Recreation & Fun

I AM not a camper by nature. Truth be told, I abandoned scouting at age 12, after the sophomore rank of Webelos, because I suffered from an intense childhood phobia of khaki uniforms, convinced they would portend a future career in package delivery. I only stuck with it as long as I did because, in my day, Webelos wore super-chic navy ensembles with a fleur-de-lis patch that always reminded me of a half-peeled banana. Vanity denied me a suitable education in outdoor living skills and all the attendant patches that go with them.

This, I am sorry to say, is what went through my head late one afternoon in August, during my first camping trip in more than two decades, when I thought I was done for and someone would find my rotting corpse halfway up the side of Mount Rainier in Washington.

Camping, everyone keeps saying, became more popular in the recession because, as Nicholas D. Kristof wrote in The New York Times in August, it’s “the cheapest of vacations.” With extra time off on my hands, I was determined to discover if just anyone could get back to nature and still be happy about it. And by “just anyone,” I meant me, a soft, indoorsy chronicler of the fashion world, whose idealized vision of the great outdoors falls closer in line with the spring 2010 collection of the gay-or-Italian-leaning label DSquared, which included a stone-chiseled model wearing only boxer briefs, hiking boots and a sleeping bag as a cape.

But where was I? Oh yes, almost dying.

It was an ambitious return to nature, I will admit. Along with my travel companions — Rosemary Feitelberg, one of my closest friends who had been enlisted in this adventure because Chris Smith, her boyfriend, is sturdy and rugged and mine would have nothing to do with a vacation that was limited to only one outfit change — I had planned an eight-day hike (we ended up taking nine) along the Wonderland Trail, a 93-mile loop of moderate difficulty that sits like a necklace around the base of Rainier. The trail actually encircles the mountain, tracing the contours and ridges of the great volcano on a path that is nearly always vertical, either going uphill or down. Bette Filley in her 40-year-old guide, “Discovering the Wonders of the Wonderland Trail,” said the trek was “like walking the crimped edge of an immense pie crust.”

Only about 250 people hike the entire trail each summer, during a roughly two-month peak season from late July to mid-September. Hundreds more tackle smaller portions, but to make it the entire way around requires hikers to pursue one of three plans of attack: Carry everything they might need on their backs; strategically deposit caches of food and clean socks at scattered ranger stations along the trail; or eat light.

We had chosen the second option and, on the morning we set out, dropped off two supersize bags of dehydrated food at the Mount Rainier National Park hiker center at Longmire, near the southwest entrance to the park, where we also picked up the requisite permit for backwoods camping. A team of cordial rangers helped us complete our itinerary by choosing where we would set up our tents each night among the 21 campsites situated at intervals of three to seven miles along the trail. Some sites can be reserved months in advance and some are distributed first-come first served, but most designated reserved sites are fully booked a few weeks after the park service begins accepting applications each year, in mid-March. We cobbled together a feasible route from what was left over, beginning on the opposite corner of the trail, at the White River entrance in the northeast and making our way clockwise around the mountain. It was 10:30 a.m. when we took our first steps on the Wonderland Trail.

THE first mile or so was exactly as you might imagine: a broad, well-shaded path that meandered through tall cypress trees, the sound of our boots tempered by a carpet of soft needles, our bodies slowly becoming accustomed to the weight of our packs. The trail traces the base of Goat Island Mountain, ascending from an elevation of 4,000 feet at a fairly even pace, with a thundering waterfall on one side, and we were lulled into a sense that our hiking experience would be a breeze. A brief note on my ensemble: I wore a turtle-green short-sleeve safari shirt and khaki — yes, I know — zip-off shorts from Patagonia, tied together with a 20-year-old Banana Republic cowboys-and-Indians printed handkerchief with a red campfire accent that perfectly matched my latest acquisition, a flaming-red L. L. Bean hiking pack that, when stuffed to the gills, weighed about 45 pounds.

Before you judge, please consider that we were carrying only the bare essentials: tents, sleeping bags and air mattresses, a water filter and bladder, sun block and bug spray, bear spray, a knife that would have made Rambo jealous, a compass and map, a flashlight, a stove, toiletries and food. We were prepared with gear for every emergency detailed in the guidebooks, including ski caps and gloves for hypothermia, though none of the warnings mentioned anything about a heat wave. The temperature in Seattle on our arrival was 103 degrees, and it only seemed to be hotter on the mountain.

It was early afternoon when we passed the tree line and stepped into one of the most idyllic stretches of the trail, up a steep incline through fields of wildflowers capped by an inspiring view of Rainier’s bald head due west. In the direct sun, I began to struggle under the weight of the pack and the altitude, now 5,500 feet, requiring more frequent breaks as we climbed. We saw other hikers, mostly climbers who had scaled Fryingpan Glacier in the early morning and were now making their way back down to their cars. They seemed to share a look in their eyes that could be described as euphoria mixed with horror. One man told us that the heat was so intense that his climb had become unsafe. He realized this when a rabbit-size rock, loosened by the melting ice, went whizzing by his head.

The final approach toward Summerland, the first campsite we would encounter after hiking seven miles, is Mount Rainier’s version of San Francisco’s Lombard Street. Here the trail has so many dizzying switchbacks zigzagging up the mountainside, covered in incredibly beautiful knee-high lupine, that it invites a sense of dementia and the temporary impulse to yell out “Riiii-cco-la” to the hikers who are ahead of you and those behind. It took nearly half an hour to climb to the top, where I unbuckled my pack and promptly plopped down on the ground next to a prostrate group of women in their late 50s who looked as if they, too, were ready to call it a day. A sad-looking coyote was sipping water on the other side of a creek. When Chris told the women our plan was to continue to the next site, called Indian Bar, some 4.5 miles farther, they gave us a dubious look. “That’s where we came from,” one said. “And it took us all day.”

It was after 3 p.m. A cheap thermometer I had attached to the back of my pack said the temperature was 110 degrees. I assumed it was broken. (It was not. We later learned from the park rangers that the temperature that day in Ashford, a town just outside the southwest entrance to the park, had reached 103, so it wasn’t that far off.) In some places, the trail beyond Summerland is barely a foot wide and marked with boulders, and the terrain is suddenly moonlike in its sparseness. We began to see patches of snow, which was concerning because, while picking up supplies at the REI store in Tacoma, we were told that an experienced hiker had taken a bad fall the week before and that another had been forced to turn back because of the ice.

Although we had reached the highest point of the Wonderland Trail, at 6,900 feet, only once did we feel the relief of a breeze cooled by the kiss of a glacier. When we came upon an eerily blue lake, bluer than the Mediterranean, clear-looking enough to be a mirage or a mirror, I could not resist a quick dip, and so I ran headlong into the water as Chris and Rosemary were still taking off their shoes. As I broke through the still surface of water, the sensation I felt was that I would not be coming back up. My legs and arms felt disconnected from my body, collectively numb, but I could sense every hair on my head stand up in unison, and then, in the same millisecond, a piercing stab through my chest. I jerked my head up and gasped. It had not occurred to me that a lake halfway up the highest summit in the Cascade Range (14,410 feet) and one of the highest points in the lower 48 states, and not a mile from the edge of a glacier (ironically named Fryingpan) might be, well, as cold as ice. My feet touched bottom, and I sloshed out of the water, frightened by the intensity of the pain, but surely invigorated.

There was still snow in front of us, first little ribbons that were easy to cross, then wide slicks of ice that required careful attention and that we dig in deep with our poles and heels. I tried to dig with my heels, as Chris suggested, only to clip off little chips of ice that flew up into my eyes. The worst moment came when the trail, going uphill, suddenly disappeared into a steep wall of ice that was 100 feet wide and extended beyond the horizon. There were no footprints of prior travelers, nor any direction as to which way led to the other side. It was after 6 p.m. by then, too late to make it back to Summerland. Well, this is it, I thought.

If it had not been for Chris, an experienced skier, we would have had to make camp alongside the trail that night. With his boots and poles, he dug a path that Rosemary and I could gingerly cross, and he carried our packs for us, one at a time. As he crossed the peak for the third time, I felt a terrible regret for having talked them into an adventure that was far more dangerous than I had believed, and, as we walked on in silence, I suspected they felt a bit hoodwinked. It was dusk when we reached the camp, just before 8 p.m. We barely had time to set up our tents before nightfall. I had no appetite, but we boiled water for a couple of freeze-dried meals, if only to have two fewer things to carry.

THE second day was less dramatic. We dawdled in the morning. I spent awhile thinking of things I could jettison to lighten my pack. I squeezed half a tube of toothpaste into the john (actually a wooden box on top of a hill at Indian Bar that some say has the best view in the park), along with the contents, but not the wrappers, of a package of tuna jerky and some nondairy creamer, arguing that they were biodegradable.

Heading south over a series of eight ridges, we were relieved to find that the terrain became less demanding and more alpine. Stunning panoramas of 100-foot silver firs, Alaska cedars and mountain hemlock ringed by countless blue mountain peaks in the distance induced the most divine sense of vertigo. My joy, however, was still tempered by nausea from heat and altitude sickness. Our destination, Maple Creek, was not much farther, about three miles on terrain that is as flat as it gets on the Wonderland Trail. We walked leisurely and arrived with daylight to spare, laughing off the previous day’s misery. Only we wished we hadn’t. The campsite, it turned out, was infested with biting black flies and swarms of mosquitoes. We had to wear black mosquito netting on our heads, three unmerry widows who spent the evening inside our tents.

Our third day was planned as a 12-mile hike across the park’s southern border, passing alongside Reflection Lakes, a popular photo opportunity from which Rainier looks like a snow-capped pyramid. Returning to Longmire, we would collect the remainder of our food, though we had barely touched what was already in our packs.

Our fourth day, on the west side, we planned to hike 20 miles. The remaining four days, we reasoned, would be a cake walk, averaging 10 miles each, crossing the north side and then back to our car. But it was hot again, and the trail had narrowed to a foot-wide sandy path along a 100-foot-high incline, with a mattress of sharp rocks below. The dense vegetation along the riverbank was being baked around us, making the trail feel and smell like a greenhouse. I was becoming delirious, trembling at moments, unable to breathe and fixated on my arms, which were now covered in dozens of welts from the mosquito bites and a butterfly shaped bruise from pulling my pack on and off.

“Look at me,” I said. “I’m a junkie!”

The itching was becoming worse. When we took a break to cool off in a small lake, I noticed that a heat rash had spread across my torso like an outbreak of measles. It was at this point, one third of the way around the mountain, that I had had enough, and — citing Fran Lebowitz’s essay on camping in which she wrote, “I am not the type who wants to go back to the land; I am the type who wants to go back to the hotel” — we quit. It was simply too hot to go on safely, and we happened to be as close as we were ever going to be to a hotel, an enormous lodge called the Paradise Inn, which looks like the hotel in “The Shining.” We were lucky to get two rooms.

The thing was, in spite of myself, I was really beginning to enjoy camping. The variety of Rainier’s vistas — the fields of yellow glacier lilies, pink mountain heather and tall beargrass, which looks like alien jellyfish — and its sounds — chirping birds and boulders bouncing down streams — were all becoming addictive. After a night of rest, we decided to try again, only this time seeing the Wonderland Trail only as far as we could stand to walk away from our car. (The only problem was that ours was still 40 miles away at White River; Chris paid a hotel employee to give us a lift back there for $50.) The first post-hotel night, we pitched our tents next to the car, in one of the few drive-in campsites where fires are permitted, then roasted marshmallows, had a six pack of Corona and watched the stars.

THE rest of the trip was, in fact, wonderful. Although most of the trail is situated far from roads, there are two access points in the northwest corner, in addition to White River on the west side and the main entrance at Longmire on the southeast. From Longmire, where our food cache remained untouched, we hiked north 10 miles, across dew-covered hills to Tahoma Creek, which is crossed on a bouncy wooden plank bridge of the kind you find in Indiana Jones movies, then hiked back to the car. We could not see Rainier from the west, alas, as a heavy mist had settled in the area that day, close to a whiteout, finally bringing an end to the heat wave.

After driving to the northwest entrance of the park, we set up camp at Ipsut Creek, a spooky rundown site that had been damaged by heavy flooding but had plenty of availability on short notice. From there, we spent a day hiking the trail south toward Mowich Lake and back. The next day, we headed east toward Mystic Lake. We covered 14 to 20 miles each of the last three days — a lot easier when you’re unencumbered of a tent on your back.

All told, we hiked 82 miles, the highlight being the final, broad stretch on the north side, where, in a matter of hours, you can walk alongside the colossal gray whale of the Carbon Glacier, then through an alpine field where marmots, which look like a backcountry cousin of the Shih Tzu, pop up their heads to issue a mating call that sounds like the shriek of an eagle. The sandy trail changes from purple to olive to an earthy brown, reflecting the pumice deposits of eons of volcanic eruptions around the Cascades.

It was there, high atop Desolate Ridge, that I came face to face with Mount Rainier from the north, which is a humbling perspective as you take in all its grand dimensions, the stony outcrops and melting snowfields that form waterfalls hundreds of feet high, a different mountain, it seemed, than the one seen from the other side.

It was enough to make you appreciate why anyone would spend a week walking around in a circle.

GETTING THERE CAN BE PART OF THE CHALLENGE

HOW TO GET THERE

Many airlines offer daily nonstop flights to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, including Delta, JetBlue and American. In August, when I went, the best fare was around $300 on JetBlue out of Kennedy Airport in New York.

Getting to the Wonderland Trail inside Mount Rainier National Park, about 85 miles south of the Seattle area, is not easy. A handful of shuttle services stopped taking hikers a few years ago because of rising fuel and insurance prices, and Gray Line, which has daily bus tours, says on its Web site that it will not transport multiday hikers.

STITA, a taxi service, quoted a price of $300 to get to the park but couldn’t guarantee a cab would be available when we wanted to return. Unless you have a friend in the area willing to act as a chauffeur, there’s really no option but to rent a car and let it sit idly in a parking lot while you hike. During the summer, a 10-day rental with Avis or Hertz, without a corporate rate, was about $1,100.

WHERE TO STAY

Likewise, plotting your tour around the 93-mile trail is a logistical nightmare, especially if you wait until the last minute and want to go at the height of wildflower season in August. Designated campsites that require advance reservations become available in mid-March for the 2010 season. It’s best to first study a map (National Geographic’s waterproof version for $11.95 at wwwtrailsillustrated.com is ideal), and then plan 2, 3 or 10 possible itineraries before faxing an application to the National Park Service, following the directions at www.nps.gov/mora. The one-time reservations service fee is $20.

Many hikers start at the Wilderness Information Center at Longmire (360-569-2211), near the southwest park entrance, and go clockwise, but you might have luck starting at other points. Depending on road conditions, you can start at Mowich Lake in the northwest or White River on the east side of the park. Park rangers might be able to help you figure something out. Some sites are better than others. Mowich and Mystic Lakes are among the prettiest and, if you are cold-blooded, you can swim. Dick Creek, a tiny camp on the north side, overlooks Carbon Glacier, which is spectacular, but noisy. Try to avoid Ipsut Creek, a former drive-in camp in the northwest that looks as if it might harbor a machete-wielding serial killer in a hockey mask.

Before your hike, consider a night at the Paradise Inn (in Paradise; generally open mid-May to mid-October) or the National Park Inn (in Longmire, open year-round), both within the park confines, where singles without a private bathroom start at $104 and $111, respectively (360-569-2275; www.mountrainierguestservices.com). If you’re heading straight back to the airport when you’re done hiking, splurge on a night at the Hilton Seattle Airport (206-244-4800; www1.hilton.com; starting at $139), which has an enormous Jacuzzi by the pool that would be perfect for your bound-to-be-aching body.

WHAT TO EAT

If you are going to hike the entire trail, it is advisable to cache food in plastic containers at ranger stations around the mountain as directed by the National Park Service. Rangers stress that visitors should plan well for this hike and be careful to avoid hauling too much unnecessary weight. But you should still carry some extra supplies as a precaution, though not so much as to share with the park’s animal population. There are bear poles at each campsite where food should be placed each night. A water filter and bladder for your pack are essential for daily consumption and cooking.

Here’s what worked for us: We tried the entire dehydrated dinner range offered by the Backpacker’s Pantry brand and found a winner in the pesto salmon pasta ($13.50). A jar of peanut butter goes a long way for protein, and the surprise hit was miso soup — made from tiny, weightless mix packets that you can get from any Japanese deli.

Here’s what didn’t: Coffee and creamer (too much effort), gummy bears (not ironic), fish-based jerky (stinky) and dried fruits (delicious and healthy, but far too heavy).

ERIC WILSON is a reporter for the Styles section of The Times