Day 5 50-Miler

Day 5 9.93 miles, 3:46 hiking time, The final day, enduring to the end!

We arose on day 5 with anticipation,

I think everyone knew we were all going to make it the full 50 miles and the scouts and leaders were anxious go get on the trail.

One of the big challenges along our trip was keeping ourselves and our clothing, tents and supplies dry and drying them out when they got wet.  We don’t endorse Logan’s method for drying socks!

We got packed up and on the trail  then started to climb, again!  We found critters all along our journey, lots of slugs and even reptiles.

We paralleled the Lewis River for the rest of our trip.

There were some fitter, younger scouts who decided they wanted to try running for the last day.  They did pretty well but made frequent stops.  By the time lunch came around, I found my purposeful, steady pace was actually faster than the on again/off again runners.  They had a great time doing it though and I only wish my knees could handle that kind of pounding exercise.

We saw more people on day five as we got closer to busy roads.

The lush views of the foliage along the Lewis River were beautiful.

Legend goes this is Sasquatch country!  One of our scouts was particularly interested in Bigfoot and his enthusiasm was contagious as the other scouts and leaders talked about the mythical creature.

A common sight was the Katadyn water pump filling our water bottles and Camelbacks.  We worked to keep the water safe with the pumps, some campers preferred iodine tablets.

One of my favorite parts of the day 5 hike was the “Mother Trees”.  I saw several of the downed, old, decomposing monster size trees giving birth to new trees and lush vegetation.  Its like a parable of motherhood; the sacrifice mothers make on their kids behalf to help them grow big and strong.

The ferns got bigger as we dropped in elevation.  Here, they have had more time out of the cold and snow with plenty of moisture to spur their growth.

The day 5 hike seemed to go fairly quickly.  Before we knew it, we were to the road that was supposed to be our end point.

There was a slight problem though.  My GPS said we weren’t at 50 miles yet.

Instead of going to the truck to load up, we headed the opposite direction up the gravel road about a half mile.  We put a marker in the road for the other hikers and turned around, when we got to the truck, we were at 50.08 miles!

What a memorable experience this was.

The beauty, the challenges, the difficulties, it was a never-forget kind of adventure.  A special trip for me as I thoroughly enjoyed the time spent with everyone, especially the time spent with two of my sons, thank you, Father in Heaven.