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.