25.5 miles of hiking • 4000' elevation gain • 6 nights
This was actually a trip I took as a volunteer adult mentor with Big City Mountaineers. Five adults, five teens. All women. For the teens, many of them had never been hiking, much less backpacking, before.
We camped our first night at the Staircase Campground, then spent 4 nights in the backcountry (2 @ Big Log, 2 @ Nine Streams) and one more night at Millersylvania SP Campground.
Our first day, we awoke to pouring down rain. Not a great way to start but everyone was in good spirits. We hit the trail and slowly made our way the almost 6 miles to Big Log Camp where we had the site to ourselves. I slept in a huge cedar tree trunk and awoke around 1a to the sensation of mice scampering across my head. Good times!
Day two, we continued up to Nine Streams where we stayed for two nights. On the third day, the kids had their summit day and we traveled across snow fields, which began just around Two Bear. We made it to First Divide, took a few pictures, then headed back to camp for the night.
Day four, had us returning to Big Log Camp, where we had less than ideal conditions due to several large groups of backpackers. We made the best of it and backpacked out the next day, where we spent the night in a very crowded campground at Millersylvania SP. Quite the shock to our system!
Aside from the rain the first day, the weather actually was amazing. Sunny, clear blue skies and virtually no bugs.
We saw bear, elk, deer, mountain goat signs as well as actual sightings of grouse, squirrel, chipmunk and a frog.
