Sarah Johnson went hiking August 19, 2019 11 miles 3,500 feet gained
Had a week off to adventure north. Left on Sunday from Portland, setting up basecamp at Marble Creek campground in Marblemount. Being a Sunday night, we didn't have a problem finding a campsite.
We hit up the ranger station to ask about permits for multiple areas we wanted to backpack, and were mostly told they weren't available or weren't available until days later, but we would have to wait in line at 7 am to maybe get the last permit available that day. A little discouraged, we decided to just day hike Sahale Arm trail, as we were informed there was only one permit available in the area at Pelton Basin for Tuesday. (And the camp had been plagued with a nuisance bear who figured out how to break into the bear boxes.) Kind of curious how the whole, 40% of permits available for walk-up really works.
I thought I had picked a large number of options for backpacking, but ended up throwing them all out the window and mostly hung out in Mt Baker wilderness for the rest of the week.
Saw 3 bears, one on trail and two in the distance. We stopped short of the glacier as I didn't want to push my boyfriend (who doesn't climb) super hard on day one of vacation. Kinda kicking myself for not going further but I figure I'll eventually do the full climb so I'm okay with waiting for those views until then. It was still a beautiful (though loved to death) trail, with gentle switchbacks up most of the way. I hated those gentle switchbacks on the way down, when I just wanted to be done with my day. Practically ran down the last few.
Road was fine for our Prius. I eyed the road to Hidden Lake on the way and said no way for our car. Would love to head back out that way with a higher clearance vehicle.
