Background
Months back, my friend won the highly coveted Mount Rainier backpacking permit lottery, allowing us to plan a thruhike of the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier. We showed up to the Wilderness Information Center around 6 AM following a couple hours drive from our staging grounds in central Washington and got set making a couple changes to our initial plan, which began with the complex permit process that began with a lot of research (notably including this book on the trail itself) and the lottery in the spring and concluded with a hectic selection date in April.
While we had been able to secure 11 camps on the Wonderland Trail itself on our permit date, we had not previously been able to secure the east side camps. Those were the main priority. We were able to trade North Puyallup for Golden Lakes, balancing our west side days a bit more, as well as adding Granite Creek on the north side to split up one of our long days.
We also abandoned our initial plan to do both Spray Park and Ipsut Pass due to a bridge over the Carbon River on the mainline Wonderland Trail being out. That would mean no Tolmie Peak Lookout, but the overall the flexibility we built into our permit paid off in spades. We had originally planned to start at Box Canyon but the changes to our campsites turned us into a traditional Longmire start instead.
It was going to be a long 11 days to Sunrise for our resupply, the second longest carry I have ever done. The rarity of the permit and the flexibility that stretching our permit out afforded us made it worth it, in our opinion. Especially to allow us the walk-ups for the east side camps.
After exploring around Longmire a bit and having an excellent breakfast at the National Park Inn, we headed back to camp at Cougar Rock and went through final assortment of our gear, before heading out for our first day on the trail.
Final Wonderland Trail Itinerary
| Night | Original Itinerary | Final Itinerary |
| Start | Box Canyon | Longmire |
| Night 1 | Devil’s Dream | Devil’s Dream |
| Night 2 | South Puyallup | South Puyallup |
| Night 3 | Klapatche Park | Klapatche Park |
| Night 4 | North Puyallup | Golden Lakes (Walk Up Substitution) |
| Night 5 | South Mowich | South Mowich River |
| Night 6 | Eagles Roost | Eagles Roost |
| Night 7 | Cataract Valley | Cataract Valley |
| Night 8 | Mowich Lake | Mystic Lake |
| Night 9 | Carbon River Camp | Granite Creek (Walk Up Substitution) |
| Night 10 | Mystic Lake | Sunrise |
| Night 11 | Sunrise | Summerland (Walk Up Addition)) |
| Night 12 | Summerland (Walk Up) | Indian Bar (Walk Up Addition) |
| Night 13 | Indian Bar (Walk Up) | Maple Creek (Walk Up Addition) |
| Finish | Box Canyon | Longmire |
