Copper Ridge/Chilliwack River Loop

We first explored the Hannegan Peak and the surrounding area last year, when we took a weekend backpacking trip with Katy’s brother, Mitch.

All three of us were struggling with some injuries back then, and we couldn’t get permits for the entire Chiliwack River loop. While we saw some amazing terrain, we didn’t fully experience it.

As a result Katy and I have had this trip firmly planted on the “to-do” list. However, in the year since we were last here, we started trail running, so naturally this shifted from the “to-backpack” list onto the “to-run” list.

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Seven Lakes Basin/High Divide Loop

Prior to our weekend to Goat Rocks, countless backpacking loops sat on the shelves of my mind collecting dust due to, mostly, lack of vacation days and good weather windows.
However, now that we figured out we can cover a lot more miles by running the loops, Katy and I restarted our tick list of trips to check out here in the PNW.

Given how my legs felt running last time, I figured I should still ease into this, so we chose a popular and beautiful loop in the Olympics. The plan was to do the High Divide Trail (also known as Seven Lakes Basin loop), and camp outside the reservation-only area to split the loop up into two days.
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Fastpacking: Goat Rocks Wilderness

Ever since Katy and I started trail running this past spring, we started thinking about how to combine this with backpacking. A few research articles hinted that this is totally a thing, and suddenly we didn’t feel so weird calling it “fastpacking”.

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