When I woke up in the morning, the Buddy Backpacker Contingent was already gone. I was totally alone again on another foggy, drizzly day. The four-mile road walk to the Foundation Camp trailhead (0098P) was a pleasant stroll lined by dense, wet, dark forest. There were a couple informational placards along the road at the site of an old logging cabin, which somehow made me feel a little bit less alone.

The Foundation Camp Trail followed an old overgrown logging road for a gentle climb up the mountain. I knew I would have no views all day, so I decided to just keep pressing instead of stopping at one of the two old fire lookouts (Mt. Wam, 0104P, and Stahl Peak, 0108P) as I had previously hoped to do.

Stahl Peak, I think

The persistent drizzle became a more serious concern as I gained elevation. I was getting colder, and the brush lining the overgrown trail kept me consistently soaked (hikers call this a “car wash”). My best bet was to keep moving. I decided to shoot for Bluebird Lake (0113P), which the trail guide said was a good place to camp.

The rest of the hiking day was pretty uneventful. I was lonely and freezing for most of it, so I just put my head down and hiked. Relief washed over me when I finally came upon the side trail to the lake. I followed it for a tenth of a mile to a beautiful meadow filled with glacier lilies (I tried not to think about how glacier lilies are a grizzly bear diet staple).

I got to the campsite as just as the sun was coming out, and spent my evening taking in the scenery. It took me a long time to set up my tent - I think I was so tired and hungry that my brain wasn’t really working.

For the whole evening, I hoped that I would see the Buddy Backpacker Contingent coming up the trail. I hadn’t seen any fresh footprints in the mud, or in the couple of small snow drifts I had crossed that day. Maybe I had passed them as they stopped for lunch at one of the fire towers? I made sure to take the smaller established tent site so that they would have enough room to set up.

This is what it’s like to not have access to other humans for a full day. It didn’t even matter that I had almost nothing in common with these people; I would have given anything to talk to them. They never came, and I camped alone.