Distance hiked today: 15.3 miles / 24.6 km.
Last night the fog was thick and dripped from the trees, but I don't think it actually rained. I could hear faint thunder and see small flashes of lightning, but it never stormed here.
Giggles and I took an alternate trail at lower elevation to get out of the clouds and check out an old railroad tunnel. We hiked along the old railway path next to a lake. The path was popular among cyclists, who cycle through the 2 mile tunnel with headlamps. We didn't go all the way through since it would involve some backtracking to town, but the cool air gushing from the tunnel was great.
We finished hiking into the ski town of Snoqualmie. The ski hills and lifts come right to the highway, and the only stores in town seem to be the Chevron gas station and another small store at one of the hotels. I was supposed to have a resupply box here, but it never arrived. It's stuck in transit somewhere in California for some reason, and I had a lot of food in that one for the next 7 days. So I had to resupply from the gas station which had limited grocery options - tuna packets, pepperoni, cheese, nuts, some relatively low carb protein bars, eggs (which I hard boiled at the hostel later), and I had 3 freeze-dried meals leftover. It'll have to do for the next 3 days to another ski town.
Then we headed to the Washington Alpine Club (WAC) cabin, which hosts hikers in the summer in hostel style with volunteer hosts. It was super cozy, with a kitchen, laundry, showers, bunks, and space to chill. They even provide food for dinner and breakfast which everyone helps out to cook, and it's all for $30 a night.
I helped make the salad for dinner, which was served along with pasta and sausages (I just put the pasta sauce on sausages 👌). Hikers lined the benches in the communal eating area. The main dinner conversation at our table was: are sunrise and sunset distinctly different, in a way that you could tell them apart just from a photo of an unknown place? (Verdict: not really.) And is twilight before or after dusk? (It's before!)
Total trail mileage: 2394.2 miles / 3852.3 km
