Day 8 Information
Paradise River Camp - Night Two - 0 WT Trail Miles
Wednesday, September 12th 2002
Day Hike to Paradise and Panorama Point

It is 11:10 a.m. on Thursday morning. It’s almost been one whole week out in the woods. And it’s getting boring now. I am ready to go home now. Although, hopefully, today is going to be a relaxed day. I’m not looking forward to carrying all my food. I have too much. I want to keep it, but I don’t want to carry it. I think I am just going to leave it at Longmire. It is about 3 or 4 pounds of food that I can live without. One being one of those Mountain House Chili Mac and Beef, which is absolutely disgusting. I had the scrambled eggs with real bacon this morning, and it tasted like crap. I would have rather had anything else... even pasta. They weren’t that good. Plus it is about 250 percent fat, which isn’t good. I got up a while ago, maybe an hour and a half ago. My tent is totally messy, with everything in it. I’m trying to organize it all: keep the food I want, get rid of the stuff I don’t, eat it or something. I’m just getting ready to go up to Paradise and I will spend the day up there and come down later, go to bed, wake up in the morning, and hike to Devils Dream. It should be 4.1 miles or kilometers. Yeah, Devil Dream campsite on the Friday the 13th, which is tomorrow, and according to my map that is 3 1/2 miles to Longmire. Yeah, wait. The profile doesn’t even match. It shows about 4 miles, and that doesn’t make sense. Oh well.

Then, head uphill for about 6 miles, well after Longmire it is a steep 2 miles up, and then down and flat for 2 miles, and then from there it is about 2 miles uphill. I don’t know what that place is like, I have absolutely no clue. After I get there, the next day I go to South Puyallup River Camp. I go up about 1/2 mile and then I go down for about 2 miles, and then up for 2-2 1/2 miles, and then down for another 2 miles. So its down, up, down. That’s a short day, but it will be up and down. Down, up and down. Then, I will be at the South Puyallup River where I will spend 2 nights. I will hike to Gobblers Knob then back to South Puyallup River Camp. And then from there, I go to Golden Lakes which is a long hike, about 11 miles. It goes up, way down, and then up some more.

I’m going to try and get my pass changed today or tomorrow so I can spend 2 nights at Golden Lakes. There is a little lookout I want to go to. That means, after tomorrow I will have approximately 30 miles left. I could probably do it in 3 days but I will do it in 6 days I think. But in total hiking it will be 3 days of hiking, but it will be at least 4 nights if not more, because I will stay at South Puyallup River Camp and possibly Golden Lakes. I was thinking about Klapatche Park, but I heard that it doesn’t have much water. That is what Charlie said about it. He woke me up this morning like I asked him too. I told him to wake me up before he left this morning and he did. He came up and said goodbye. He also said he would e-mail me after he got back to Ohio. I am doing well so far, I just want to shower. And I want some more clean underwear and socks. I will be fine with what I have, so all is good. The temperature is about 65, or probably 60. Altitude is 4100, I think. The barometer isn’t correct.


Derek Rowley at Panorama Point - MRNP

It is about 8:15 p.m. on Thursday. I’ve been out one week now. This morning I work up at 10 a.m. and made breakfast (dried eggs), and they were absolutely discussing. They were pretty gross. It’s probably 60-65 degrees right now. The weather today was really good. Sunny all day. I went up to Paradise; I got there at about 1 p.m. I think. I stood on the corner near Narada Falls. It took about 5 cars that passed before someone stopped and gave me a ride.


Ashley, Ally and Paul - PS... thanks for the ride... (how was your adventure summer of 2002?)

They were from Ohio, a married couple with a friend that was staying with them for the week. His name was Paul, her name was Ally and the friends name was Ashley. The married couple were on a road trip, they had driven from Ohio and had mostly stayed in Washington and had spent the last two weeks at the Olympic National Park. They had just been staying at state parks for free. I guess there are logging roads where you can pull off to the side. They said they budget about $1500 per month. They buy food in bulk at places like Costco and Sam’s Club. They said they buy a lot of pasta. They had been out since June, and planned to go until November. They drove me up to the Jackson Memorial and I got out and walked around the Jackson Building.

I bought some postcards and stamps. I figured out where the showers were at, they are downstairs. It cost 25 cents for 7.5 minutes, so 50 cents is 15 minutes. I didn’t take a show though. After that I went out and hiked up to Panorama Point. It is about a 2 mile hike. I didn’t run but I did hike pretty fast. They say it’s a four hour hike but I went up in 45 minutes and down in probably 30 minutes. I ran most of the way down. About half way up. I met up with those people from Ohio again. We spoke for a few minutes then I continued on to Panorama Point. I got to Panorama Point and started eating then those from Ohio arrived. I took their picture, we talked some more, but they kept offering me a ride back down to the camp but I told them that I was fine. But Ally really wanted to give me a ride, she said, when we get down, we will just wait for you. But I explained that I would be taking a shower.




A Brazilian Couple I met at Panorama Point - Por favor me escreve!!! Perdi o seu email!!!

I met some other people there too, a couple from Brazil. I forget the city (Probably Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro) He was a really tall guy. I took his picture I got his email, so I will email that to him. He had actually ordered the same camera as mine ( the Fuji s602z). Also he had met some people that I had me earlier, they must have been Brazilian too, and they started speaking to each other in Portuguese. They were just speaking to each other and in the middle you would hear things like “Mega pixel” and SuperCCD. I Told them about Panorama Factory and how to take multiple shots and stitch them together. There were some others that I took pictures for. Then I started writing my postcards. I only wrote one. I didn’t get too far.

My plan was to stay up there till a little while until the sun came to the other side of the peaks, to get a better picture, but it never really got better. A better thing to have done would have been to have taken a picture back in June or July when the sun is actually in a totally different path. The shadows didn’t come off the side of the mountain like I was hoping.


Tatoosh Range from Panorama Point - Above Paradise

After I took my panorama, I ran down. I passed all the other people. I didn’t pass those from Ohio because they took the longer tail down (High Skyline Trail). As I was getting closer to the parking lot I could see them getting into their car and leaving. I left Panorama Point 90 minutes after they had.

As I was walking toward the Jackson memorial they drove by and we said bye. I went inside. I went to get four quarters since I only had two. So I went to the ice cream shop and asked the same lady AGAIN like I had that morning and she told me the same thing. “I can’t just open the register, someone has to buy something for it to open. Just wait a few minutes and someone will buy something.” So I waited then just asked to buy an ice cream cone. But she said they had just started to clean the machine and that I was just having bad luck. So I didn’t get my ice cream or four quarter. I then walked downstairs to take a shower. I didn’t have any soap so I got some liquid hand soap from the bathroom. I took a 10 minute shower and dried off using my yellow shammy. I then rinsed it out to use later. I then got dressed then washed my shirt and put it back on. Then I waked out to the waiting room. I saw that there was a phone right there so I decided to use that one. There was a ranger that kept walking by. I thought he would kick me out since it was past the normal hours. He finally asked me if I was an employee or visitor, since I was a visitor he told me to use the lower level exit (the doors right in front of me). About 20 minutes later he walked by again and asked me to make sure that the doors were shut and locked after I left. I called home and talked to Michael and Rachelle then my dad. My mother was at work Rachelle acted like she wanted to come see me. So maybe she will come up to Gobblers Knob when I am there. Then I called the O’Connor family and talked to Tim for about 20 minutes. I told him that I was ok, He was glad that I called and said “I’m so glad you called” Then I used the bathroom I then waited about 25 minutes before I found someone to give me a ride down. He was staying at cougar rock. He planned on going up to camp Muir, he wanted to take a shower, but unfortunately it was closed. He took me down and I hiked back to camp. I Put my bag in my tent. I took my food off of the food holders. (a metal pipe about 12 ft high and have about 6-8 re-barb hooks so that bears or animals can get your food) And here I am now, I’m going to bed it’s 8:30 p.m. or so. I’m pretty tired.


You have been reading about Day 8


Extra 6 Miles is from Hiking from Paradise River Camp to Narada Falls - 1 Mile. Paradise to Panorama Point and back - 4 Miles. Narada Falls to Paradise River Camp - 1 Mile.