Dosewallips

Dosewallips, duswa’ylups: The title of a mythical chief who the Transformer changed into a mountain near the head of the river.


11.5 miles 1,146 gain that's only a 15 on the Hike Difficulty Calculator but it kicked my butt. Maybe it was the ups and downs that did me in or maybe it was trudging along in the snow or maybe I'm a bit ill but I sure was ready for this hike to end by the tenth mile. I drove 1/10 of a mile before I remembered to turn off my track log so the elevation profile goes more then 11.5 miles.

(A local paper says it's 1250 feet in and 220 feet out so I can ad a few extra feet but still that only rates a 16 on the calculator.. hmmm and now it's two days later and I'm still stiff, sore and tired.)

Santa brought me a fancy new GPS and now my elevation charts are nice and smooth like the one above. This was my first hike with my new GPS. My old GPS is an Etrex Legend and it lost the signal on every hike. So far my new GPS has never lost a signal.


I bought myself an old beater Jeep (175,000 miles on it) this month and that enabled me to actually reach the washout. The last time I hiked here I had to stop my car a mile before the washout, that trip report is here.

Armed with a new Jeep and a new GPS I ought to have lots of fun hiking and geocaching in the coming year.

The heater in my Jeep is broken, it keeps blowing fuses and we took it to a mechanic who could not find the problem but charged us $95.00. It probably needs a new blower motor, if I had more money I would get it fixed now but I'm broke after Christmas. It's not a lot of fun driving around without a heater because it's cold and the windows fog up. But if I drive at highway speeds for long enough it warms up a little bit and most of the window fog goes away.



This is a pretty hike in spite of it being just a walk down a closed road. I believe that this road is now a trail and treat it as such. Everyplace that was covered with snow on the road had cougar tracks. In one spot I think an adult and baby cougar had been chasing a rabbit. In other spots the cougars just seemed to be walking along.

The falls are nice to look at but the hill beside them sure it steep and can be seen as the up and down near the middle of the elevation log. The overland trail that avoids the wash out is a bit steep too. That is easier to see at the end of hike where it is not covered up by a label.


Most of the picnic tables at Dosewallips camground were either covered with snow or partly underwater or both. I found one table that someone had tipped up onto it's edge, I pushed it back down and enjoyed a snow free spot to cook and eat lunch. For lunch I had a cup of hot cocoa and fried rice with king boletes, chanterelles and beef.

I did not see anyone else on the trail and the last human foot prints in the snow stopped less then one mile into the hike. This tells me that no one has been down here since it snowed 4 days ago. I found it a bit unnerving to be all alone miles and miles from the trail head with cougar tracks everywhere around me. I was extra alert but kept reminding myself that cougars are everywhere even when I don't see their tracks. But this is the first time I have seen cougar tracks in the snow so there must be more of them here then in my usual hiking spots.

I passed the Lake Constance trail head on the way. I've never been up there and I don't know if I ever will. I think the trip back down would kill my knees. I was surprised to learn that my Dad has been up there. He is not a hiker but he is a fisherman. The Lake Constance Hike would be a whopping 39 on the hike difficulty calculator