Tonga Ridge

Pyracantha (I think)

Tonga Ridge - 1st week of September

6 miles
Elevation Gain: 1200 feet
Mt. Baker Snoqualmie National Forrest
Dog Friendly
Difficulty: Easy

My Mom, and later Chris' Mom and Step-Dad, visited us back in September and we took them on a few hikes. We mostly hiked with my Mom since she was here a bit longer. Our first stop was Tonga Ridge. 

Patriot Blueberry

Chris and I had been wanting to do this hike for a while. The hike starts out at a very high elevation, even though the elevation gain is 1200 ft, the highest point you reach is 5501 ft, so there isn't a lot of uphill, but you still get great payoff. Supposedly there are amazing 360 panoramas of the surrounding mountains as you walk along the ridge line. Since my Mom doesn't do a lot of hiking we figured that it would be a very good fit.

The weather had been lousy but was supposed to clear up that day. Which, in all fairness it did... right as we left. We got pretty soggy. That being said, it was still a lovely hike even if we didn't have the stunning alpine views I really wanted to share with my mom. 

Boletus Edulis

The hike itself starts off with a bit of a climb, but then it levels off nicely. You alternate between walking through forest and alpine meadows. Even with the lousy weather, sometimes because of it (above), we got some pretty lovely photos. I wish my camera was good enough to really capture the way the mist looked in those trees. 

Amanita Muscaria

We also saw a lot of incredible flora and fungi. Including a near perfect amanita muscaria (poisonous), otherwise known as the most stereotypical mushroom ever. There was also an ENORMOUS boletus edulis (edible). Seriously that SOB was huge, I should have photographed something next to it for scale. We ate several varietals of blue berries, including Patriot blueberries, which I think are very striking. We obviously did not eat these red berries, which I think are pyracantha but I'm not 100% sure. 

The real highlight of the day actually came as we were leaving. There's this beautiful rail bridge, and as we were standing there taking pictures a train passed!! Very cool, I got some pictures of the train, but I don't want to overload a hiking blog with train pictures. 

Overall, even with the weather it was a good hike. Misty and beautiful, Chris and I definitely plan on going back when the weather is more accommodating. Although be warned, according to several trail reviews and trail books I've read this trail can get pretty crowded.

For directions, additional trail reports and other details go here.

Brief Update Before Post Hurricane!!

Hello again! It's been a while since I put up some hikes or anything else for that matter. Everyday at 2 pm, my reminder to do blog posts comes up and I look away shamefacedly. You ever have that experience where you're hanging out with a friend you haven't seen in years and have absolutely no idea what to say when they ask "What have you been up to?" Obviously you've been up to tons of shit, but there's so much shit that you've been up to it's easier to just say "Not much." That's sort of how blogging gets. You miss one week, no big deal. You miss several months and then it's just too much to try to explain. So I'm not going to try. 

What I am going to do is try and restart. I will post a couple of hikes we've done over the past couple months. Play a little catch-up basically. Then my hope is over the next couple weeks to talk about winter hikes and what we're doing to stay fit in the off season. Enjoy!

Trail Review: Ingalls Creek Trail - Part 2

Continued from Trail Review: Ingalls Creek Trail - Part 1

Suckers.

Nothing happened. The only injuries I sustained were the bug bites. Which, to be fair, I'm moderately allergic to, and they made my legs swell to the point of bruising, and that is definitely a new experience for me.

Here's a picture of my legs at the end of Day 4 (they actually continued to get worse until the following night).

Those rings around my ankles are not dirt, they are just swollen bug bite rings! As of today (4.5 days later) they are all bruised and awful. They don't itch anymore but it looks like I have lesions on my legs. Not. Nice. Anyway, back to the story...

Up until this point in the hike I would give Ingalls creek maybe an 8 out of 10 on picturesqueness. It was okay, but nothing particularly special. The sub-subalpine meadow where we set up camp at the end of day 2 was definitely pretty, but only enough to make it an 8 instead of a 7.

We decided to tidy up our camp, and have me just carry one backpack with as little as possible in it, and then on the way down stop at our campsite, have some lunch and rest up a bit before starting back down in earnest. This was absolutely the right decision and I would absolutely recommend doing that rather than trying to pack all your gear up and down.

First view of Day 3

So we started up towards Stuart Pass and the lake and it got increasingly gorgeous. The light on the mountains was stunning and it really showed off the depth and cragginess of the area. We hit this gorgeous meadow, and had to stop for quite a while. I really wanted to spend some time taking photos, but more than anything Chris had continued to feel bad, and it really came to a head on day 3, he actually puked a little ways up the trail and was feeling pretty bad, both physically and just in terms of morale.

We didn't end up going to the lake proper, half because we had a dog, dogs are not allowed at the lake so we would have had to go to it in shifts, and we honestly couldn't find it. There was really no signage directing us toward the lake, and the only trail aside from the one that lead up to Stuart pass seemed to peter out in the middle of the field. So we decided to take the trail that headed toward Stuart Pass to see if we could find the lake, or at least see it from the top. I think we probably would have been more inclined to do a bit more searching if Chris hadn't been feeling so bad and I hadn't been concerned about how long it was going to take us to get out.

Panoramic of the south end of the meadow

We never did find the lake, which I'm still a little bummed about.

Ingalls Peak

I won't be very sad about it because seriously that meadow was bananas! I wish I could spend the rest of my life there... If it wouldn't be illegal, and a complete bitch to get supplies to. I could swear I took pictures of Mt. Stuart, but I can't seem to find them, I thought Mt. Ingalls was more striking anyway, but it still would be nice to have them.

About half way up Stuart Pass, Chris looked at me and I could tell he was just done. He asked if we could turn around. I really wanted to see how much farther it was to the top so I left him in some shade and we each set a timer for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes more walking I was going to turn around and come back to him, no matter where I was, and if I wasn't back in 1 hour Chris would come find me. I took the dog with me, so that if I got hurt I could send him back to Chris.

Now, I would normally not ever, EVER, recommend doing this. It's not good to split up (think of every horror movie you ever saw). As it is, I have some reservations about Chris and I hiking just the two of us. If something happened to Chris I would have a very difficult time getting him out, regardless of the terrain, but I really didn't want our trip not to have an end.

That's Glacier Peak (we think)

Endings are wonderful things, especially when it comes to hiking. It completely boosts your morale,  and makes the trip back better, there are 3 ways it does this: 1) You typically get to see something beautiful 2) You have a sense of accomplishment, which is simple enough in concept but I can't overstate how important it is and 3) you know that from now on it is, quite literally (most of the time), all down hill.

I hiked for about 10 minutes and I was at the top. I took some pictures, and some deep breaths, turned around and went back down to Chris to try and get him up to the top. Which I did, and he felt better for it. I've very glad I did because these pictures (left, bottom) were definitely worth the slight risk. I think it definitely improved the rest of the day for Chris as well, which was good, because all told on day three we ended up hiking about 12 miles. It was especially difficult getting started again after striking camp.

One pooped pooch!

The rest of the trip out was uneventful. We were able to do the whole thing in about 72 hours total. I would (and very well might) absolutely do this again, and encourage anybody. I think it's a great multi-night trip. You could try and do it in 3 days and 2 nights, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you are in good condition and don't let bugs and overgrowth discourage you.

Multi-Night Menu and Mushroom Stories

Not that kind of mushroom...

Backpacking food is always tricky. I wish I was a little bit more adept at foraging just so I didn't have to carry a bunch of crap with me. Luckily I'm not stupid. Relying on foraging is not only a TERRIBLE idea, because there's no guarantee you will find anything, but it's not very environmentally conscientious to tear through an area and pick everything in sight. Ruins it for everybody else. Plus there's that slim chance you'll mix up Queen Anne's Lace with hemlock or something. Not good.

Even if you're thinking to yourself "Allison, don't be ridiculous I've been picking and eating wild stuff my whole life, that wouldn't happen to me." Well imaginary conversationalist, let me tell you something. Where I'm from in California there is a mushroom (amanita calyptroderma) commonly known as a "creamy top" or coccora that is (supposedly) very tasty. They are very close in appearance to another variety from Italy called Caesar's amanita which is also edible. So far everything is great, people from Europe and people who are fairly familiar with California fungi see it and think "Mmmm, tasty!" 

Here's where the trouble starts. There are two other types of mushrooms that are almost, almost identical to the creamy top (Amanita phalloides anAmanita ocreata). One of which is known, rather fondly, as the Death Cap (Amanita phalloides). Every 3 or 4 years some mycologist (person who studies mushrooms) would come out, and pick a creamy top and kill himself and his whole family. My point here is that relying on foraging is not smart for a bunch of reasons, but the foremost in my mind is, that even experts can make mistakes, and it's much better to eat a cliff bar if you're not 100% certain about something. Even if cliff bars are almost certainly flavored tree bark that's been masticated and regurgitated by a herd of camels.

Yeah, that's totally how they are made.

That tangential ramble brings me back to food for overnights. I won't discuss ultralight food because despite my dislike of carrying food, I am not at the point where I am willing to only eat dehydrated food.

For our overnight trip to Ingalls Creek this past weekend we are brought the following:

Breakfast: Instant cream of wheat, individual shelf stable creamers, raw sugar and instant hot apple cider

Snacks/Lunch: Almonds and dried cherries (some of which will be going in that cream of wheat), Cliff (Mojo) Bars

Dinner: Boil in a bag rice, instant Indian food from Trader Joe's, and vacuum packed chicken/tuna, freeze dried soup

You'll notice we only snack during lunch, we really don't like to stop and have lunch. It's one thing to snack on short breaks, but I don't like chilling for too long, otherwise I have a hard time getting started again. I feel like most people I know are similar in this way, 

If you want to read more about Coccora click here!

Trail Review: Ingalls Creek Trail - Part 1

Ingalls Creek Trail - July 19-22nd

Lower Ingalls Creek

32 miles
4,544ft of elevation gain, highest point 6,500ft
East of Snoqualmie Pass; I-90 Corridor
Dog Friendly (except for Ingalls Lake)
Difficulty: Intermediate
Someday I am going to learn to carry a topo map, and I think if nothing else this trip will be the catalyst for me actually doing that. I'll get to that though...

So congratulations to me, this was my first multi-night backpacking trip and it was AWESOME.

The original plan was to go to Image Lake, however there was some concern about snow on the trail and the road being out 11 miles before the trailhead and we just did not want to have to deal with it. I realize that dilemma could have been solved by a simple call to the correct ranger station, but Chris and I hate the phone, so we went with a simpler back up plan. Ingalls Creek to Lake Ingalls and Stuart Pass.

Our first view of the mountains, wait a second is that.....

Ermahgerd, it's Mt. Doom!!!

We started out on the trail about midday which was a mistake. I think Chris and I have become totally spoiled by always hiking on the west side of the Cascades because no matter what time of year it is it really rarely gets hot. Ingalls Creek trail is on the Eastside and it might as well be a completely different state. It actually reminded me a lot of the Sierra Nevada: dry and scrubby with a lot of pine and fir trees. We had to stop fairly often to get water and cool off. We ended up stopping about 6.5 miles in at Falls Creek Campground.

This campground was wonderful for the first night because it was really well protected from light and heat exposure, which was really great since you never sleep too well the first night and it let us sleep in a little.

Day two was pretty rough, there had been a forest fire fairly recently so the next 4 miles were almost totally exposed and the brush started to get REALLY bad. Not far into the hike we had been warned by a couple we met that they had actually planned on going farther but turned around because the trail was so overgrown.

I don't know what it is about hiking that makes me think that everybody around me is a total wimp, but it does. Every time somebody warns me about trail conditions I just think to myself, well they're obviously big babies. To some extent I think I'm right, I mean, if I drive two hours to do some hiking, I'm going to do it. Unless it is actually impossible, not even dangerous, but IMPOSSIBLE, I will try. This was no different. When the couple we met told us about the overgrowth, I thought to myself, it's can't be THAT bad, besides I grew up in the woods, I'm used to trail blazing. Which is all true, what I forgot it how completely exhausting trailblazing and even walking on overgrown trails can be. Not to mention painful.

Here is how thick the brush was, I am in both of the pictures below, standing on the trail:

In the one on the right I simply just lifted the brush out of the way.... Yeah, pretty damn thick.


Between the brush, the heat, and Chris feeling kinda poorly we probably only did another 6-7 miles on day two. This was starting to get me worried, it meant that between days 3 and 4 we were going to have to do at least 18 miles, which would normally be completely fine, but I was definitely concerned about our pacing, especially since day 3 would also include some elevation gain.

We camped on the edge of this beautiful meadow with a bunch of pretty gorgeous views (up-right, left, bottom right) and had a spectacular view from our tent (Up-Left). Aside from our first view of the mountains while we were walking through the fire section, we had been in lowland and there hadn't really been much to see. So it was wonderful to get out in the meadows and sub-subalpine areas. There were also tons of wild flowers and blooming fire-weed that was out all over the place during day 2.

The only other remarkable thing about day 2 was that the bugs came out in force. I had brought bug spray with me, but these biting flies we're like "DEET? What do you think we are? PUSSIES?! NOMNOMNOMNOM."

I went to sleep and during the night I had this dream: I got badly hurt, to the point that Chris couldn't stretcher me out. He would have to leave me to get help, I kept telling him to go slow and not rush, so that he wouldn't hurt himself in the process. As soon as I finished telling him he sprinted away.

I didn't know then how prophetic that dream would be...

Link to Part 2!

Deepwoods Damnation

I am exhausted. I didn't sleep last night till 3:30am, which for me (and probably most people) is ridiculously late. Why am I exhausted you ask?

Because I was rocking the fuck out.

Last night was Deep Woods Damnation. My friend Marietta decided that for her birthday she was going to rent a couple generators and her band Audrey Horne (no website sorry) was going to play in the middle of the woods. She also got two other bands to come out (Don Peyote and Sioux City Pete &The Beggars). We drove out into the National Forest just East of North Bend and out a public access road. We helped unload band gear, set up our tent and then began the hard task of drinking.


I decided not to bring my good camera because I really didn't want anything to happen to it. There were going to be lots of people I didn't know not to mention the very real possibility of drunken negligence. I think it was the right choice but I am incredibly bummed that I don't have decent pictures. The pictures I do have do not do it justice. The colors in the sunset were incredible, the mountains were gorgeous but I just really wish I could have taken some shots of the bands playing. If there are some photos that appear later via facebook I will add them.

However! I did manage to get a video of Audrey Horne playing. Watch it! they are awesome and my phone actually did a pretty decent job.

The sound must have carried for miles. I have no doubt that there were other campers in the area and that they were absolutely furious with us. I certainly would be. However, I'm willing to take that in exchange for the memories from last night, though they got increasingly hazy. There are moments in everybody's life where you know that you are going to remember it forever. Most people think that about lots of things and don't necessarily remember them, but you know when you truly will remember because you feel it. You feel that moment burning into you, rattling your bones like a bass guitar.

I won't remember the names of the people I met. That Chris and I laughed about how metal trash and constellations are. Or how I rambled on and on to this poor girl about how I really want to make a sweet risotto with almond milk and coconut water. But I will remember the way the light illuminated the band, and the way the sound seemed to be a living thing tearing it's way across the mountains.

I am physically drained, but I don't give a shit. My life is fucking incredible.

Trail Review: Gold Creek Valley

Gold Creek Valley - July 7th

8 miles (+ 1.5-2 miles round trip of dirt road)
Negligable
Snoqualmie Pass; I-90 Corridor
Dog Friendly
Difficulty: Very Easy

A little over a year ago Chris, Katie and I tried to hike Gold Creek Valley. We were looking for a good early season hike and it had been recommended. I can’t remember who or what recommended it. It was probably something along the lines of “This hike opens in May” and we thought to ourselves sweet! It’s May 18th (guessing) it’s got to be melted out! We totally don’t need to look at trip reports o WTA or anything...

We drove out there and didn’t even get to the actual trail before things turned slushy. Apparently you used to be able to drive up to the trailhead, now you need to park at Gold Creek Pond and walk about ¾ of a mile to the trailhead. Not a big deal, and the only reason I bring it up is this: there were people getting ready to go cross country skiing on our way from the pond to the trailhead. That should give you a pretty good idea of how snow it was.

I hear you thinking, surely they turned back, they’re not total morons who would try to hike an unfamiliar trail in two feet of snow when one of them was only wearing tennis shoes and jeans. Oh how wrong you are imaginary conversationalist. We are absolutely that dumb. My guess is we went about 2 miles, maybe a little bit less. We lost the trail a couple of times, but what finally made us turn around was we all fell into tree wells up to our hips.

This time was waaaaay better.

There was no snow. It was warm but not outright hot, the trail wasn’t crowded or muddy or anything! It was pretty much perfect. It’s an incredibly easy hike. We ended up turning around where you need to ford Gold Creek to continue on to Mt. Alaska, we’d read reports that things got a bit overgrown and nasty after that and we were looking for an easy recovery hike because of how hard we’d pushed on the the 4th. Not to mention that Chris’ ankle was only just starting to feel better.

It was a gorgeous day. There were tons of wildflowers, including my personal favorite (aside from daffodils or narcissus but they're not indigenous): wild tiger lillies (right). About ¾ of the way through the hike it opened up into the valley where there had obviously been an avalanche or mudslide or something. I find that kind of destruction oddly beautiful. It was one of the most enjoyable, mellow hikes I’ve had so far this season, I highly recommend it if you’re in need of an easy day. Start earlyish though (we started about 10:30), on our way back we passed twice the amount of people going out towards the trail than we’d seen on it all day.

WTA Link for Gold Creek Pond (no entry for the trail itself)