2018 Fall Campout | Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Washington

It's the 20th Anniversary of our Fall Campout!

It's hard to believe that we have been doing this for 20 years.... I guess that means that we're getting old.

Most of our Fall Campout's have been in the Cascade Mountains, so it's no surprise that we feel like we're coming home when we go there.

We started out at the Salmon La Sac Trailhead near the Waptus River. The trail didn't start us out where it had said it would on the map, so right off the bat, we made a wrong turn. Once we found our mistake, we jumped on to trail #1310 and started making our way towards Waptus Lake. It's pretty typical for us to get overly excited at the start of the trip, and this time there was a little too much pre-hike celebration and we didn't make it up to the lake on the first day. That was all fine as we had worked in a couple zero days along the way.

The second day we continued up trail #1310 up to Waptus Lake. It started out as perfect weather, but was raining on us by the time we hit the lake.

Day 3 turned out to be the toughest hike of the trip. We started out from Waptus Lake on trial #1310 and hooked up with the Pacific Crest Trail #2000. We went SOBO on the PCT until we hit the trail to Dutch Miller Gap #1362. From there the trail started to really climb. The rain seemed to pick up the higher we got. Finally we made it up to Ivanhoe Lake. There were a couple possible campsites, but nothing that would allow all of our hammocks to fit in. We were tired, wet and ornery, when we decided we had to make it up and over Dutch Miller Gap. We hooked up with trail #1030 and got through the gap. At this point we were taking the first campsite that would work for us. We saw absolutely nothing and then came to the junction for Williams Lake. I knew that there would be something at Williams Lake so we took the junction trail #1024 and went up to the lake. There was nothing right on the lake that would work so we pulled back from the lake about 1/4 to 1/2 of a mile and setup.

We spent two full days at Williams Lake. It was spectacular there!

On day 6 we decided that we would hike down and get a little closer to the finish line. We hooked back up with the Dutch Miller Gap trail #1030 and started down. This was an incredibly beautiful section. We camped along a couple of creeks, maybe it was Crawford Creek, but I am not positive about that. We could finally have fires and so that we the first thing we did.

The hike out was straight down to Dutch Miller horse camp. From there was a road walk down to the Dingford Creek Trailhead. We could've taken trail #1003 and went past Goldmeyer Hot Springs, but everyone wanted to stay on the road. It was probably an easier walk, but I wish I would've broken from the group and taken the trail. I hate road walks.

It was an incredible trip and befitting of the 20th Anniversary of our Fall Campout. I'm looking forward to the incredible places we'll see in the next 20 years!