Trail permitting begins on March 15th (Tomorrow) for the Wonderland Trail. We have an application ready to go in the mail.
The Wonderland Trail is an epic 94 mi hike around Mt. Rainier. Aside from the distance, there's quite a lot of elevation gain.
Some resources:
We applied to take on the trail in mid July. Hopefully, we have a warm spring and a lot of the snow melts.
The adventurers on this trip will be myself, Bill & Tim (from our WCT Trip) and Nigel. Nigel is taking Theresa's spot as she is pregnant and due in August, so won't be able to make it.
We going to take a somewhat relaxed pace and do the trail over nine days. There are two points at which we can cache food for re-supply, so with only having to carry three days of food on each leg, we should be able to go pretty darn light.
I did the Wonderland two years ago and it was pretty amazing. Its pretty easy to to in 4 or 5 days ultralight if you haul (we did it in 4.5).
I carried about 15 lbs then. Today I’d do it with my SUL load (probably around 5.5 lbs with a slightly beefier pack than my spinnaker pack).
I’m glad to hear its back open after all the destruction of last year.
Our favorite places were the north and west sides (beautiful ridges). It is a lot of climb/descending every day. There was still quite a bi to snow in late July that year. We did parts of it later that falll and the snow was gone – it looked very different).
I look forward to as excellent a trip report as we were treated to with your WCT posts, Brett.
thanks sam! i’m looking forward to it.
wade – yeah – we could do it faster, but we kind of want to relish the trail a little. we enjoyed our pace on the WCT – but it might have been nicer to have more idle time to take it all in.
I did the wonderland trail about 10 years ago and have always wanted to go back. I did in 5 days and have always regretted it! I would much rather spend more time in such a remarkable place. I agree with the comment above about the west side being one of the best sides of the mountain. I didn’t see a soul until I made it to Indian Henry’s!
Enjoy your time there!
P.S. Your info on light travel is great! Thanks!