Gold Mountain

(Golden Leaves on Gold Mountain)



I was wondering where to go hiking this week with so many of the major entrance points to Olympic National Park closed and most of the Olympic peaks snowed in. Geocaching.com and Terracaching.com came to the rescue.

(me at the highpoint and the geocache)



There is a geocache and a terracache on top of Gold Mountain.

I got up at 7am and was showered and out the door by 7:45. I arrived at the starting point at 5 minutes to 8 and finished my hike at 2pm. I spent about one hour cooking and eating lunch and I took a 20 minute break to enjoy the view on the way down.

The last 1/4 of a mile that I drove my car was very rough and my poor little car bottomed out twice. I also stopped and removed debris from the road a couple of times. I managed to drive back out at the end of my hike without bottoming out my little car.

The weather prediction was 45 degrees with 100% chance of rain, not nice hiking weather at all! But the prediction was wrong. There was not a drop of rain and by afternoon some of the fog cleared so I could see the views.

I walked up the road to the cache via the locked gate at the end of Minard road. There are no issues with the Bremerton watershed here. Only the property to the right of the road is off limits. Just stay on the road here and you will be fine. Several cars passed me as I hiked up and everyone in the passing cars smiled and waved at me.

This was a fun hike with some views of the Olympic Mountains to the west. The forest is a mix of, second growth, third growth and fresh clear cuts. Some of the second growth is pretty and the clear cuts provide a view to the Olympics.

(The Olympics)


Here are some stats for my hike up. Total ascent 1,400 feet, Total Descent 1,552 feet ( I know they should be the same), Average moving speed 2.5 MPH, Total time spend moving 3 hours 17 minutes, Total time stopped 1 hour 17 minutes, Total time 4 hours 34 minutes, Total distance 8.4 miles.


I used this website to help me project waypoints for my hike and I'm glad that I did. There were a couple of spots that confused me a bit but with the help of the waypoints I got, I did not take any wrong turns.