Hiking the High Divide

Friday morning we left for our "Anniversary" Hiking Trip, which pretty much means we use our Anniversary as a good excuse to take off for a few days. This year, we decided early on we wanted to do a great back pack trip......and the High Divide ABSOLUTELY delivered.
Our route was going to take about 23 miles to complete, split over 4 days. The trail head leaves from Sol Duc Falls, which are incredibly beautiful in themselves.

The first day was a forest hike to Deer Lake. It was only about 3 1/2 miles in, but the road was really rocky and not easy to travel over.
We got to Deer Lake in the late afternoon and picked out our spot. The only campsite on a little side lake with a creek running through it. Perfect.
Here's our spot.
Even though the hike was short, the day had been a bit long with the drive and such, so we were happy to call it a night.

However, during our dinner, we were joined by a mama and baby deer. It was pretty precious because the mama deer had already came over to our camp, then we heard the baby calling for her and peeked out of the trees. They literally were 5 feet from us.
Inspired by our dinner guests, we decided to go for a little evening hike out to a meadow where we saw another 4 deer, including a Buck.
Will provided the entertainment for the evening when we got back to camp. What a perfect night!
Day two, we woke up leisurely (seeing as we had a YMCA girl's group camping at the lake as well that sang the Alphabet song for an hour straight to scare off a bear that was apparently right between our two camps).
Our second day was going to take us up into Alpine Country, with a side trip to the Seven Lake Basin and on to our second camp at Hoh Lake. It was about a 7 mile day.
After hiking for about an hour, we could look back and see the lake we had stayed at and the meadow to the right that we had seen all the deer.
The wild flowers were amazing through the whole hike. They were a constant presence.

As we got up into Alpine Country, I just loved it. I love hiking between 4,000-6,000 feet. I love the rocks mixed with the green, mixed with the snow, mixed with the trees. Oh, and the blue sky is rockin' too! In the picture below you can see the ridge (with the snow melt below it) on the right side of the picture. That is the saddle we would eventually summit later that day.
Before the saddle, you have an opportunity to DROP DOWN STEEP into the Seven Lakes Basin. It's a beautiful area and where we had chosen to have our lunch break for the day. This is Round Lake in the pic.
We hiked down in and headed for Lunch lake, in the picture below.


We dropped our packs here and swam in the lake. It was VERY chilly, but felt VERY good. It was helpful that it was 85+ degrees when we got out. This spot was really nice and it was hard to leave.......especially knowing we were hiking straight back UP.
After the side trip into the Seven Lakes Basin, we started to head for the Saddle, where we would veer off to Hoh Lake to camp. In the picture below, you can barely see Will hiking along the trail on the far left.
I haven't really said much about the beauty, but it was spectacular. Constantly. It was never ending. Here we are at the Saddle, where we would eventually head to the left, but tonight we went about a mile to the right to Hoh Lake.

About this time, we started scouring the slops for Bear. We would stop frequently to gaze up and down the side of the hills for them. Will LOVES wildlife, so I told him for his Anniversary present I was going to find him a Bear.
Finally, I spotted one! Of course, it was a long ways off, but we could tell that he was a HUGE one.
Below is Hoh Lake, where we stayed the second night. This should have been called Bear lake.....bacause the show was only beginning.

We got ourselves another nice little spot. Lake with sloping mountain filled with bear cubs on one side, Mt. Olympus on the other. Hmm.......where to look?
After dinner, we went back to the lake side and sat down to look for bear. We watch a Mama bear and her two cubs for a long time and several others came and went.
The Mama and her babies.
We were enjoying ourselves so much. Do you just love the day two look? The bandanna was mostly to keep the mosquitoes out of my ears.
Sunset over Mt. Olympus, the highest peak in the Olympic National Forest.
In the morning, I woke early to go to the bathroom and before I got back into the tent I looked over to the mountain side. I said to Will, "I could be crazy, but I think the mountain side is CRAWLING with bear.......and it was.
We started to head back out to the trail and spotted more bear on the way.
It had only been a few hours since we took in the beautiful views, but it was like enjoying them all over again.
Once we rejoined the trail, we quickly had an option to hike up to Boganical Peak, which would be the highest point we'd reach the whole trip and looks back into the Seven Lakes Basin.
We didn't stay on top long. The mosquitos were out in full force.
This was one of the views from the top. I love when you can see ridge after ridge after ridge.....all the way to the coast.
Will talking with a few people near the top. His pack looks kind of big, huh? I swear, I wasn't hitching a ride.
We hit several patches of snow and this one happened to be a great sled run.
Will slide all the way down this!!
I felt kind of stupid but I kept looking around me and thinking, I should take a picture of this, but I knew I had already taken a million......but it was just amazing for hours and hours.
.........and hours and hours.........and then off in the distance, in the picture above, I thought I saw a very color coordinated group of hikers coming our way. But no, it was a family of mountain goats walking down the trail. Kind of like they got tired of the hillsides and suddenly said, "Quick, come on guys, no one is looking. Let's make a break for it down the human trail".
We kept on enjoying the views that changed ever so slightly with every step.
Then I turned the corner........and THERE were the mountain goats we had seen. Still on the trail, RIGHT in front of us. This guy in front kind of looked at me like, "Um...lady, are you gonna step aside". Seriously!!
So we did ever so slightly........and the family, with it's two babies, came walking right by.
I mean.......RIGHT by. It was crazy!!
We just couldn't believe it!!
And then they were off.......down the trail they went.
Oh yeah, back to the amazing views.....are you getting sick of these yet? Sorry, but I couldn't get enough.

Below is Hart Lake, where we had planned to stay the third night. However, we had some commitments on Monday come up last minute, so we decided to camp further down the trail to save us time Monday am hiking out.

We had lunch at Hart lake though and enjoyed the Alpine landscaped just a little longer before we dropped back out of it.
Will and I both love the little streams everywhere.
Quickly we dipped back into the forest. We started talking about how we could either camp as planned, or hike the remaining 5 miles out and find a cool little place to stay the night........seeing as it WAS our Anniversary trip AND we really needed to be somewhere on Monday.
So Day Three turned into about 12 miles and 4,500ft elevation change......which is a lot. We are both pretty fit, but our feet were hurtin' pretty badly towards the end. Plus, beautiful river trail still doesn't compare to what we had been seeing, so we took it at a pretty face pace.
When the dirt turned to gravel at the end, our feet were screaming, but we were glad we had made the choice to hike out. High Divide Completed!
Just down the road, there is a Natural Hot Springs made into several pools. We just HAD to stop to swim in those.
It felt so awesome after that long of a day.
Then we went and found a hotel on the waterfront in Port Angeles, had a great dinner and sat on our balcony cuddled up in a blanket together. It was a perfect end to a perfect day. Around 9:00pm, we crawled into bed with our books and at about 9:03pm.......we turned out the lights.

Thanks baby for a GREAT trip!! Thank you to Tommy and Rebekah for watching the kids for us. It was awesome start to finish. I TOTALLY recommend that particular hike to anyone. It was amazing.
Just a few of the videos we shot along the way.