August 20

I woke up the next morning after a very full night's sleep. We were all expecting it to be a lot colder than it actually was, and were pleasantly surprised when we got out of the tent in the morning that is was just a little chilly, nothing more. We had a slow morning eating breakfast and deciding what we wanted to take with us on our day hike up and over Eccle Pass. It was a gorgeous morning, and we were all hot very quickly, as we were going up hill the whole time. We reached the top of the pass a lot faster than I had anticipated, and stopped to rest and eat a snack.

Then we went down the other side among a bunch of little ponds or tarns I think they're technically called, and found a bigger one to eat lunch by. As we ate, clouds started to role in, revealing two different storms, and we debated whether we wanted to go to the other pass, which was or original goal, or should we turn around and go back over the first pass to get out and low before the storms hit. We decided that moving on would be fine, because there was plenty of trees that we could hide in if the need arose.

By the time we reached the other pass, the storms had passed on gone different directions and we were hot again, since we'd put our clothes on again. Well we stopped at the top of this pass again to look at some little marmots there. They should have been really shy, but they weren't and one came within about a foot of dad! They almost seemed to be posing for our cameras, so we got some really good pictures of all of them. Then we decided to go to the top of this little knoll where we got some really nice pictures again, as well as being able to see just how red from beetle kill the valley below was.

When we came down again to the place where the marmots where, they were still there and Rissa wanted to see if one of them would approach her like they did, and so she went to sit down a little bit away from us. Sure enough, almost instantly the bold one came up to her and looked like it was about to sit in her life. Promptly Larissa jumped up yelling, "EW!!!! It's ugly!" Dad and I just laughed at her reaction. Apparently their buck teeth are almost scary up close.

After that we started walking back to camp, and another storm started to role in so we were trying to hurry a little. However we still took a bit of a detour because we saw a big patch of snow. It's sort of a tradition to boot ski on our backpacking trips, and so that's what we did. The snow wasn't very fast, but it was really fun. By the time we got back to camp it had cooled down quite a bit and the sun was no longer out. So we went into the tent to have a little down time.

The storm passed quickly and we went out to eat dinner, which was mashed potatoes and chicken. Even though it was dried, it actually tasted good. But then again, everything always tastes better while you're backpacking. Chances are if I had that at home, I would be absolutely disgusted by it. I didn't feel very good as I'd had a headache and a stomach ache since we got back from our adventures, so I went into the tent and to bed early that night.