SURVIVING THE OUTDOORS

Although I had done many hikes before, the summer of the 2019 was very productive in this sense , my son and myself did a backpacking to Lake summit a beautiful place on the south of Mount Rainier , it was his first backpacking , we did a hike prior to the one nigh stay and we loved it , we stay on the lake area with beautiful view to Mount Rainier.

We tried a tent that in my opinion was a little heavy for backpacking, it was almost 6 lb , I decided to switch for a more light weigh big agnes tent super light weigh, as far as my sleeping pads I have been trying many and so far sea to summit sleeping pads are been very reliable and also comfortable when it come to cold whether although I have been combining with the terma-rest foam pad which I also used as a seat in camp or to rest during the trail.

in the summer of 2019 I did many solo one night backpacking, one of them was the Winchester Lookout , I got on my car and drove there for almost three hours and half , getting on the off road to the main trail head around 4 to 5 pm , actually could not get to the main trail, the road was deep on snow little difficult for my Subaru outback , so I decided to leave the car on the side of the road and keep going on foot, it got dark very quick, walking on the dark for the first time on many hikes, it was calm and cold , I did not have my winter boots since I did not expect to find snow or at least that much snow on the road , so my feet were the coldest I ever felt.

I could not arrive at the lookout I was getting very cold and dark , I was afraid I could get out of the trail or maybe since the snow was very deep the danger of falling on a hole was the present I decided to stay almost 1 mile before the target, still it was a beautiful spot on the twin lakes , got there choose the first open space that I could see on the dark and got my tent ready, rapidly change my socks and my dress on my night outfit while hot water for my hot coco was on the making, it took me sometime before I could control my temperature even inside my sleeping bag which was a 20 degree, at that moment i could easily felt subzero temperatures, while I was on my seeping bag I was thinking about the return , I knew it was not going to be easy , the roads would be icing and dangerous to go down.

The morning was beautiful , with astonishing clear skies, but very cold ,the water in my containers were frozen and some condensation also frozen , got my breakfast ready and did some exploring short hikes round could not get far since the snow was deep , i did not have snow shoes or even insulated boots, after enjoying the view and the silence , I start thinking about how I was going to go down , did not want to go immediately, because I knew the roads would be very icy,so anyhow I packed all and start walking down , I confirmed my thoughts as I was going down , got to the car and waited until past noon. The time came and I started driving down, few hundred feet coming on the shadows of the tree line, my car started slipping towards the cliff, and a moment that no one wants to experience, you lose complete control on the car, there is not traction, I bet had video recorded myself and posted on any social media it could have been viral, seen myself yelling to the car STOP STOP STOP!, the car stop by itself, got out of the car and start breaking the ice with an ice axe, then laying pieces of debris fro old logs , leaves rocks ,and more, happened a couples of times more did the same every time , until I got down where the road were more manageable.

after every experience there is some learning left , I got some chain for my car just in case and try to check the weather report of the area and some reviews of the area. some thing that I start noticing on this trip particularly was the the electronics lose charges very quickly and that power bank dos not charge as it should, takes very long and then lose the charge again very fast.

Going up to Pilchuck was very exciting, it was one of the hikes that was on my list for a very long time , I planned to go and do a solo hiking , staying inside the fire outlook by myself, arriving on the trail head around 2 pm getting up on time for sunset it was week days i was not expecting to find any one up there, but little did I know there a guy up there , then another two joins us later one if them a woman with her little dog , all of them thinking about the same thing , spending the night by themselves , birds of the same flock.