Day 176 (12 October) - Mile 2541.90 - 2561.26

Campsite near Miners Creek to Campsite near Swamp Creek

Another cold night and cold morning. It is so hard to get out of the sleeping bag when it is as cold as it has been the past week or so. Even though the alarm went off at 5:30 AM it took us until 7:35 AM for us to be ready to hike.

Ready to hike

Today's hike starts off just as we like it, with a climb to warm us up. This climb however goes for around 7.5 miles and climbs 3,800 feet. The good news is that once that climb is done the rest of the day is mostly down. 
Everything was going great until I failed to negotiate a stream crossing and got both of my feet wet. Two days ago my feet got soaked from walking through rain and snow. Yesterday was a dry day so my shoes got mostly dry. This morning I even put on dry socks so my feet were feeling good...until this. I was so upset at myself for allowing this to happen. The only good thing is that it happened early in the day so I have all day for my shoes and socks to dry some. Like yesterday, it took a couple of hours until both my feet were feeling warmer. What a bummer!

At least today it is blue skies and the views are amazing and the snow made everything look beautiful:

Morning view while climbing

Self-portrait "Winter Wonderland"

Brad hiking on a snow covered trail

Cool ice crystals on the grass

Everything was going good until Brad stepped on a log covered with snow...down he went. His comment after falling, "Wow, that's a pretty cloud."  Obviously he was fine, just a bruised buttocks.

Poor Brad

After the climb we descended into a valley with mountains all around us.

View during the descent

Spectacular

We decided to take lunch right there since the sun was shining and we were pretty certain that we would be entering a shaded forest soon.

Breaking for lunch right on the trail

We took the opportunity to dry out our tents by laying them right on the rocks:

Drying out our stuff

Today reminded us of our time in the Sierra Mountains earlier in the hike. Washington is so beautiful. If only it wasn't so cold and wet right now. 

Beautiful mountain view

Wow!

It was around 3:45 PM and we were doing great. We only had 4.35 miles to go to our planned campsite. We were discussing maybe going to the next site 3 miles further because it looked like we were going to get there around 5:00 PM, and then we were stopped in our tracks. 
In front of us was the South Fork Agnes Creek and the footbridge that once stood was washed away years ago. There were some logs crossing the creek, but they looked very slippery and hard to negotiate. After contemplating how to get across, we decided to just take our shoes off and walk through the water. 

If you look at the creek it doesn't look too bad with smooth river rocks, not too strong a current, and not too deep:

South Fork Agnes Creek

However, if you look a little closer you will see this log with icicles fallen over the creek:

Uhm...what?!?

We hesitantly removed our shoes and enters the creek...holy...what...oy...it was FREEZING!!  I barely made it without crying, but we did it. It took an hour to get feeling back to all my toes. Needless to say. We didn't make it to the further camping spot which is fine since this spot is pretty nice. It even has a toilet so no digging a cat hole in the morning. 

What an unfortunate day my feet had. Tomorrow is supposed to be cold and rainy all day, so another day of no joy for my feet. The overall good news...we have only 88.85 miles to go to get to the Canadian border!

Well, it is freezing and I need to put my gloves on, so until tomorrow...

Home for the night