Trapper Creek Wilderness - Memorial Day Weekend

Trapper Creek Wilderness

Southern WA

Mileage:??

Elevation Gain

Difficulty: Intermediate-Hard

Dog Friendly

With how long it takes to drive down to the Washington-Oregon border from Seattle, we figured we better do another hike down there besides Dog Mountain. Unfortunately because it was so early in the season I didn't have the option of doing some of the hikes I really wanted to do (Indian Haven, The Tieton River, Goat Rocks etc.). After some looking we settled on Trapper Creek Wilderness since it was the most likely to be melted out. 

This overnight was not nearly as successful as Dog Mountain. We camped at an actual campground between Dog Mountain and the Trapper Creek hike, though I am sorry we did that, it was nice to have some creature comforts at the campsite, but I think we could have made more of the day had we camped a mile or so in. The one bonus is that we got to "Ice" our friend David. Now for those who are unfamiliar with this particularly cruel, though very funny prank, you hide a Smirnoff Ice where somebody is bound to run into it. If they see it they have to take a knee and drink it, but here's the rub, if THEY have their own Smirnoff Ice you have to drink both. However, we were relatively certain that David hadn't brought any with him. So we parked one outside of his tent first thing in the morning, cause we're sadists. 1 down 5 more in the six pack to go, and Chris was committed to bringing them with us.

After the Icing we had breakfast, struck camp and headed for the trail head. It's worth noting that the directions to Trapper Creek Wilderness in my hiking book were... insufficient. At best. We ended up having to do some exploring and there was absolutely no cohesion between what was written and the actual numbers on the forest service roads.

The hike itself was very nice. You start off walking through the forest and for most of the hike you're walking alongside Trapper Creek itself. We were trying to get to Observation peak, but either because it was one of the first real backpacking trips of the season and we were all out of shape, or because there were some major discrepancies on the mileage we didn't make it. The other unfortunate part is that it was Memorial Day weekend and part of the reason we didn't push through to the peak had to do with reports that there was no way we were going to find camping up there, apparently there were tons of boy scouts and folks who had taken both of the main campsites. We pushed on hoping we'd find some smaller campsites.

Around this time folks started to get really tired. I kept pushing, but we were taking frequent breaks. We ran into some people and they told us there was still a good 3.5-4 miles to go. About 10 minutes later 2 people in our group ran out of water. We had passed a stream back a little ways, as well as a smaller campsite. So we talked it over, and after taking a long, hard look at some of the group Chris and I made the executive decision to turn back and bed down for the night. 

There's something especially disappointing about not being able to finish a hike, it irritates me like a bug bite on my back that I can't quite reach to scratch. So I was disappointed, but it was the right choice. Knowing when to stop, and seeing the limits in others is SO important. When I was a kid my mom told me if you think you can do one more ski run, then you're already done. It's so true, pushing yourself is a very good thing sometimes, pushing yourself too far means you're more likely to get injured and ruin your whole weekend, or more... 

Just as we got back to the place we were going to camp it started to rain. Hard. All of the established campsites were full. So we ended up flattening out, and in some cases digging out, some space by the creek to pitch our tents. We also strung up some tarps to have a bit more coverage, a couple of us spent a very wet night. Even so, there's not much that beats sitting around a campfire, having some food and spending time with friends.

EXCEPT ICING DAVID. AGAIN AND AGAIN.

The next day we walked out, and headed back to civilization. Even though it hadn't been anywhere near perfect we were all better for having done it. Except David.

Snowy Holiday Hiking Collection

Allison and I discussed whether or not we should release a new post during Hanukkah/Christmas and New Year's.  We decided that everyone would probably be too busy with family, food, and presents to be able to concentrate or have the time to read a full blog post. Same conclusion we came to on Thanksgiving.  We still wanted to release something, and I thought to myself, what relates to the holidays and also hiking????

After a few minutes, it came to me, Snow.

We settled on doing a compilation of pictures and short descriptions from previous hikes where snow played a major role.  If you missed any of the original posts, just click on the title for the post below to be taken to the original post.  We also decided to throw in a teaser picture and description for a future post from one of the prettiest hikes we did right before leaving Seattle in August, Snow Lake.  We'd like to wish all the Hiking Trails and Puppy Dog Tales' readers a great Hanukkah/Christmas and New Year.  We will resume normal posting the first week of January. 

Snow Lake - July 10th, 2014

As promised, our first entry in the Snowy Holiday Hiking Collection is Snow Lake.  The post for Snow Lake is in the queue of backlogged hikes from this summer which are being posted chronologically every week until we get caught up.  If you like the picture on the left, you are in for a treat as I saved some of the best pictures for the full post. The full post will go up in February.  

Dog Mountain (North Fork Snoqualmie) - May 15th, 2014  

Snow held Katie and I back from the completing the last 400 vertical feet of this hike and gaining the summit.  Dog Mountain is a trail in the Mt. Baker Snoqualmie National Forest which was abandoned between 50-70 years ago.  At 9 mi. and almost 3900 ft. of elevation gain this trail is a challenging and technical day hike for anyone wanting to get off the (recently) beaten path.

Mt. Si Summit

via Boulder Garden Loop and Old Si Trail - May 20th, 2014

via the new trail from the main parking lot - April 22nd, 2014

Mt. Si is the most popular hike close to Seattle and one off our favorite early season training hikes in the Pacific Northwest.  The primary reason for this being that it is usually clear of snow quite early in the season compared to the surrounding mountains.   This season, however, that was not the case.  We did two of the three different ascents this year and had a snowy adventure both times.

Skyline Lake  - April 14th and again May 13th, 2014

Being that this is the only snowshoe we have been on the entire season, it represents the snowiest of all the hikes in the Snowy Holiday Hiking Collection.  If you are up for a challenge and prepared with winter survival training and gear then this is the hike for you.  We rarely rate hikes as difficult, and this is one that we have assigned that rating to.  If you are in good shape and want a challenging hike with an amazing payoff this is your hike.  We've never seen the lake, so if you hike it, let us know if you find it!

Mt. Rainier - March 11th, 2014

Snow really didn't effect us much on this short hike/visit to Mt. Rainier, much of this looming and iconic volcano's visual beauty comes from the sharp contrast between the blacks and greys of the rock and the pearl white snow.  Hiking in close proximity to Mt. Rainier is a quintessential part of the Washington hiking experience and should be experienced by everyone who has an opportunity.

Greenwater and Echo Lakes - May 4th and 5th, 2013

You may notice that Echo Lake has been struck-through in the title above.  That was, as you may have guessed, thanks to snow!  Allison, Katie and I tried our best to make it to the lake, but after trudging a ways in snow and falling several times into snow covered tree wells, we made the smart decision to not push on to echo lake. 

Dog Mountain

Dog Mountain - May 24th, 2014
Columbia River Gorge
Mileage: 6 round trip
Elevation Gain: 2800 feet
Dogs Allowed

Earlier in the year, Allison and I sat down and made a comprehensive hiking plan for the summer 2014 season. This was a particularly important and more formal planning session compared with those from seasons past because we both had our fingers crossed that Allison would get into graduate school and we would be moving out of state for for the fall 2014 semester. With that in mind, we wanted to make sure we got in as much Pacific Northwest hiking as possible in during the summer months. What this ended up meaning was that we were booked a hike for 2 weekends a month for almost the entire spring and summer 2014 seasons... including Memorial Day weekend. Normally I would do my best to avoid popular hikes or popular anything on Memorial Day weekend and instead choose to hide from the crowds. Alas, the grand hiking schedule we had created did not allow for this and instead told me that we were scheduled to hike one of the most popular hikes in the state, Dog Mountain.

This was another hike that Allison and I ran for our hiking group, Allison Pushes People Up Mountains. We had a really solid turnout of 8 people. We left Seattle early in the morning and arrived at Dog Mountain early in the afternoon. As we approached the parking lot my fear of a Dog Mountain being overrun with pretty much the entire population of the state joining me for the hike was quickly realized. The entire, quite large, parking lot was completely full with cars actually waiting for spaces to open up, and on top of that there were probably 50 cars lining the side of the highway in either direction. Luckily I had mentally prepared myself for this scenario and had decided that I would enjoy my hike regardless of the number of people, think Zen.

We actually had quite an easy time finding a parking spot despite how dismal the initial prospects seemed. Everyone got geared up and we started up the mountain. You know that special time at the end of a movie when everyone leaves the movie theater at the same time and you have to try to manage your spacing just right not to collide with the person in front or behind you? Of course you do! While, parts of both the ascent and descent of Dog Mountain where much like this. Some trails are made for two way traffic and other trails put you in a situation where you have to step off the path to let other groups pass. Unfortunately Dog Mountain, despite its popularity, really wasn’t built to comfortably accommodate high traffic in both directions which lead to touching strangers, moving off the trail frequently and trying to pass people without killing yourself or them on the steeper parts of the hike.

Jaime at the first overlook

I know based on the above paragraph that you are probably thinking that any Zen I might have had at the start of the hike might have been lost by now, but luckily that wasn’t the case. The ascent was quite rigorous and the endorphins put me in a really good place to handle the crowd.

The majority of the first section of the hike is pretty heavily wooded, so we weren’t able to see much of the territorial view, other than small glimpses of the columbia river for time to time. This was kind of cool because it allowed us to be completely unprepared for the absolutely stunning view we got as we broke through the trees to the first major lookout a little more than halfway through the hike. I’ll let the picture do most of the talking about the view, but needless to say, we were blown away. The view was so good that I convinced myself for a short time that we were at the top. This, however, was not the case.

After taking a fairly long break at the first lookout, we geared up and began the second leg of the ascent. Most of this part of the hike took us through an enormous steep field which was covered in beautiful yellow flowers. Think Van Gogh meets Sound of Music pretty.  My aunt, Cherese, who is also an avid hiker, had taken pictures of these flowers just the week before. She shared those pictures with me, and I was really pleased that they were still in full bloom for me to see in person. After managing to not tumble to our deaths down this beautiful scene while passing other groups on the narrow path, we finally arrived at the top. The view was similar to the one we had at the first lookout, but the addition of another 1000 ft. of elevation meant we were able to see geographic features much farther away including Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams. Both of those peaks are completely snow capped year around and their stark white contrasted beautifully with the dark greens, greys and purples of the surrounding mountains. 

We took a long break and consumed some awesome deer jerky that Allison and I made with some meat Nick had given us. After our much needed break, we started the descent back to the car. Overall the descent went pretty well for everyone in the group except Jaxxon. There were two primary reasons for this. Reason 1: Jaxxon really wanted the man who was using a walking stick that looked like Gandalf’s wizard staff to throw said stick so he could play fetch, and Jaxx wanted to tell and show everyone he could how much he desired this outcome. We were hiking a little faster than Gandalf but every time we would take a break he would pass us and then we would start and pass him again. Everytime this happened, Jaxx when apeshit until we finally just decided to speed up and stop the process from repeating another time. Jaxx also hates trains and wants to tell everyone how much he hates trains. Lucky for us, just as we were in site of a car here comes the train causing Jaxx to go crazy and try to choke himself to death and everyone in the parking lot to stare in disapproval. Talk about a great way to end a hike.

In closing, you should definitely check out Dog Mountain if you have a chance. Seeing the view at the top left me with not question as to why this is one of the top hikes in the state. Just don’t be dumb and go on Memorial Day weekend (in fact maybe try and avoid weekends period) and you’ll be fine!

Thanksgiving Mushrooming on the Pacific Coast

...

Sea Ranch, CA

Miles: 3 round trip

Elevation Gain: Negligible

Dogs Allowed

I wanted to start this post with a little housekeeping:  Allison and I decided to not publish a post last week because we figured that you would all be too busy eating copious amounts of turkey to read our blog.  We also ate a large amount of turkey, but prior to the gluttony, we took part in the Ruork family tradition of hunting for wild edible mushrooms on Thanksgiving morning.  We will resume our retroactive posts starting next week.

This is the second year that I've gotten to participate in the mushroom hunting tradition.  The first time I went hunting with the family, three years ago, I was blown away by the diversity of mushrooms that grow wild in the forest on the pacific coast in Northern California.  I remember wishing I had taken a camera to document the diversity, and so when it came time to do it this year I made sure to bring our good camera so I could share the experience with everyone.

The view from Allison's Grandma's back yard

Before we get too far into this post I need to do a warning/disclaimer about consuming wild mushrooms:  The majority of mushrooms you find in the wild are poisonous with symptoms ranging from losing your lunch to death in a matter of hours.  When I go wild mushroom hunting with Allison's family there are always at least 3 people who are EXPERTS in local mushroom identification and who have been doing this their entire life.  And they only bother to collect 3-4 varieties so they avoid any danger. The point is, if you are not 200% sure you know a mushroom is edible don't eat it or touch it, as the toxins of some mushrooms can poison you through your skin.  Allison covered this in detail in a post a few years ago.

Alright, enough with the pleasantries...  On Thanksgiving morning, myself, Allison, and four of our other family members loaded up in the car and drove about a mile from her Grandma's house to our first mushroom hunting location of the day, the Sea Ranch airport.  Mushrooming in this part of the country has gotten more and more popular over the years and unfortunately for us, the woods around the airport had been picked over pretty thoroughly.

Allison's brother, James and his girlfriend, Kara
find the first edible mushroom of the day, a boletus. 

Luckily, a couple members of our group still found a couple of really nice edible mushrooms, and because the inedible mushrooms outnumber the edible varieties 20-1, I was able to get plenty pictures (see slideshow above) of beautiful inedible ones of to illustrate the diversity I mentioned above.

Allison's sister, Jessica harvesting another boletus

We were able to take Jaxx and also Allison's grandma's dog, Chip.  They both had a great time running around in the woods and helping us search for mushrooms.  After spending about an hour by the airport, we loaded back up in the cars and drove another mile or so to a series of hiking trails that the Sea Ranch HOA built and maintains.  We hiked about a mile in, looking for mushrooms the entire way.  You could really tell that I was the most inexperienced mushroom hunter as the day wore on.  I ended up not finding a single edible mushroom the entire day.  The others continued to find mushrooms, mostly boletus and we ended up with a good 10 cups worth by the end of the day.  Throughout the day we hunted in small groups or as individuals, in order to not cover the same area.  We stayed out on the trails for about an hour and a half.

Mushrooms hung to dry above the fireplace

Allison's grandma, Edith wanted us home to start cooking the turkey by 2 and as it got to be around 1:30 we started rounding everyone up and low and behold we couldn't find Allison's Dad, Steven, who had been running around with a large cooking knife, in his hand, which he was using to cut the stems of the mushrooms he was finding.

Allison: My dad is out in the woods all the time, and sometimes gets so caught up in what he is doing he loses track of time. So initially, it wasn't strange that Dad wasn't with us, and nobody was particularly worried. However, as time wore on and we kept whistling (which is how we keep in touch in the woods) and we got no answers we started to get concerned. We headed back toward the car, hoping he had headed in that direction. We waited there for about 15 minutes, but still no word. My brother James, Chris and Kara headed back along the trail to look for Dad, while Jessica and I waited at the car with the dogs in case he returned. 

After another 15 minutes they reappeared, but still no Dad. Now, anybody who knows me knows, that I have a pretty high thresh-hold before I start worrying, but once I start it's like wildfire. By this time I was pretty much certain that Dad had tripped and impaled himself on his knife while falling into a ravine where he had broken his neck. He was probably lying there trying to whistle but during the fall he had bitten off his tongue, so could only gurgle with his bit off tongue, stab wound and broken back. Yeah, this is how my brain works most of the time, I'm just relatively good at keeping the crazy to myself.

We decide that two people will go off down one trail and the other pair will go down the other. Chris and Jessica went down a nearby fire road, while James and Kara headed back on the original trail and cut in to where we had been mushrooming. I don't particularly like waiting, especially when I'm worried, so I'm pretty sure I looked completely nutso to anybody who drove by. Wild-eyed, pacing by the side of the road, and occasionally talking to myself... you know, like normal, completely sane people do.

After another 10 minutes or so James and Kara returned with Dad in tow. He just hadn't heard us calling, though James' whistle could break glass. I didn't care, I was just glad he was back. Now Chris and Jessica were gone.... Dad was completely sure they'd gotten themselves lost back on the fire-road, which I thought a bit ironic. I wasn't too concerned since I know Chris has a good sense of direction, and wouldn't have strayed off the main path. James ran back to find them, in about 5 minutes we were all back together, though we had a mighty need for sandwiches.

Harrison Grind (Adventures in British Columbia)

The Group at Harrison Lake

Harrison Grind - April 19th, 2014         Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia
Kilometers: 6.9k round trip
Elevation Gain: 620m
Dogs Allowed

Allison at the 2010 Olympic Torch in Vancouver

Earlier this year our friends Jesse and Angela won a free condo stay in a small resort town called Harrison Hot Springs in British Columbia. I had never been to Canada despite living only two hours away from there for the better part of a decade, so we were really excited to take them up on their offer to join them. We were able to cram a bunch of activities into our quick weekend including visiting Vancouver, eating at Tim Horton’s and even a hike.

Harrison Hot Springs is a small resort community located on a beautiful lake that is surrounded by mountains on all sides and kind of looks like a fjord. Allison and I were really excited to discover that we could walk from our condo right to the trailhead of an awesome mountain hike. On Saturday morning Allison and I put together our hiking gear and headed out to the mountain as the rest of our group went off to the spa.

Allison: There was actually a bit of disagreement here between us and our group, we were really pushing for our friends to come hiking with us (in hindsight it was good that they didn't, spoiler!). Jesse said “I can hike anywhere, I want to go to a spa.”

Wait. WUT.

You can hike anywhere but you want to go sit inside while some faceless person rubs on you? I mean I can see the appeal, but you can, in fact, literally do that ANYWHERE, whereas you can hike many places, but not a single one will be the same. However, I digress, back to Chris...

The Harrison Grind’s name is a spin off of the name of one of the most popular hikes in Vancouver called the Grouse Grind, and while the Harrison Grind trail is not quite the torture test that the Grouse Grind is, it still offered us with a challenging (especially hung over) and rewarding hike.

We left our condo and took a short half-mile walk to the trailhead. The first half-mile of the hike was very steep and took us up a gravel service road to Harrison’s water tower.

From the water tower the path continued up a trail that followed a power line through a boulder field.

Here we got our first view of the mountains, which was spectacular even though we were only ¼ of the way through the hike. Not long after that the trial entered a very lush and beautiful section of the forest that reminded me of Jurassic Park. In fact, we even saw a cool rock that looked a lot like a T-Rex.

It also began raining, which wasn’t really a big surprise being that we were still in the Pacific Northwest, we donned our rain gear and pushed on.

Allison: I had however forgot to pack my hiking boots, so my feet were suuuuper squishy about 20 minutes into the hike. But, Goonies never say die!

Can you see the T-Rex?

After literally scrambling our way up the side of the mountain for another half an hour we ran into a fellow hiker and had a very Canadian hiking experience.

Now, there are rules of etiquette, whether spoken or not, that govern just about every social situation. This includes hiking. For instance, when you are in a hiking group that is headed back down from a summit with a difficult and/or grueling ascent, it is common courtesy when encountering another group who is struggling on their way up the same summit to lie to them about one or more of the facts surrounding the rest of their journey to the top. In the United States the conversations usually go something like this:

Scenario #1
Other Group: How much further do you think it is to the top?
Your Group: Probably about ¾ or a mile.
Reality: You are so happy to be coming down that you haven’t been paying
attention and have no idea. It could have been 5 miles… actually it probably was.

Scenario #2
Other Group: How much further do you think it is to the top
Your Group: You’re almost there! It’s just around the corner!!
Reality: You are completely sadistic, there are at least two more miles.

Scenario #3
Other Group: How much further do you think it is to the top?
Your Group: Still a few more miles.
Reality: You want them to be pleasantly surprised when the summit is just around
the corner. This is the most unlikely of the three scenarios.

As a ‘Murican, upon your first visit to Canada you will quickly realize that Canadians are, well, very stereotypically Canadian. You will quickly learn that the word sooorry is much more versatile than you once imagined. You will be told sooorry for any reason imaginable: A waitress, for instance might be sooorry for taking your order, or someone passing you on the street might be sooory because they are passing you on the street. They are very friendly and very apologetic for no reason. About is pronounced aboot and Tim Horton’s, a popular doughnut chain, is one of the most important and talked about national treasures.

About halfway up our hike we met an older Canadian gentleman on his way down the mountain and proceeded to stop and have a conversation which included all of the Canadian features mentioned above. He was also a strict observer of hiking etiquette. It went something like this.

Canadian Gentleman: Hello, eh, Soory did ya knooo aboot the Tim Horton’s they got at the top?
Chris & Allison: No, we didn’t
Canadian Gentleman: Ooh yaaa, well you fooolks enjoy your hike, eh.
Reality: There was no Tim Horton’s on the summit of the mountain, curse you Canadian gentleman for filling our thoughts with Honey Crullers!!!

After another hour or two of hiking we reached the summit hoping to get an amazing view of the valley. While the view was still really beautiful, we couldn’t see many of the surrounding mountains because they were all covered in mist. Being that it was windy, wet and cold we snapped some pictures and did an about face and headed down the mountain. Overall the hike was quite steep and we ended up having to do some precarious scrambling over wet and slippery rocks and trees which were much more treacherous on the way down. Luckily we both came out of it unscathed. With good stories to tell our spa friends about the natural beauty of the
place we were visiting.

Welcome to the biggest little city in the world!

Seattle to Reno - August 2nd, 2014
Washington > Oregon > California > Nevada
Mileage: 707 Miles One-way
Elevation Gain: ~4250 feet
Dogs Allowed

As you may have noticed, things have been rather quiet on the hiking blog front for quite some time. As most of you know, Allison and I moved to Reno, NV for Allison to attend graduate school at the University of Nevada, Reno.  The months leading up to as well as the months after any move are always quite hectic.  Things really had to be prioritized to get everything wrapped up in Seattle and then get established in Reno in an efficient manner. Less crucial parts of our lives, like the blog, ended up at the bottom of that list.  This however didn't mean that we stopped hiking.  We currently have a backlog of almost ten blog posts ranging from the middle of April to just two weeks ago.  We already have three posts written, and now that everything has settled down the plan is to release one blog post, in chronological order, every week until we get caught up.  To all of our Seattle hiking buddies, we miss all of you.  Thanks for sharing so many great adventures over the last season through Allison Pushes People Up Mountains!  We are both also really happy to see the hiking group continuing to be active in its current incarnation, Katie Pushes People Down Mountains.  Kudos to Katie, Nick, and the other organizers.  We think about you guys every time we go out and can't wait to get together anytime we are in Seattle or you are in Reno.  There is some amazing hiking in the Sierra Nevada right at our back door anytime you want to visit.

Dog Mountain (North Fork Snoqualmie), An Abandoned Trail

Dog Mountain - May 15th, 2014

Mileage: 9.0 miles

Elevation Gain: 3850 feet

Snoqualmie Pass - North Bend Area

Dog Friendly

Difficulty: Intermediate

Katie and I set off the morning of this hike with the intention of torturing ourselves by hiking the most difficult hike close to Seattle, Mailbox Peak, which gains over 3800 ft. in just over 3 miles.  Katie, myself and many of the other members of our hiking group, APPUM have been hiking quite difficult hikes at least once and sometimes more per week for the last few months and have gotten in much better shape to the point where Katie and I were interested in challenging ourselves with Mailbox.

Unfortunately when I Katie and I arrived at the road that goes to the trail-head for Mailbox, we ran into road construction and were told that the road will be closed to vehicles during the week for the foreseeable future.  Our hearts momentarily sank at the prospect of not doing Mailbox, which we had been greatly anticipating.  Our mood immediately improved when we pulled the car over and pulled up the Washington Trails Association's website and found another hike about 20 miles from our current location that sounded really interesting, Dog Mountain.

Dog Mountain is an abandoned trail in the Mt. Baker Snoqualmie National Forest.  As the trail ascends Dog Mountain, it follows an old logging road which was abandoned, I would guess, between 50-70 years ago based on the size of the trees and the deterioration of the road and other man-made structures such as bridges.  It is really a cool experience to get to walk along a piece of history like this old road and be witness to how powerfully and relatively quickly nature can heal the massive scars inflicted on it by our industry.  

After a few miles the road ends and turns into a trail with steep and relentless switchbacks as it quickly ascends almost 4000 ft. to the summit of dog mountain.  The forest service has not maintained this trail for many years which causes this already difficult trial to be much more technical and dangerous than other hikes with similar mileage and elevation statistics.  Despite needing to take more time to stay on the trail and find proper footing, Katie and I got about eight tenths of the way up the mountain in a pretty decent amount of time.  After this, the trail disappeared and we began to ascend a steep boulder field that was still covered in snow.  After almost an hour of carefully ascending this part, we had only made it another tenth of the way to the summit and were getting quite exhausted.  We decided that we needed to turn around because it would be foolhardy to attempt the somewhat treacherous descent if we tired ourselves out further by making the summit.

Once we were back on the trail, the journey down went fairly fast.  Overall, this was a very enjoyable hike with breathtaking views of several other snow capped peaks visible during almost 3/4 of the hike.  If I wasn't moving in the near future, this would definitely be on my list of places to return to later in the season when the snow is all melted making the ascent to the summit more manageable.

Hoh River Trail: Part 2

Con't from Part 1

Bear Scratches

If there were ever four words that instantly killed morale and simultaneously made everybody jittery and anxious it was those four little words.

"Guy's there's a bear." Effffffff.

The bear was not acting aggressively and we were quite far away so we took a second to discuss our options. #1: We could try to scare it off, in the hope that it wouldn't come back later that night. #2. We could try to find an alternate path around the bear and see if there were campsites a reasonable distance from him. #3. We could backtrack and try to find another place to camp. We settled on three, which I think was absolutely the correct decision. We actually found out later that particular bear is a regular at the campsite, and while he has never attacked anybody or gotten into people's food, he's very difficult, if not impossible to scare off.

We had seen a sign for horses a ways back, but couldn't remember whether it was a sign for the horse camp or just a ford. So, we started heading in that direction. The tricky thing about the rain forest and camping is that you are required to camp in established spaces, or on the river bed. Aside from the place we hoped the horse camp was, we knew that the next camping site was 3-4 miles back. So not a great option, for a bunch of kids with tired feet.

After about one mile of back tracking we came to a place that had very easy access to the river and didn't require a lot of walking off the trail. It was the first time we'd been close enough to get to it without walking a long way through the undergrowth. Places like temperate rain forests, alpine meadows, etc. often have very fragile plant life that does not respond well to trail cutting, So rather than hope that is wasa horse camp and not a ford, we decided to head out to the river. This was a good decision, since it was in fact a ford and not a camp.

We dropped our packs and did some exploring of the river bed to try and find a place that was on high ground and sandy rather than rocky. We found a great little spot that was almost at the tree line, and surround on 3 sides by trees, but still river bed. This was crucial, camping next to water, especially if there isn't a wind break can be very cold. Not to mention, that sand sucks body heat away from you really effectively. Despite our concerns, nobody was too cold.

Prior to bedding down Chris and I told everybody that we needed EVERYTHING that had any kind of odor, including toiletries, food etc. 3 of our friends apparently didn't get the message because we were about to go hang the bear can when I asked:
"So is there anything else?"
"Weeeelll I do have a vitamin water, but it isn't opened."
"No, I'm serious guys even if it's sealed, but it has a smell we need it, we just saw a bear!"
Then another friend sheepishly steps forward...
"I've got all this unopened food in my tent."
At this point Chris and I are looking at each other like we must have somehow ended up in an alternate Universe where everybody is stupid AND deaf, but we're trying to be patient cause they're noobs. So we take everybody's stuff and go to hang the bags. Now our friend Koko had accidentally saturated his backpack with aerosol sunscreen we we had wrapped it in some backpack covers and garbage bags and we're just planning on leaving it on the ground next to the bags, but he looks at us with these pleading eyes saying "....but it's very expensive." So we end up hanging his bag as well.

Tent in lower left corner for scale.

After that we went back to the campsite to enjoy our campfire and relax. I made all the boys pee around the perimeter of our camp and we let the fire go into the late hours to help put off any predators. Our precautions weren't necessary, but it was comforting doing them. The most eventful part of the night was that our friend David, who had never camped, backpacked, anything ever, got up in the middle of the night, his tent was right next to Chris and I so we woke up when he started shining his headlamp all over the place.

He went to relieve himself and must have got a little freaked out being in the woods in the middle of the night, he came sprinting back into camp. This was irritating/hilarious for a few reasons, the biggest being that we had spent several minutes explaining that you should never run away from predators because it makes you look like prey. The other being that it was amusing to think about him getting all freaked out by the woods while peeing. But I'm a jerk.

The river bed had been pretty the evening before, but we were maybe too tired and a little to apprehensive to appreciate it. The next morning it was glorious though. The river was beautiful and the sun on the surround mountains was gorgeous. It actually made me really thankful that the bear had been where he was. If he hadn't we would have spent the night in the woods, which while wonderful wouldn't have been nearly as stunning the next day.

The walk back the next day was pretty easy and nothing really of note happened. We were all tired and foot sore. Flat terrain tends to make my feet ache. After the hike we drove back, taking a detour at Hurricane Ridge to show everybody how beautiful the mountains were. Then headed back to Seattle. All in all it was a pretty successful first overnight of the season.

Bonus: I am a banana!! ...slug. 

Hoh River Trail: Part 1

Hoh River Trail - May 9th-11th
Olympic National Park
Mileage: 19.7 round trip
Elevation Gain: 1000 feet

No Dogs Allowed

Our first overnight of the season and it was pretty eventful! We drove out to the peninsula Friday afternoon, stopped for burgers (decent) and shakes (outstanding) at Sully's in Forks. We car camped at the main campsite the first night so we could make a good start in the morning. There was a notice on the bulletin board at the main campsite saying there was an aggressive bull elk that had rolled a couple of tents in the past couple weeks. We had two people who had never been backpacking and one who had never even been car camping before. So that night (somewhat prophetically) we did sort of a brief overview of what to do should we run across wildlife.

Mostly the best thing to do with any animal is keep away from animals, they are not pets, they are not nice fluffy toys, they will fuck your shit up. We discussed getting the fuck out of dodge ASAP when it comes to things like Elk and Moose which are typically aggressive while rutting. They're mostly trying to get you to leave their territory. So you leave. But recently there have been some changes to the protocol with Black Bears. However, if you do run into a black bear (NOTE: This absolutely does not apply to Grizzlies, or more aggressive bears) and they notice you and begin to move toward you, you want to make yourself as big and load and threatening as possible. Previously the recommendation was to just curl up like a ball, to protect your insides, which is in fact the second step if the bear doesn't leave after you make a big ruckus. Then if they don't back off after you've made yourself small you roll over and, literally, punch them in the nose. Anyway, we discussed what to do and then spent some time enjoying the campfire and went to bed.

Next morning there was two elk in our campsite, they weren't aggressive and they moved off as soon as we started to stir. Some of our group was planning on just doing a day hike and then staying at the main campsite and car camping, but 7 of us started off hiking that next morning. Before we took off we stopped at the visitors center where there was an older notice about black bears but we weren't too worried about it, since we felt comfortable that we could get through the situation if it came up and the notice was a month old so...whatever.

The Hoh river trail is gorgeous. Really the only word that accurately describes a temperate rain forest is lush. There are tons of huge trees, which would probably be more impressive if I wasn't from the land of redwoods. Cedars and spruces are big, but they're not behemoths the way redwoods are. Even so, there were some giant cedars, which had recently fallen and been cut up, which made the whole place smell like clean hamster cage, which I really like.The trail stays pretty close to the river the whole time, but it's really the forested areas that are the best.

We had planned to camp about 10 miles in, attentive readers will notice the word planned, about 8 miles in we started to notice a bunch of the birches had bear scratches on them. We pressed on, aware, but not concerned. Bears are a fact of life when it comes to hiking and really the only thing to do is make plenty of noise and try not to startle them.

Everybody was starting to wear down a bit. 10 miles with a full pack is no joke especially for people who haven't ever really backpacked before. So we were pretty excited when we came around a corner and saw the campsites. Right about then Koko said "Guys there's a bear!!" We assumed he was joking... We were wrong. There was, in fact, a bear and he was, in fact, standing directly in the campsite...

Continued in  Part 2 next week!