The morning of Day 4 we had a relaxed hike down the Paradise Valley to Longmire, over terrain very familiar to me from my summer working at Longmire after high school.  That summer hiking from Longmire to Paradise was a commonplace trip to access the alpine zones above Paradise.  This time, we entered the Longmire complex and recovered our food cache at the ranger station, at upper right.  They also let me refill our fuel bottle from a large supply from hikers before us.  We loaded our packs then faced the very steep climb up Rampart Ridge, combining our heaviest pack with one of the hardest stretches of the trip.  Following a familiar pattern, we then descended to another valley and climbed again up to Devil’s Dream for the night.  Buggy with no convenient water--our least favorite camp of the trip.

Day 5 began with a brisk hike through beautiful, buggy Indian Henry’s Hunting Ground, then a descent to the spectacular bridge across Tahoma Creek shown at right.  This was a day of up and down again, but our muscles were becoming more accustomed to it.  We finished Day 5 at Klapatche Park, by reputation among those we met on the trails as full of mosquitos, but which was not as bad as we expected.  We found a site where our tent overlooked the scene at right and enjoyed the view from a mosquito-free tent.  We also read:  I brought the The Grapes of Wrath and halfway through we cut the book in half with a Swiss Army knife when Jenny finished her book.  All in all it was a great campsite.

The following day, Day 6, we descended steeply from Klapatche and then ascended again more gradually to Sunset Lakes, the most isolated part of our hike.  The lakes also have a patrol cabin, and have views to the Puget Sound basin from this northwest part of the hike.  Day 7 we descended and ascended to Mowich Lake where we camped in a walk-in campground accessible by road.  It wasn’t much of a campground in comparison with the others we’d enjoyed, but the consolation was to take a cleansing dip in Mowich Lake itself to remove at least a few layers of grime.