I eventually dragged myself out of my sleeping bag into the cold morning. It got down to 25 degrees F in the night, so I was not really excited to get out of my cozy cocoon.

After moving our camp to another site (since we had to take one of the ADA accessible sites the night before, and without an access pass, you’re only allowed one night) we loaded up our backpacks with water, clothing, and food for a hardcore training hike to prepare for backpacking in Glacier NP and North Cascades NP. Our packs were probably around 40-50 lbs so that we could find out if we could hack it, which is a great idea and important to do, but it sucked.

The Garnet Canyon trail is 9.5 miles round trip, not including the .25 miles from the car to the trail head since parking was rather full. An elevation gain of 2,650 feet over 4.25 miles with 40-50 lb packs and fairly out of shape people makes for a miserable climb. Fortunately there were lots of nice views which gave us further excuse to pause and think about all those days we could have been doing leg workouts.

It ended up being totally worth it, in the end.

For some reason, Robert wasn’t interested in climbing around in the boulder field, but I went of exploring and I found some cool little spots where the water was flowing under giant boulders and in little niches of green amongst the rocks.

The way back down was much nicer for a while. I appreciated the views and took lots more pictures.

After about six or seven miles, my feet decided that my shoes weren’t as comfy as they used to be. My upper back also reminded me that my pack was heavy-ish. All around, getting back to the car was exquisite.

The evening was much warmer than the previous one, but we turned in early all the same, being dead tired and all.