Day 6 - Summerland to Maple Creek 15.6miles

The first four miles from Summerland to Indian Bar cross Panhandle Gap, the highest elevation point of the Wonderland Trail. The whole section was pretty burly when I made it with strong headwinds, rain, low visibility and that is because I weathered out a thunderstorm complete with hail at the shelter waiting for these 'better conditions'. There is basically no shelter along the route and I had to open my pack and put on my puffy mid-hike due to the temperature which is pretty unusual since usually climbing a mountain produces plenty of heat. Anyway, we had a really cool little posse camped out at Summerland most of which was headed South and met back up at the Indian Bar shelter to defrost. From Indian Bar I crossed a little snow, but basically dropped into the woods and descended all the way to Nickel Creek, Box Canyon (and virtual civilization), and into Maple Creek.

Summerland meadow

Standard visibility at a pass along near Panhandle Gap

One of the frozen tarns I passed

One of the last shots I took before deciding there was just too much rain

Looking back at Panhandle Gap from Indian Bar - obviously lens was a 'bit' wet

This was the view leaving Indian Bar - the snow leaving Indian Bar wasn't bad - again Panhandle Gap in the background



Day 5 - Mystic to Summerland 20.8miles

Originally I had planned on the previous day ending at Carbon River, but my rough calculations showed about 5,500ft of elevation gain so I shaved a thousand feet and almost 4 miles off of it and camped at Mystic. The result is that Day 5 was a monster day. Jeff and I left camp at 7:30am winding past the Winthrop Glacier before climbing through the woods into Berkley Park before dropping into Sunrise via Sourdough Ridge around 1:30 (~9.2m).  Early in on the day we ran into a geology class doing moraine mapping and water sediment testing and later ran into a handful of people doing the Northern Loop trail which looked like a pretty awesome 2 night trip. It had rained a little over the night and day 5 was mostly cloudy and socked in with a few moments when the sun popped through.

Winthrop Glacier terminous

Right before Berkley Park, we apparently just missed a herd of goats

Looking into the Berkley Park bowl

Berkley Park was amazing - it can easily be day hiked from Sunrise and is on my list to revisit

We crossed dozens of bridges like these

Emmons Glacier coming down from Sunrise

After eating a veggie burger, beer, and then some coffee (and having a bit of a food cache mishap) we left Sunrise for White River which involved us taking some wrong turns and making it a 4.9miles trek rather than the 3.1 it could have been. Jeff and I split ways here and he met up with Joy for a night of car camping.


I think that this is a little piece of Fryingpan Glacier approaching Summerland

Summerland Shelter - where I was lucky enough to spend the night