Day 3: Cispus River
- Bad night of sleep. Very windy.
- Still windy in the morning but... the smoke has been blown away!
- After a cold and windy breakfast, we set off, feeling optimistic because of the blue sky.
- After a couple of #blessed campsites, we see the Cispus River Tributary, a giant bowl fed by the Cispus River and several smaller rivers - and we can see it because of no smoke! (The "#blessed" comment is a joke we made regularly on the trail to describe campsites that might have amazing views, which you'd want to photograph for Instagram... but you'd never actually want to camp at because they were small and/or perched on a cliff.)
- Stumble across surprised waterfall.
- Cross Cispus River and begin climb out of tributary (a basin, really, I think the map referred to it as a "tributary" so I kept using the word).
- Another climb leads to another amazing valley, this one on the Yakima Reservation.
- Signs that read "No trespassing. Stay on trail."
- Crazy hexagonal rocks push out of the earth, their broken off chunks looking like columns.
- Leaving the Reservation leads to a long, straight path which dominates the middle of the day. Hot!
- Lunch at Sheep Lake. Lunch & wading. Dead salamanders. (We would hike pass enough Sheep Lakes on this hike that it became a bit of a joke. "Is there just some sort of itinerate sheep that travels between all the Sheep Lakes?)
- After long straight march, break at Walpus Lake trail turn off. Old man with torn white hat finds a campsite and asks us to deliver a message to the "Czech & Polish girls behind me." (We had presumed they were friends, but when we later ran into the girls, who were significantly younger and quite attractive, they seemed perplexed. "We just met him this morning.")
- Rest of the day is easy, flat walk through large trees. Ambika and Sarah talk the whole way. I'm exhausted from all the hiking and bad sleep.
- Camp at curve in trail, next to small stream. (There ended up being a bees nest in the site, but they seemed docile.)
Day 4: March to the Lava Field
- Woke up after decent nights sleep and weird dreams.
- Made breakfast of hashbrowns with spam and peppers. (Sarah, Ambika and I had divided meals up, so that we took turns with breakfasts and dinners. But, Sarah ended up planning mine and cooking over half of them. Because I'm spoiled rotten.)
- First half of the day, made great time, doing 5 miles before noon, through flat forests with lots of lakes and mushrooms.
- First lunch at lake side campsite.
- Second lunch at small idyllic stream w/ frogs. (Which we named.)
- Left Goat Rock Wilderness, crossed a small dirt parking lot and entered a hot, dry forest where the path stretched straight as an arrow, seemingly forever. Only thing breaking it up was a gravel road that also stretched straight in both directions.
- Finally, through the trees, we began to see the lava field, which looked like a wall of boulders stacked 50ft high and running in each direction like a wall built by giants.
- Beyond that, hazy in the distance, we could make out the white peak of Mt. Adams.
- Shortly, we arrived at Lava Springs, a section of the wall where spring water emerged from beneath it, and a stone bridge over the resultant stream.
- Talked with friendly Northbound section hikers who told us about a "short cut." Also, a crazy yerba matte drinking guy w/ a dog.
- A half mile hike uphill took us to our campsite next to the raging, brown, silt-filled Mudfork River.
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