Monday, August 3, 2026
7.3 miles, 591′ gain/2224′ loss
Since we had such a short hike to White River today, we slept in this morning until 7am after going to bed early because it was so cold. We enjoyed taking our time this morning, with hot coffee and breakfast snacks sitting on our campsite’s log. The low temperature overnight was 37 degrees, but it was in the low 50s by the time we started hiking at 9am.
Smoke had come in overnight and it was ~100 AQI at the site. We checked some websites for information since we had service. No fires were threatening our hike in any way, but we might has smoke problems for a few days. As we descended into the forest, the smoke lessened to ~50 AQI, though visibility was quite poor.
We hiked together, chatting as we went, and kept a very relaxed pace for our 7 miles to White River. It was mostly wooded, with tall trees and thick green moss, paralleling many creeks and rivers. We descended for the first few miles, enjoyed some flat walking, and then had a small climb up to White River. Thankfully, the water level was lower than 2 days ago when we checked on the log bridge across the river and the river had been spilling over the top of the bridge.
We arrived at the campground before 1pm, set up our tents, retrieved our resupply buckets, chatted with other Wonderland Trail hikers, and sorted our resupply. We enjoyed a few non-alcoholic beers we’d put in our buckets, and relaxed for the rest of the day, meeting other hikers we’ll overlap with in the coming days.
