Day 1 Information
Mowich Lake to Dick Creek - 9.6 Miles
Thursday, September 5th 2002

It is about 9:15 a.m. or so. Thursday morning September 15, 2002 I am driving getting onto the freeway. I am getting a late start. I wanted to leave a little earlier. I bought some rope at Home Depot to hang my food up high just in case I needed to, keeping the bears or other animals from eating it.


The Wonderland Trail along Mowich Lake

It is 11:30 a.m. I’m now leaving on my trip starting the Wonderland Trail. I’m taking my first few steps on the trail. I’m starting at Mowich Lake. The temperature is 70 degrees. Altitude is about 5100 feet. The sky is partially cloudy, the mountain was clear on most of the drive up to Rainier although I believe now it is partially covered. I think I remembered to get everything. I don’t think I forgot anything.


Taken from Ipsut Pass - Looking out over the Ipsut Valley

It is about 12:45 p.m. I am currently hiking down Ipsut Pass. I am hiking along the Ipsut Valley. It’s a pretty cool view from here. I can’t see Mt. Rainier but I can see all the woods around it. I stopped at the top of Ipsut Pass for about 10-15 minutes. I ate my last meal by my mother, a homemade McMuffin. I took a few panoramas of the Ipsut Valley. The elevation at Ipsut Pass was about 5500. Right now I’m at about 5200 feet. The temperature in the shade claims to be about 70 degrees which is about what it feels like; although, it is sunny at times as I’m hiking down the valley.


Along the Carbon River

It is 3:40 p.m. I’m approaching the Carbon Glacier Suspension Bridge. The elevation is 3500 feet, the pressure is at 27.6, and the temperature is about 74 degrees, although it feels cooler. I started hiking past the Carbon Glacier River about 45 minutes ago. It’s been loud walking along the river. It’s been mostly up hill almost the entire way. My knees feel a little better but my left knee on the inside part is a little sore when I go up hill just from hiking in general. I don’t really know why, maybe it’s just a muscle I haven’t used in a while. Hopefully it won’t hurt tomorrow. My toes feel bruised from all the downhill hiking. Not to mention the fact that I don’t think I really clipped my toenails before hand.


They always say "Don't round off your tonails, cut them more straight"...
I say "Don't cut your tonails too straight, round em off..."

This can be kind of painful when your nails are jamming in to the side of your other toe.

I should be at the Carbon Glacier Suspension Bridge in about 10 minutes at the most. There I will stop to take pictures and maybe have something to eat.

Well, it is almost 5:00 p.m. The altitude is 4240. I’m tired. I stopped at the Carbon Glacier Suspension Bridge but I didn’t even take off my pack. I took a few pictures though. I asked a couple who where there to take my picture and I took theirs. I continued on to Carbon Glacier, stopped for a few minutes, talked with the couple for about 20 minutes or so.


Derek Rowley at the Carbon Glacier

The part that I’m on now is fairly steep. I’m glad that, at least for right now, that tomorrow is a long day and not today because I don’t know if I would make it much longer today. I’m getting really tired now. I think I’m really going to like my tent and sleeping bag tonight. It will be nice just to sit down lay back and fall asleep. The temperature right now is about 80 degrees; although, it feels more like 75 degrees because the sun is covered by clouds right now. The weather is nice right now. There is a nice cool breeze as the sun starts to show again. The trail is flat here, which is nice. Right now the altitude here is about 4300 feet. I have about another 1200 feet to go. Then I should be at Dick Creek. Then I can take a rest.

It is Thursday night at about 9 pm. It’s getting a little dark now. I got to camp quite a while ago, about 4:30 p.m. or so, just moments after my last recording. I thought I still had a good hour to go, but really it was just a few hundred feet up. The temperature right now is about 50 degrees. It is a little chilly but I’m doing alright. Tonight for dinner I had pasta with parmesan cheese and a little bit of garlic, which is what makes the pasta good. I did forget all of my utensils. I don’t have a fork and I don’t have a spoon. Those would be nice to have. Also one other thing I forgot, I’m realizing now, was my beanie. It would be very nice to have that now but unfortunately I have no clue where it’s at. Cleaning up for pasta wasn’t too bad. The hard part was that the parmesan cheese was sticking to the pan. Tomorrow maybe I will try something else. I used my water pump today for the first time. It worked pretty good. The only problem, like the manual said, it did squirt out some black carbon deposits but I knew about this so I let it drain back into the water. After it had cleared it out, I hooked it back up to the bottle and filled it up.

I’m finding that it takes about 4 – 5 minutes to cook the angel hair noodles, which is better than the 8-10 minutes at normal elevation for normal pasta. The elevation here at Dick Creek is 4320 feet, and I thought my watch was off a little along with the campsite being at about 5000 feet but the map in the 50 Hikes Around Mt. Rainier is off a little, it’s more like 4300 not 5000 feet. The people camping at site one here at Dick Creek are fairly nice. They are a brother and sister. The sister is from Seattle and the brother is from Philadelphia. I talked to him about camping and that I had summited Rainier last summer and he thought it was absolutely crazy especially waking up in the middle of the night and hiking in the dark. She was pretty nice, she gets out about once a year or so to go hiking.


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