Big Quil, Constance, and Dosewallips: August 2001

At the end of the summer of 2001, Anton and I embarked on a three-day trip up the Big Quil, one of the best loved trails of Parsons scouts and staffers. I had just finished up a summer as Head Commissioner at Parsons and was starting my teaching career at Kennedy. Anton was working as a DE for the scouts in Longview and had just completed a summer as camp director at Pioneer in Oregon. It was labor day weekend and we were excited to get out of town and run around in the woods for a few days. We started out Friday morning hiking uphill towards Marmort Pass, uncertain if the clouds would part for the view ahead.


Notice I am STILL wearing the borrowed backpack from my mom with no padding on the waist strap. Yeah, that was painful after day 3.


At last: Marmot Pass! This is one of my favorite spots in all of the Olympic Moutains. We had a sweeping view of the interior and blue skies above.

From the pass we decended to Home Lake, where we camped for the night. I don't know what was on our menu that night, but it definitely wasn't chicken slop! I do remember that as we fell asleep that night I thought about how peaceful it is to be out in the wilderness, totally cut off from normal life and all its stresses. We fell asleep and woke with the sun and heard nothing outside our tent but the gentle wind, birds, and the occasional whistling marmot.

On the second day, we hiked up to Constance pass. It was a challenging hike, but just when you thought you were done-- oh no!-- the trail continues UP from the pass for a while before beginning the decent on the other side. The side of the pass is very exposed and we were constantly refilling our waterbottles. We did see a couple of marmots with the wind ruffling their fur coats. That was pretty cool!

We camped just above the Dosewallips that night and hiked out the next day. (We had parked one car at each trailhead.) I was definitely tired at the end of that hike, even though it had been a great weekend. And thanks to my sore hips I knew that for our next trip I needed a new backpack!
This was our last backpacking trip as a dating couple, since a ring appeared in the picture just a few weeks later. To think about those days now: without kids, a mortgage, etc. etc... it is definitely a portrait of a simpler time. Just the two of us out in the Olympic mountains. It can't get much better than that.