Since I unexpectedly stayed at the Colter Bay campground on Wednesday night, I had an easy trek to my first destination of the day – real showers and the laundromat! As I drove the half mile to the laundromat, I saw that there was a lot of fog hanging around the lake, with the mountains peeking out overtop. I knew it wouldn’t last long, so I threw on some shoes and headed out to the same trail I was on a couple days ago.
By the time I actually got to the good mountain views, most of the cloud coverage was gone, but I still walked along the water for awhile and took even more pictures!
After that short side trip, I headed back to take a shower (which was amazing!) and do my laundry. It was nice to have a break and be able to fully charge my phone, catch up on what I had missed over the last 5 days and just generally take a break for a little bit. I finished laundry about lunchtime and headed back to Trapper Lake.
When I got to the Leigh Lake trailhead, I briefly talked to a Ranger who was headed out on the trail. I was still packing up my stuff, but he was sure I would catch up to him at some point on the trail. I did eventually catch up to the Ranger and he offered me a kayak ride if I would help him to get to the north side ranger station. Unfortunately, I didn’t know where that was (especially in relation to where I was going), I’m not a strong swimmer should anything go wrong and it was already starting to get quite warm out, even under the shade of the trees. So, I passed on the offer, but later I found out that the Ranger station was very close to Beartrap Lake, so I would have had about half a mile of hiking to go after that, but I think I still made the right decision based on the information I had at the time.
When I got to camp, the lake looked a lot different with the sun shining over the mountains.
When I first saw the Ranger in the parking lot and told him where I was staying for the night, he told me that the night before there was a bear sighted at Beartrap Lake (the lake about half a mile before my campsite) and to make sure that I kept all of my food in the bear box. So, as soon as I got to camp, I quickly packed all of my extra gear into my very own bear box.
Shortly after I got there, my marmot friends came to visit again.
Since I made it to camp by late afternoon, I set up my tent and decided it was time to take a nap while the sun was so hot. I slept for a little bit and apparently there were a few other folks who took the trail, because at one point I heard someone say, “Look, there’s a tent. I didn’t see that on the way in – it’s well camouflaged.”
I made another campfire and just spent the night relaxing and watching a beautiful sunset over the mountains.
