Mount Daniel

Work is amazingly non-eventful today…we’re still in “wait” mode. So instead of trying to make thumb-twiddling look like work, I went to the gym. Kids, don’t be a dumb ass and try your normal gym routine without extra fueling up the day after a backpacking trip. I bonked sooo hard halfway through my normal work-out, breaking into cold sweat and feeling a bit dizzy. I took that as a sign from God that I don’t need to exercise ever again and left (thanks God, you’re my favorite homie *throws fake gangster signs*)…then went to QFC next door, ate ALL their free crackers and hummus samples, bought out half the store, and inhaled the entire content in the five minutes drive between store and work.

So now I get to sit here, blog and comb through the five billionty pictures that the four of us took during our three day/two night trip.

The trip out to Mount Daniel was a lot of fun, but I doubt it’s a trip I will be repeating any time soon. Our buddy, Fraser picked out this hike, saying that it will be extremely easy. I did a little research on the trail and found hardly anything except for this blurb on Trails.com:
I assumed we must be going up a different trail because despite English being my second language, I’m pretty sure “Physically most difficult, technically difficult” does not mean the same thing as “extremely easy”. Yes, I looked it up in case I forgot all my English after speaking to my mother in Chinese this morning…most difficult does not fucking mean the same thing as extremely easy…they’re fucking antonyms.

We (Fraser, Daniel, David and I) all met up after work at Fraser’s house around 7 and drove out. By the time we got to the trailhead, it was dark. We strapped on all our gear and started our hike in for our first campsite, Squaw Lake 2.5 miles away. When we got there, we hardly broke a sweat so we figured we could charge in for the second camp, Peggy’s Pond, another 3.5 miles further in.

The hike to Peggy’s Pond was easy except for the end part which consisted of us hiking on slippery gravel surface, trekking across some snow-covered ledge, and scaling a bit of cliff side – all with our full packs on. I was not so happy after climbing around on the cliff in dark…then we lost our trail. We did eventually find it after much stumbling around lost in the night. It was past 3a.m. when we made camp and we were worried about being fried alive by the sun at 5 because the weather forecast for Cle Elum that weekend broke 100 degrees.
The weather ended up being absolutely perfect the following day with a bit of sun and lots of cloud. We really couldn’t have asked for better weather to sleep and hike in.
The “hike” up Mount Daniel is really more about trekking across rocky fields,
climbing up boulder fields,
climbing up slippery gravel mountain side,
and trekking up fields of snow.
We could have died so many times on this climb it was stupid – seriously, despite all my jokes about being eaten by bears, I don’t go out of my way to take chances with my life. We just went too under-prepared. If any of us knew how technical this thing really could get, we would have all brought crampons and ice-axes. Really stupid - I’m going to always carry an ice-axe at any mentioning of snow from now on...hell, maybe I'll just carry it all the time, take it to bed...toilet...you never know when it'll come in handy.
The view from the top was gorgeous and a stark contrast from Green Mountain, which is nice – because you can only have so many pictures of lush green mountain tops before people wise up and realize it’s pictures from the same place only with a slightly different angle (don’t worry I tell my hiking buddies to put on different clothes so it looks more authentically different).
We hung out at the top for a while enjoying the scenery and being silly goofy. Strenuous hikes have a way of making people giddy. We glissaded parts of the way down but we still had to trek across a steep snow field with a cliff drop-off which was yet more stupid risks we shouldn’t have had to take. Still, watching Fraser do a flying leap onto the snowfield wearing only nylon shorts is pretty entertaining. None of us bothered trying to suit up for the glissade, with rainpants or whatever, we just sat down on the snow and slid. After a while, my butt was frozen through from the snow, but god damned that was fun.

I was bone-weary by the time we got back to camp. We ate dinner, hung out then bunked down early so we could be up by 5 to pack and head out.
We woke up to the weird wind storm thingy. The trek back was pretty easy but it was scary to see the steep drop from the cliff that we scaled in the dark. We stopped by this wonderful place for breakfast. I had steak and eggs and a nice cold Guinness (I’m not much of a drinker these days, but for some odd reason, a nice cold beer and steak ALWAYS sound so good after a tough hike) for breakfast.
Edit: Finally got the slide together. It's a bit long but we did have over 2 gigs of photo between all of us.
It was a wonderful trip. Happiness is a piece of steak grilled rare and an ice cold Guinness at the end of tough hike.