Navaho Pass

We decided we need to get on this whole backpacking thing before we loose all this great Seattle summer weather! I think next year we'll do a better job at getting weekend backpack trips in. They're so easy and cheap and amazingly beautiful! This weekend may have been the best backpacking trip I've ever done. It was perfect weather. We chose a close hike so we didn't have to rush. There weren't too many people on the trail to deal with. The starts were out in full force. It was great! We had been throwing around a few different hike ideas the last week or so. Finally we decided on Navaho Pass since it was the closest one and we weren't motivated to get up super early on Saturday to make it to a trail. We made it to the trail around noon and headed up.









The trail was pretty easy. It was a decent amount of elevation gain, but nothing too technical. We took a few breaks along the way and made it to the pass in a few hours. The views from the pass were amazing! Quite a few people had already claimed little camp site so we set out to find one for ourselves before it got dark. We got a little nervous at first since every place we thought might have a good spot was already taken. We walked up the ridge for a ways without finding a good flat spot to set up. We were about to give up and head down to a lower spot when we came across the perfect spot...with no one anywhere near it! It was right on the ridge, so we had great views of the valleys on both sides. We were a little nervous at first that it might get super windy since there wasn't much tree protection on the ridge, but it was perfect.





We set up camp and just sat and enjoyed the views for a while. When the sun started to set, Ryan cooked up some supper while I did a little reading out loud...I'm such a nerd. When the sun set it started getting a little chilly so we bundled up in our sleeping bags in the tent. Since it was so clear out, we opted to sleep with the rainfly off...which basically left us sleeping under the open sky. The stars were killer! We just laid there for a while staring at the stars before we drifted off to sleep. 







Since we didn't have the rain fly on, we were also woken up as the sun rose. That was pretty amazing as well :) We enjoyed the sunrise from our tent before getting moving with some coffee and breakfast.



We packed up and hit the trail back around 9am so we could get home at a decent hour and clean up around the house. It was a pretty easy hike back down and we made it back to Seattle in the early afternoon. Definitely worth a quick backpack trip! It could also easily be a day hike if you went a little earlier in the day, but it was so much fun watching the sunset, sun rise, and sleeping under the stars!