Tolmie Peak Lookout - Eunice Lake — Wednesday, Jul. 24, 2013

Mount Rainier Area > NW - Carbon River/Mowich

Set out for Eunice lake, but we just passed the 1.2 mile mark and decided to head back. My five year olds were getting tired. If it was just that we would have stopped and rested but the bugs swarmed if we even stopped for 30 seconds. The bugs were horrible. I thought I had parked on a bees nest, when we arrived because we had huge deer flies surrounding our car. We doused ourselves in bugs spray and headed out. We were not bitten by the deer flys even though they accompanied us for our entire trip. It was those little black flies that actually broke skin. I ran into some backpackers with four days left of the Wonderland to hike and one said that he'd trade 1 mosquito for two horseflies. Then he showed me his arm and he had mosquito bites on top of mosquito bites.