Rachel Lake: 8/10/2023
Checking a box with this one, but this box probably would have been better checked 20 years prior.
Thursday
Rocks and roots on the steep trail up, playing leapfrog with a young family whose eight-year-old repeatedly blazed past us every time we paused to gasp. Thursday night was fine. We got one of the last campsites. Temperatures were moderate but the wind roared day and night, raising whitecaps on the lake.
Friday
Early Friday, the smart ones left, and we moved camp to a broad, dusty lakeside knoll with semi-private access to the shore. We walked to Rampart Lakes. Hornets stung Jason and Victor in their legs, one apiece. We’d been warned about a trailside nest, but a goofball in a wide floppy hat, enthusiastically exercising his uphill right-of-way, jammed us just as we were passing it. We ate of the ramen and the beef strog (stroʊɡ). At six o’clock, two dozen or so hikers click-clacked into the basin looking for campsites, some arriving as late as eight as the light disappeared. Accessory dogs watched first-timers’ fumbling attempts at deflowering virgin Hubba Hubbas (where does the pole go?), pitched on stony beaches and wide spots in the trail, arrogantly close to ours. “If we don’t do it, someone else will!” We glowered imperiously down but chose grace, acknowledging our own past idiot transgressions. But I didn’t feel it in my heart, and I don’t think they deserved it. Headlamps cast shadows that danced on our tent walls deep into the night. Wilderness.
The next morning we motivated out of our tents at 7:30 and were packed up by 9:00. On the way down, 10 or 15 groups of backpackers passed us on their way up. Good luck, fuckers.
Rocks
Geology information.
