A chilly morning; despite the thermals, the borrowed bag did not keep me as warm as I hoped. But I did sleep soundly. By the time the sun hit the tent I was up and out. It warmed up quickly and I switched to shorts and a T-shirt. John was all set up for breakfast and cooked a whole pack of bacon, four eggs scrambled and hot cocoa!
While John fished, I wandered, hoping to get to the top of the rim. I should have taken a direct route behind the camp, but I stupidly chose to go halfway around the lake, then up. The trail petered out, leaving two poor options: bushwhacking through thick, shoulder-high huckleberry, or a water-logged path at the edge of the lake. Getting up to the top of the rim no longer seemed worth it so I returned to camp.
The other guys had done some fishing; we packed up and headed out by around noon. I packed a couple of broken-off stromatalites from the outcroppings that were all around the campsite. These can be some of the oldest fossils on Earth, formed by mats of blue-green algae in shallow seas.
After some consultation, we decided to follow the stream for a more direct route down. It quickly turned dangerous in and around the creek, so we blazed a trail tangent to the chute. I led, pushing through incredibly thick patches of huckleberry, into dense fir forest, down precipitous brush-covered slopes, hanging on to branches with every step. I slipped a few times but was having fun until hitting the edge of a cliff and began to think we might have to back-track. John consulted his map and led us down an even steeper section, then across, eventually leveling out. We crossed another stream, crawled through a dog's hair thicket of alder bushes and soon caught the trail.
The crazy bushwhack had probably saved some time; we had descended at least halfway. The trail seemed steeper than it had coming up. It was hot in the sun, fairly cool in the forest. Within 90 minutes we reached the trailhead.
J had seemed to be doing okay on the way down, but was puking again in the stream (upstream!) at the trailhead. The two dweebs got in the back and rode mutt as we sped off, windows open. John asked them if they wanted to hit the A&W but Jason answered, "Nope. We're broke." That was that, we dropped them off at his trailer in Columbia Heights and wished them well.
Walking into the A&W, all stiff-legged, in dirty stinky clothes.... I inhaled a bacon cheeseburger; don't even remember what it tasted like.
