Wonderland Trail – Day 1 – Joel and Alison’s Excellent Adventures

An early morning gear check at the Mountain Madness office and then a 2.5ish hour van ride to the trailhead and we were off to complete a 53 mile section of the Wonderland Trail.

An interesting note that the office was filled with memorabilia from the early days when Scott Fischer was the owner. In fact, there was an old poster that showed all the trips that were scheduled in 1996, including the trip to Mt. Everest where Scott and seven others died trying to descend from the summit during a blizzard. Another interesting note was that of the nine clients for our trip, many were so young that they did not know anything of the disaster or the history of Mountain Madness. Only one asked how old I was … GRRRR

Poster showing all the trips that Mountain Madness had scheduled for 1996.

This was the first adventure that I have taken with Mountain Madness and it was a great time – the guides were competent, funny, great cooks, and had a great pace for clients with fairly large packs. They actually cooked about 1/2 of the meals vs all freeze-dried and we were treated to custom pizzas, pesto chicken pasta, chicken and vegetable curry, savory pancakes and breakfast burritos. Although I burned a lot of calories hiking the 53 miles, I certainly did not lose an ounce of weight! And the rest of the hikers were great – the group got along very well and I think in my 20+ years of going on these type of group trips, this was the best group (and the largest, to boot!) They came from all over – MN, WA, GA, MI and UT and we all connected immediately.

Group gear divided into nine piles – we were required to each take a pile and add it to our pack.

Lead Guide Zach, Steve, Susan, Melissa, Carol, Tami, me, Steve, Steve’s daughter Elizabeth, Ashley and Head Chef, James

Our first day was actually going to be sort of a long day – we offloaded the van and adjusted our packs and set off from the Mt. Rainier National Park Paradise Visitor Center. The hike was predominantly downhill for 11 miles to the Nickle Creek Campground and it was dark by the time we got all the tents set up and organized. James ended up cooking in the dark! As the posted itinerary only indicated 8.9 miles we soon realized that you can’t believe everything you read on the internet! HAHA Many more inconsistencies were noted but hey, that’s why it is called an “adventure!”