Overanxious rangers, freezing fishing mission, and hypermiling to Chimacum

When Kelly and I set out on our five day backpacking trip to high divide and the seven lakes basin we were expecting rain but had high hopes. There had just been a storm and there was supposed to be another one coming in during our trip. There was a typical overcast mist in the air as we entered the ranger station in Port Angeles. We asked if there was much snow on high divide yet, the backcountry ranger shrugged and said "not much". He routinely typed out our pass and handed us the bear canisters and we headed on our way. Just as we were going to pull out of the parking lot though he came marching up to the car.
"So looks like you got some weather coming in on Thursday. You looked at the weather report?"
"Yeah, I saw that there was a bit of a storm coming in" I replied.
He smiled a bit unconvincingly "Well you got warm clothes I see...waterproof jackets...so if you get caught in a snow storm ya know, just hunker down."
That made us a bit more uneasy...we didn't really want to "hunker down" in a snow storm at 5000 ft. Our first two nights were at a bit lower elevation though. We figured we would just go those two nights and see what the weather is like.

As we arrived at the trail head just a bit above Solduc resort the weather was alternating between rain and mist. Random tourists trudged off the trail wearing multicolored see-through ponchos, getting their picnics out under umbrellas. As we set off for a short hike to Mink lake we passed the ranger station and noticed that we were being followed by what seems to be another overanxious ranger. He was very polite and in a round about way asked for our wilderness permit and made sure we had bear canisters. Just like the other ranger he seemed to think we were a bit crazy to be going camping in...oh no...rain! He also sort of listed items offhand that we would need...but that he could obviously see we had.
"I see you got your pack covers and rain gear there. That's good. Warm clothes?"
Can't blame him, probably get a lot of people who come completely unprepared for the drastic changes the northwest weather can make. We tried to put him at ease and then headed up the 150o ft elevation gain to our first campsite.

It felt real good to be hiking with a heavy pack again. Tiring, but good. I had never seen so many different kinds of mushrooms at one time before. So many huge obviously poisonous ones, a few golden chantrelles and countless others. As the rain pattered on my shoulders and seeped into my hair I hit the zone of thinking about everything while at the same time not thinking about anything. We stopped occasionally to munch on delicious wild blueberries.

When we got to Mink lake the vision in my head came true. There was a big opening of blue sky directly above the water. The vegetation on the edges of the lake glistened bright green with the reflection of the sun in water droplets. During camp set up Kelly and I realized just how cold it was. Just a week earlier and I think we would have missed the cold snap. The good thing is that there was no one else anywhere near us, we had the place to ourselves. After a burrito dinner we got in our sleeping bags and fell asleep to the sound of raindrops dripping from fir branches.

The morning hit us cold but rainless. So we quickly ate our oatmeal, drank our coffee, stocked up on water and set off to make tracks over two small passes before ending at deer lake. We got up into snow encrusted alpine meadows. And it stayed mostly rain-free the entire hike. We were hoping to see a bear but a deer and a grouse would have to suffice.

When we got to our campsite I made some coffee with a bit of whisky in it and I set off to try my hand at fishing. I hadn't fished in about a decade...no idea what I was doing and so I didn't catch anything. But had a good time yelling at the stupid trout to get on my lure.

Kelly and I looked up at where we were supposed to be headed, high divide, and it looked fairly covered with snow. And there was supposed to be a good storm coming through the next day when we were planning on hiking on the highest part of the ridge. Not much to our liking, so the next morning we headed back out to the car, satisfied in our decision not to get caught in a snow storm.

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I did get another chance at fishing though. Last Saturday Stefan, Joss, Homer and I set off on a little fishing day trip to Silver lake. As we pulled up the the trailhead I looked down at my gas meter just as the little E light blinked on. We had been driving for what seemed like ages since Quilcene and apparently, Stefan informed us, there isn't even a gas station in Quilcene, the nearest one is in Chimacum. Hmm...that was stupid, it appeared that on our way back from the hike we were going to run out of gas. I have never run out of gas, I like to think that I am enough of a forward thinker to fill up when it gets low. I guess I kinda forgot to do that this time. We decided to deal with it later.

We set off just before a bunch of Asian guys about our age who were grossly underprepared. They seemed to all be wearing basketball trainers, shorts and cotton tee-shirts. And the one day pack between them could not have contained much. Joss set out ahead to see if he could bag a grouse while Homer, Stef and I trudged up the seemingly unending, very steep mountainside. We played leapfrog with the unprepared group and as we increased in elevation it seemed to start to get very cold. A few groups of smart-ass middle aged folks came down wearing full-on, warm raingear commenting that we should look out for the group of boys ahead of us. Also commenting on our intentions.
"Going fishing?" no, we are just carrying fishing rods...
"Oh the lake is frozen."
Good one buddy. Real funny. Hopefully he was joking, I think we all half believed him at first.
Once the group of underprepared Asians heard there was a lake they were dead set on going also. Luckily when we got to the turn off for Silver lake we mentioned to them that it was about another 2-something miles to the lake. Oh did I mention that by this time it was snowing? I think the distance and weather convinced them to turn back.

After what seemed like much more hiking then we were expecting we made it to the lake. The trees all around were crusted with snow. As we started fishing the ends of our rods were icing up and generating frost. Made it a bit harder to cast.

Stefan caught the first one and expectedly, instantly started gloating about it.
"Well, real fishermen do it this way.", etc...
Joss and I started getting some serious bites and it wasn't before too long that I dragged one in. Joss got two right up to the edge of the lake and then they flapped off the hook just at the last minute. And Homer would never get a bite when he was looking at his bobber, but everytime he left reaching distance of his pole we saw the bobber start to dip and he would run back just as the fish stopped biting at his bait.

Needless to say the later it got in the day the colder it got, so about 5 o'clock rolled around and we were all freezing, so we set off back up and over the ridge. The last mile before the parking lot was covered by trees and super dark. We were in ankle rolling town, roots and rocks threatened us on every step. We clapped to scare off the bears and cougars and planned our methods of killing four attacking bears at once.

When we finally made it down to the car we looked at the gas gauge and Stef made the prediction that we would definitely would make it to Chimacum if we "hypermile" the entire way. So I basically glided down the entire road to Quilcene in neutral and then took it real, real easy on the uphills, gathered as much speed on the downhills as possible and we ended up making to to Chimacum with .2 of a gallon left. Success! After a healthy dinner of gas station fried chicken and jojos I went home exhausted but satisfied.