Needle Falls Hike Day 3

          Day three had to be one of our hardest days. Today we went up, up, up, up, and then down, down, down, down. During the night we had a pretty good rain storm. Woke me up a few times. But by morning it was almost clear. There were still lots of low flying clouds, but we actually managed to get a few peeps of the sun. Everyone was slow to get out of bed and ready, probably because it was still dark and gloomy, and really cold. We did manage to get most of our tents pretty dried out before we left camp though.
        The first few hours were a lot of switch backs. We just had to go straight up, basically to the top of the saddle, and then down, and then up again, and then down again. The first ups weren't too bad because we were well rested, but we didn't have a ton of water because we didn't want to pump at our campsite because it was so rough on our filters. We got up to the top of the first saddle and didn't see any water. But we stayed and chatted with a few other hikers at the top. We then hiked down, and down and down, until we got to a cute little meadow with a fun stream, and pond and such. We took a 30 or so minute break to pump water, have some snacks and hike around a little bit.
         Next section of the hike was up again. Not straight up at first. More of a mediocre up with some flats and a few downs. We stopped somewhere in the middle and had a quick lunch. The sun was out, but it was still pretty chilly in the shade. We finished our lunches and headed out. The sun was out most of the day today so most spots of the trail were dry. We did have a few really muddy, swampy gross spots that horses had basically torn apart. But only 2 or 3 of those. Finally we made it to the top of the continental divide. For most of the day we were hiking along the Chinese wall, and then the wall turns a different direction, and we hike up and over the saddle. While we rested at the top, some of us brave souls ventured up to actually touch the wall. Most of the time it was too high up and too far away to even attempt to get to the wall. But at the continental divide it took us two minutes to jog up a steep hill to get to it. It was frigid up there. The wind was howling like crazy, and we were above tree line so there wasn't anything to protect us from the wind. Somehow, the one bug that was up there decided to sting Tallus. Literally, the only living thing we came across up there stung Tallus. Just his luck for sure. There was a quaint little patch of snow that Tallus and I wanted to go play in, but it was so cold that we decided it wasn't worth the hike down to it.
       Once we got over the continental divide we had to go down. Lots and Lots of down. I do believe that I may have got my first start of a blister here. The trail was so steep, with lots of switch backs, and it just kept going and going and going. We were all just about out of water, and completely exhausted when we hit a dried up river bed. No water, but just near a place we had camped 5 years ago that last time we came. My dad went and scoped it out, made sure there was water there, and then sent for all of us to come and join him. We had a fun little camp nestled in the trees and near a babbling brook. There were also lots of deer in this campsite. We woke up in the middle of the night to some stomping and tromping and crashing sounds. I know I am not the only one in our group that thought it was a bear. Levi sent Kyler out of the tent to scope it out while he got his gun ready just in case. They got out to find it was a deer. The deer tripped over our tent fly strings, ate someones shirt, and also took a few bites out of a roll of toilet paper that someone left out. Silly thing.
   

This is us trying to get as much sun as we could while it was out. We are trying to dry out our tents, and our rain flies, and our sleeping bags and our packs. Basically we are trying to dry everything we had. 

Paul is modeling with our tent. He was so proud that of himself for getting our tent all flipped upside down to dry ;)

Our day 3 pictures. Kind of blurry, but thats okay. 

Just a snap of the typical day. Nena brushing her teeth in the background, and Nayeli and Lincy  posing. Paul is also in the background doing something important while I take pictures. Looks like, getting our bear bag crap and everything else we left out that night so we can pack it up in our packs. 

The first shot of the Chinese Wall. Doesn't look like much but it gets prettier. 

Paul posing in front of the wall. I was hoping the background would come out better. Oh well. 

The crew! Well part of us anyway. We just just gotten up a set of switch backs and needed a break. So we figured taking some pretty pictures would be a good enough reason to stop! 

This is what we call a postcard. A beautiful view from the hike. 

Another postcard. This is one of the reasons why we backpack. 

Just a couple of lovebirds on a hike.

an actual not selfie picture of Paul and I.

One of my favorite pictures I got of the Chinese Wall. It kind of looks like the cliffs of Moher from this angle. Only it needs ocean at the bottom of the wall instead of grass and trees. It was a pretty awesome view to see valley and hills and then bam, out of nowhere a pretty defined rock wall that stretched for miles. 

This was a turn in the wall. It goes straight and straight and then a sharp turn and keeps going. There were multiple sharp turns like this one along the wall. 

This is their, "we made it to the top" pose. 

I carried a frisbee the whole time with me, and this is the only time I really got to use it! We were too tired every other time we stopped and camped, or too busy. So here we are playing frisbee on top of our first saddle to cross that day. 

This was our whole group. 15 people! Crazy. Bottom from left to right, Uncle Tim, Cousin Devin and his wife Nayeli, Aunt Leanna, Cousin Lincy, my dad Therron, Mommy Karina. Top row left to right Cousin Brytt, behind him is cousin Kyler, sister Kessla, Behind her is Cousin in law Levi, then sister Lena, brother Tallus, Paul and me. We are sitting/standing on the great stone table. This is the top where we met some other awesome hikers who were nice enough to take a picture of all of us. the lovely Chinese Wall is in the back ground. 

A stop and rest along the way point. We were still looking for water, and thought there might be some close by, but there wasn't so we rested for a few minutes and then kept going. We hiked along the Wall for basically the whole day until we hiked up and over the other side. 

More pretty views

Us with the cool back ground. Maybe one day Paul and I will come back and rappel down the Chinese Wall. That would be pretty epic I think! 

Another cool view of the wall

And another.

We hit a split in the trail so we all stopped to wait for the rest of the group to make sure we took the correct trail. This is right before a lot more up, up, and up. 

This is how Levi rests. Notice the mud on his pants, this is from the day before when it rained. Imagine 3 times the amount and thats how much mud I had on my pants before I washed them! 

This is how Brytt rests. He doesn't even have service or internet, but still made sure to check his phone all the time just in case ;)

Kyler, Lincy and Paul layin in the grass

This is at the top of the continental divide. Well a little higher. We took our packs off and scaled a hill to touch the Chinese Wall. 

Nena showing off her machoness 

My little patch of snow! I really wanted to go play in it, but by the time we were done taking pictures we were nearly frozen with the crazy wind blowing on us. 

Me touching the wall. 

Tallus thinking he is all bad bum and stuff. With his french braids (that he asked me to do haha) He is too cool to smile for pictures these days. He usually tries to give a smolder look, but it usually fails haha ;) 

Kess face being brave at the top

This is a view from the bottom ish of the hill up. Those rocky things in the background are part of the Chinese Wall that we hiked up to touch. The hill was pretty dang steep and  didn't have a trail so we sort of made our own. 

We didn't have a bear bag picture because usually I put it up without Paul, and he takes it down without me. This time we did it together so I had to document. He didn't care a whole lot.

But I thought it was kind of fun. My cousins put their bag up in the next tree over, but used our trunk to tie theirs up. Look closely at the trunk, the darker colored green string, and see ho much effort they used to zig and zag their string so their bag wouldn't fall. I just laughed when I saw it. 

A picture of our quaint little camp site. We had maybe 2 more tents up that weren't in the picture. Mine being one of them. No wonder the deer tripped through our campsite. The tents were so close together and we all had our fly strings staked out. Some of the strings crossed over each other so we had trip wires all set up. 

Everyone having breakfast around the fire. The only reason we would have food this close to our camp at our fire is if it was breakfast. 

     

Needle Falls Hike Day 2

        When we woke up today, we weren't quite as lucky as yesterday. It was very cloudy, and pretty chilly. It had rained a little the night before, and was threatening rain before we started our hike, so we figured we had better pack everything up and wrap it all up just incase we did get hit with some rain. Which, was a very good thing that we did because it rained on us. All. Day. Long... It was just a light drizzle for most of it, but a light drizzle all day means wet people. Not to mention the trail is frequently used by horse pack groups, so it was very boggy and very muddy. In the beginning of the day we all tried pretty hard to avoid the mud and keep our boots dry. By mid day it didn't matter. They were all soaked, and muddy, so we took the path of the least resistance, even if it meant stepping in 2 inch deep mud puddles.

         We kept our spirits up by making up verses to the song if your happy and you know it, only it was more about hiking in the rain and being wet. For example, "If your feet are feeling soggy clap your poles, (our trekking poles). And so on. It was silly, but it really kept us entertained for a good hour or so in the rain. We didn't take a whole lot of pictures because no one wanted to risk getting their cameras wet. The biggest thing I remember about day 2 was the rain. Lots and lots of rain. And just being wet and cold. I think there were a few patches of no rain, but there wasn't any sun. It was lots and lots of thick clouds. So it seemed really dark outside all day. I do remember what we had for dinner though, Mountain House beef stew. And boy was it delicious. Warmed be up, (mostly), from head to toe. Oh, and we didn't really have a phenomenal source of water at this camp site. It was a tiny little brook that was under ground most way, and only had a few small places to pump from. The water was really hard on our pumps and clogged them up pretty good, (not that the water was dirty, to look at, it just had lots of stuff in it (hard to see stuff) that made it hard for us to pump). It actually clogged up our filter for the rest of the hike. We could pump water it was just a lot of patience and arm strength.

Here we are at the start of day two. Still dry, still kind of happy. And completely unaware that we will be hiking through rain and mud. But hey, we had fun.. for the most part. 

This hike was Brytt's first backpacking experience. He didn't have a pack cover for his back pack, so he ingeniously used his rain poncho as a cover. He looked like a camel all day, but his pack stayed pretty dang dry. 

This is basically at the start of the hike. Some of us are a little wet already. The picture isn't super clear because of the water and moisture in the air. All the smart people are wearing jackets. Then there is me, who hates hiking in long sleeves. I get too hot. So I had just my shirt. Levi didn't hike with a jacket on either. I would rather be wet from the rain, that hot and sweaty wet. 

This is us at the end of the day. If you look closely, most every one has mud splashed all up the legs of their pants. I had it really bad on my legs, and almost to my butt. It was so bad that the first thing that I really did after Paul and I got the tent set up and our stuff out of the rain, was to wash my pants. They look pretty decently clean here. This was after I washed my pants, and after we all had had dinner. We are just chilling by the fire trying to get our hands and toes warm, and the rest of us dried off. The only place we could find to have dinner away from our camp and out of the rain was down in a little dried up creek bed. It was maybe not the smartest idea since there were lots of roots all over the place that could catch fire, but we were smart about it, and triple checked to make sure that the fire was out and no smoldering would be happening. This fire is near our campsite so we didn't eat our food here, (to keep us safe from the bears). And, since we didn't have a hatchet or anything to break the wood, we just pushed the tree logs into the fire slowly as the ends burned off. 

This is Tallus, my youngest brother, scaling a tree to fix our bear bag predicament. He thought he was so bad bum because he was in a tree, that he insisted my mom snap a picture of it. 

Needle Falls Hike Day 1

           Sunday July, 26th we started our hike. We woke up to pouring rain at our family reunion and gather things quickly as we could to prepare for the day. We ended up leaving Augusta around 10 ish. It took us maybe an hour or so to get to the trailhead. It wasn't too far away. But a lot of the road was dirt road so we didn't cruise too fast. I am thinking maybe by the time we actually got on the trail it was around 11:30 or so? Thankfully when we got to the trail head it wasn't raining any more. It was a little cloudy, (which was so great), and slightly chilly, (also great), but not rainy. If I had been thinking I would have tried to journal down the days events because after a week they all just blur together. But I clearly wasn't thinking and after 7 days of being dehydrated and delirious, my details might be vague. I will try to just remember the days events through the pictures. 

      We had about an 11-13 mile hike that day. All in all it wasn't bad. The terrain was slightly up hill, but mostly flat. We made several stops along the way, but didn't rest a whole lot. Last time we did this hike, my cousin Krista got bear maced in the face by her then boyfriend, now husband. Sadly, but also thankfully, we didn't have any such events this year. Nothing quite that exciting at all really. 

Here we are at the cars. Not even to the trail head. Happy so far. Ready to take on the world. 

At the beginning of the trail head. We kept teasing that the sign looked kind of like a CTR sign just with the letters all mixed up. I guess it stands for the continental divide trail. You can follow this trail all the way up in to Canada one direction and down to Mexico the other direction. We only stayed on the CDT for a a portion of our hike. 

We were anticipating how we would feel at the end of our journey just in case we didn't make it out ;)

Several years ago there was a pretty bad forest fire that burned through here. We were grateful to have cloud coverage because a lot of what we hiked was through a burn area. It was really sad to see so many dead trees, but it was also really neat, and kind of pretty in some ways. I Snapped this pictures because the pack horses that go through here make their own trail some times, and so here we have four separate trails and up ahead my sibs and cousins are all on their own little path. It was kind of fun to see them standing horizontally instead of being in a vertical stack like we usually hike. 

One of our many breaks to wait for others to catch up, or to rest, or to take a potty stop.

We stopped for a lunch at a bridge. It looks like a common place for hikers to stop because there is wood stacked to replace the bridge here quite frequently, and people always use it to sit on. Also there is a great spot to pump water, and enough area for horses to graze if they needed to stop for a rest. We stopped for maybe 40 min, had some lunch, pumped water, and then hit the trail again. At this point I believe we were over half way for the day. Still hiking through burn area though. I am pretty sure we spent most of the day hiking in the burned parts. 

Mommy and Nena just chillin at our lunch break. 

Paul thought it wise to take a snooze while we waited for others to come and join us. 

I thought I would get in on the action and wake him up ;)

Its hard to tell because of the lighting, but there is a strip of trees in between the green ones in front and the mountains that is just dead and burned. I tried to get some landscape pictures of the burn area, but alas I am no photographer. 

This one you can see a little more. It is just so crazy how much area a wild fire can take out. It is also crazy to see how long it takes for everything to grow back. There are finally some trees beginning to grow, but it has been 7 or more years since the fire and still the trees aren't much taller than 3 feet. 

We found a great place to camp just past the burn area. If you look closely in the pictures you can see that just past our camp sight there is burn area. We were just inside the forest. We had a nice river running past us, and flat space to set up our tents. It was perfect. The only down side was that we had to hike down a short but steep trail to get to our cook spot. But like my dad always says, its better to hike a little ways to eat then to deal with a bear trying to get into your tent. 

Tallus trying to put on a smolder face, but failing totally. The girls are doing the dishes probably and getting the bear bags ready for hanging in the trees. 

Just a small glimpse of our first campsite. Lots of trees, grass and flat ground. It was perfect. We even had enough space that all of our tents weren't set up right next to each other.