curse on our hiking life this month, which unfortunately coincided with what was to be my big 100 mile effort for the Hike-a-thon. First I was sick for a week, then I hurt my back (I still have no idea what I did and it’s still painful – I must be getting old), then JK got sick for over a week and here we are and the calendar says it’s September. I didn’t come anywhere close to reaching my goal, but I did pretty well considering all the setbacks.

Ok, so two weekends ago we were all set to go on a backpacking trip to Ptarmigan Ridge with a group of friends. I was concerned about my back, but the doctor said I could go if it was an easy trip (check), if I brought drugs (check check) and if I carried a light pack (check check check and huzzah) – so JK was my pack mule and carried all of the heavy stuff. I could get used to this kind of backpacking!

Unfortunately, one of our friends had hurt her foot the night before, so they were out. The curse struck again! JK and I set out alone with our two little trail pups and meandered around in the fog until we found a suitable campsite above the lake.

Even though the weather was less than stellar, we had a great time. It’s gorgeous up there even in the fog, my back felt pretty good and I was happy to be out and about with my little family again after being sick.

Bobby and Wellie were hard at work patrolling our campsite for rogue marmots and mountain goats:

The sun started burning through the clouds the next morning and made the lake look even prettier:

…and as we were hiking back to the car, the clouds lifted to reveal all the views we had missed the night before. So beautiful!!

Our original plan was to go on another backpacking trip that night, but JK had a fever and wasn’t feeling good and we had to drive back home with a measly 8 miles added to our Hike-a-thon mileage. At this point I realized I didn’t have a shot in hell at making my goal of 100 miles in August and was doing my best not to be stressed out about it.

After taking some deep breaths, I took in the view of Mount Shuksan in front of me and felt the taste of fresh huckleberries still on my tongue and realized how lucky I was to just be out there in the mountains. I’m disappointed about missing out on several of the big hikes and climbing trips we had planned for this summer, but I am not making the situation any better by being annoyed. Just because we’ve been “stuck” doing short and easy hikes, it doesn’t mean they’re worth less than the big trips. We’ve seen some very purdy scenery on those easy hikes!

I think a big part of my problem is that I feel like I wasted so many years being seriously depressed, and now I want to experience as much as I possibly can to catch up…so when I miss out on a planned trip, it feels devastating to me. I need to find a balance between being excited and being laid-back, between perfectionism and failure, between attachment and detachment. And most of all I need to just breathe and realize that we’ve only just begun.

(…and now I have The Carpenters stuck in my head.)

Ugh, so I ended up staying home all of last week with a cold and have spent this week being all gimpy with a tweaked muscle or nerve or something in my back – this should make the finishing the Hike-a-thon interesting!

Luckily I was feeling good enough on Sunday to go for a dayhike, but between two missed backpacking trips and one missed midweek hike, It will be a reach for my to hit 100 miles before the end of August.

I refuse to get stressed out about the mileage and ruin my favorite hobby, so we enjoyed our mellow hike to Upper Palisade and Hidden Lakes in Mount Rainier National Park. It was a free entrance weekend so we expected to see hordes of hikers, but we were mostly alone once we got past the first lake. This was a six-lake day for us in total, but I didn’t get to swim since I had just been sick. Boo! JK jumped in two of them while I soaked up the sun, smelled the flowers, and watched the pikas (and a fox!) – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love Washington!

The GPS said we hiked 9 miles for a total of 37 so far this month. Do you think I’ll make it to 100..?

I’ve been feeling like crap these last couple of days, but on Sunday afternoon I decided that the only thing that could possibly make me feel better was to go hiking. My head had been heavy and pounding for days, so I figured some fresh air, exercise and maybe a refreshing swim would help.

I dragged JK away from his FIFA game and we drove up to Snoqualmie Pass to revisit one of my favorite places, Melakwa Lake. JK had never been to the upper lake before, so I figured it would be a good place for us to go swimming.

The weather looked rather ominous as we hiked up to the lakes, but we were spared the predicted torrential downpour (Mother Nature was nice enough to save that for today) and even caught some glimpses of that big, glowing orb in the sky.

Since we started late (2 PM) we met hordes of people going down as we were hiking up, but by the time we made it up to the upper lake a little under two hours later, we had it all to ourselves. JK, Wellie and I jumped into the upper lake while Bobby hid under our backpacks, and then we ran to the lower lake so we could swim in that one too. Brrr!

We enjoyed a marvelously healthy lunch of JK’s homemade, Norwegian-style cinnamon buns (and biscuits for the Italians) and watched a pair of pikas frolicking in the talus field before reluctantly heading back down to the car.

On the way we found a side trail and stumbled across a waterfall we hadn’t seen before – I wish we had known about it during the heat wave since jumping into that little pool would have been absolutely heavenly when it was over 100 degrees outside… Yet another reason to love this hike!

Unfortunately I have spent today inside the house with a fever, sore throat and entertaining myself with some epic sneezing (seven times in a row!!), so it turns out that there was a reason why my head felt all heavy and fuzzy this weekend. If I had known I was getting sick, I would have been smart enough to not swim yesterday. Oh well!

Hopefully I’ll get better soon so I can get some more miles in for the Hike-a-thon, I’m a bit behind now since we didn’t get to go on the backpacking trip we had planned this weekend – now it really will be a challenge to get to 100 miles! I’m crossing my fingers for better weather (and less sneezing!) next week so I can get out a lot.

Melakwa Lake added 9 miles to the list, for a total of 28. Only 72 miles to go!

Since we spent Sunday cleaning and organizing our house (I know, it shouldn’t even be legal to spend a beautiful, sunny day engaged in such perverse activities), we decided to get out for some midweek hikes to bump our mileage up for the Hike-a-thon.

We didn’t have much time on Tuesday, so once JK could get out of work we headed off to our favorite close-to-home hike, the Chirico trail up to Poo Poo Point on Tiger Mountain. This short but relatively steep trail is very popular, not only with hikers but with the paragliders that use Poo Poo Point as a launch area. Earlier this year we came across a Washington Trails Association work party doing some much needed trail maintenance here, exactly the kind of work the Hike-a-thon donations will be going towards (hint hint). ;)

On Wednesday, our friends Tom and Amy joined us for what was supposed to be a quick, post-work jaunt up to Snow Lake. We left grey, cold (yup, the heat wave is definitely over), depressing Redmond and drove up to happy, sunny Snoqualmie Pass. Success!

The water in the lake was surprisingly warm, so we escaped the mosquitoes by swimming. Wellie got in the water three or four times; I am still confused as to whether he likes it or if he’s just trying to rescue us:

We started hiking back to the car at sunset, but unfortunately poor Amy rolled her ankle on the way down. I had sports tape (I always carry it since my ankles are useless from years of playing handball in Norway) so she was able to tape her ankle tightly enough to walk out on her own with hiking poles. We slowly and carefully made our way back to the car under a beautiful moon and a layer of fog.

All this midweek hiking is making me feel very good, both physically and mentally – it’s nice to keep the endorphins flowing throughout the week instead of just spiking every weekend.