T'was a beautiful September day and Daniel and I set out early for a beautiful day hiking up to Blanca Lake! The most challenging hike I have ever done.
7.5 miles round trip with a whopping 3300 ft elevation gain, my knees were knocking by the end.
we got a later start than planned and even with the warning of my sister who had previously hiked it, the sheer steepness of the switchbacks caused out trip in to be longer than anticipated.
But it could not have worked out more perfectly. we hiked up and up and through meadows of wild flowers and wild be berries, then dropped into the lake (thinking the whole time we descended that we were gonna have to climb back out after we reach the lake) quite a few people on the trail. had lunch at the lake and explored around a bit!
the crystal blue alpine water was breath takingly beautiful. I had never seen anything quite like it.
after relaxing for a bit and dipping our feet in the water we started the trek down knowing that it would be a race to sunset.
we stopped in the meadows and picked a full nalgene bottle of wild blue berries that i savored for a week afterwards. better than candy! store blue berries don't taste anything like mountain blue berries. the sun was starting to set and all the creatures were out. I learned what a Pikka was. These cute little rock dwelling gerbils were chirping and playing along as we walked. we were talking about bears and arguing whether or not WA has grizzlies because i was sure that in fact we did..when all of a sudden a black berry appeared on the hill top in front of us! it was the coolest site. so surreal. he spotted us and before we could even whip out our cameras he took off back over the hill.
the hike down was a long process and luckily we had headlamps to use for the last hour.
exhausting but totally and completely worth it!!
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