Day 1 - SUCCESS!!

Box Canyon to Paradise River Camp
10.5 Miles / 2035 elevation gain

My definition of success for Day 1:
Success means we made it to Paradise River Camp.

Yep, we made it. 10.5 miles and 2035 elevation gain. Note: the distances and elevation gain I will be giving was my best estimate however during our hike we often referred to Bettey Filley's book "Discovering the Wonders of the Wonderland Trail" and I noticed that some of my numbers were off a bit but overall pretty close.


We made it to the Box Canyon Trailhead about 8:15 and were on the trail by 8:30. Here we are at the sign on the road across from the trailhead:



And at the trailhead where I look kind of worried, huh?




And now a note about the pictures on this trip... So many of you are reading this because you asked to see pictures so this is a way to share those pictures. Sadly, we had a little camera snafu which is going to result in not as good of pictures as I would have hoped for. Let's remember that goal # 1 in all of this is to get myself around the mountain. If you want to see everything the Wonderland trail has to offer then you are going to have to get yourself around the mountain because pictures just don't relay the grandiose panoramas we experienced. I was expecting A LOT as far as scenery goes on this trip and I was completely blown away by the fantastic scenery. The views far surpassed anything I could have ever imagined.

Early in the trip planning I considered taking my nice SLR camera but it was just too heavy and I decided against it. Instead, I settled on my little pocket Sony Cybershot. I even ordered an extra battery about 3 weeks before the trip and here's where we have the problem. The extra battery never arrived and it still hasn't arrived! So I was stuck with just one battery which would have been fine except for one thing...

A few days before we left I downloaded all the pictures on my camera's memory card so I'd have plenty of room for pictures of the hike. I took some lovely photos on day 1 and then on day 2 I went to take pictures and my camera gave me a nice little message about the memory card being full. Doh! I had forgotten to erase all the pictures I had downloaded before leaving. Now the only way to erase them would be one by one and that process sucks battery. To make matters worse my camera thought it would be funny if it required me to delete 10 pictures to "clear" enough memory to take one picture. More battery sucking fun!

When it became apparent a few days before we left that the extra battery might not arrive I decided to just order an extra camera. Amazon was having a great deal on the Casio Exilim. We had given one to both of our sons for gifts and it seemed like a nice little camera. Curt had expressed interest having his own camera on the trip. I thought he could use the new camera for the trip and then we'd keep the packaging and box it up and give it to Emily for her birthday next month. The camera arrived the day before we left and Curt was very pleased to have his own camera.

One more thing... the subject of "photography" has been a sore point in our marriage for many years. I can take a decent picture and let's just say that taking a decent picture isn't one of Curt's talents. I'll often ask him to take a picture of me and kids somewhere and it just doesn't quite turn out how I had hoped when he's behind the camera. That being said, my camera started going dead pretty early in the trip so many of the pictures were taken by Curt. If the photo is beautiful and awe inspiring then I probably took it and if it's not the best photo then it was probably taken by Curt. Just kidding! He did actually did alright AND he got a great bear shot (Spoiler Alert: we saw bears.) So I digress and just for getting the bear picture I will forever, from here on out, never ever criticize his photo taking abilities again.

OK back to Day 1....

We got on the trail at 8:30 and began the quick decent down Steven's Canyon. We had maybe been hiking 30 minutes when Emily asked, "When we get back can we have steak and mashed potatoes for dinner?" Poor Kid! She had only been hiking 1/2 hour and she was already suffering from hiker's food deprivation fantasies. By the way, that's just what I made for dinner the day after we got back as she asked for it almost everyday out on the trail. We made good time getting to Maple Creek Camp in about 45 minutes. From there we followed the trail along Steven's Creek and slowly started climbing out of the canyon. Over our right shoulder we would catch glimpses for the road far above us. A little later we had climbed enough to be even with the road on the other side of the canyon. Soon I looked and we were above the road! I was doing it, I was successfully climbing out of Steven's Canyon with a 25 pound pack. Amazingly to me it seemed that perhaps I might be able to make it -- at least until the end of the day.

We made our way up to Lake Louise where the sky was clear and we had a beautiful view Ranier:



We continued on to Reflection Lakes where we stopped for an hour lunch break and had one of the many tourists there take our picture:



We continued on our way passing the short trail to Narada Falls where he hiked up to see the falls. There is also a trail from the road to the falls so there were lots of tourists. We asked a guy to take our picture which he did and then his friend, Doug from Sequim offered to take one with his Nikkon DSLR. He then emailed it to us. Score! Here it is: (Thanks again Doug!)



And one of just the falls:



We then finished our hike for the day ending at Paradise River Camp at 3:00. We were the first ones to camp but by 5:00 all spots were taken. We took site #1.


We put on our camp shoes (Crocs) and headed down to the river to get water and soak our feet in the glacier fed water. It was so cold but Curt decided he'd try out soaking in the river:




He didn't last long.

We went back to camp and got dinner started. I finished unpacking my pack and guess what I found? Remember those training walks I mentioned with a backpack weighted down with books? Apparently, I forgot to remove a nice 500 page hard back book, "The Rise and Fall of Nauvoo". I had been packing that book around all day! At first, Curt thought he might want to keep it for reading material but we decided to ditch it the next day in Longmire. I had spent hours reading tips on lightweight backpacking and worked really hard at getting gear that would keep my pack weight low only to carry a heavy hard back book all 10 miles of the first day.

I was very stiff and sore at this point and had no idea how my body would react to the days activities. I was concerned I'd wake up in the morning not able to walk very well. I took some Advil and went to bed.

Gear/Tip of the Day:
Hiking poles are great! I've never used them before but knew with all the ups and especially downs I would really need them on this trip. They make great thir and fourth points of suspension on rocky trails and when going downhill. I'll definitely be using them on all future hikes.