I didn’t know it then, but yesterday was Mountain Day. Mountain Day is a traditional holiday at Mount Holyoke College; on some beautiful fall day, students wake up and find out that it’s Mountain Day and classes have been cancelled. Traditionally one climbs Mount Holyoke, but whatever the activity, the holiday is always better for being a surprise. Even alumnae are so attached to the holiday that the Alumnae Association sends out emails every Mountain Day.
I didn’t know yesterday was Mountain Day, but I climbed a mountain anyway. Mount Holyoke hardly deserves that name, actually (it’s only 878 feet tall), but Jeff and I climbed the mountain, Mount Rainier. We neither started at the bottom nor reached the very top, but we climbed more than three times Mount Holyoke’s height.
Update: MHC alumnae must have some telepathic synergy with Mountain Day. Somehow I always know what day it is.
When we hiked the Wonderland Trail in March, we meant to reach Mirror Lakes but turned back at Devil’s Dream. Yesterday we made another attempt on Mirror Lakes, by a somewhat easier trail this time (and in more favorable weather). While the Wonderland Trail cuts over steep ridges, the Kautz Creek Trail leads gently up the side of one ridge. Also, the Wonderland cuts so close to the base of Mount Rainier that we didn’t get many panoramic views, either of Rainier or away from it. If you can get up on the top of a ridge, like on the Kautz Creek Trail, the views are spectacular.
The first mile, up to the bridge over Kautz Creek, is pretty flat, and then the trail starts going Up with a vengeance. There are some nice almost-level bits of trail, and then there are some very steep sections. Overall it was a very nice trail.
Most of the trail is surrounded by trees, but about four miles in you come out into alpine meadows. The heathers and grasses were bright with the crisp autumn oranges and reds that I miss so much in the damp Northwest. A wide saddle at about 5,300 feet elevation afforded views southeast toward Mount Adams and to the southwest as well.
The only problem with the trail was its length: 6.6 miles from the trailhead to Mirror Lakes. We didn’t have enough time in the day to make it all the way in, and even if we had, I don’t think I would have been able to walk all the way. I could have done it if I’d had much more time, although I would still have been tired, but as it was I hiked nearly 10 miles, which is more than I’ve done this year.
We turned around near Mount Ararat and descended to the meadow again, where we ate a little more of our food before plodding back out. While Jeff stopped to tighten his boots, I found a nice sitting rock (rock not being destructible like the delicate heather and alpine grasses) and snapped a picture of the mountain.
My knee had started hurting a couple of hours into the hike, and this time I dealt with it very preemptively. I wrapped it immediately and favored it, particularly on the descent. While it did slow me down a little, it hurt much less than it has in the past, even on shorter hikes. I am going to buy a knee brace before our next hike and see if that helps.
When we crossed Kautz Creek again, the water was brownish-pink instead of gray, and I think it was running faster as well. We hypothesized that glacier-melt during the day had increased the flow and caused the water to pick up more sediment from the streambed.
The trailhead marker had a sign about Zachary Weston, a MIT student who disappeared while hiking on Mount Rainier on August 11. Searchers followed his boot prints up onto the Wapowety Cleaver, between the Kautz and Van Trump glaciers, but were unable to determine whether he came back down. The search was called off on August 18. Of course the sign didn’t say that (it probably should have been taken down), but we kept an eye out anyway. We didn’t find him, of course.
Friends, enjoy hiking, but please don’t do it alone.
Lori Melton says:
What lovely pictures! I'm glad y'all had such a good day.
After I dislocated my knee in college (ow), I used a neoprene brace with a flexible rubber ring that supported the knee. It seemed to really help -- at least, I didn't have extra pain when dancing, and I haven't had the knee go out again since. (I injured it when I did a lot of SCA dance, and was the local dance mistress.)
Laurabelle says:
I'm not sure quite what's wrong with the knee, but I think it just needs a little bit of elastic support. The joint itself doesn't hurt; I think it's the ligament on the right side that starts getting sensitive and inflamed once I've hiked a few miles. It's nowhere near as bad as a dislocated knee, though!
The odd thing is, the ligament hardly hurts at all when I'm going uphill, even though the movement obviously starts irritating it. Once I start walking downhill, bending that knee suddenly becomes very painful.
I'm pretty sure a knee brace will help; I'm hoping that it will help enough that the ligament will get stronger and eventually allow me to remove the brace altogether for hiking.
jared says:
Zachary Weston was a great friend of mine. I was recently thinking of him and googled his name, this came up. It's too bad you didn't find him, he would have made you smile.