Friday, September 14, 2007

Church Creek Trail

The Church Creek trail used to be much longer but logging destroyed the lower section of the trail.  The trail used to go from the Sastop Lakes to South fork of the Skokomish.  There was a shelter where the trail met up with the Skokomish river.  The shelter is still there and remnant of the trail leads to it.

This end of the trail is behind a wildlife gate and inaccessible from from October 1st to April 1st unless you want to hoof it or bike it several miles to reach the trail head.

I don't know if the Satsop end of the trail is behind a wildlife gate.



The Scaly Chanterelle (Gompus floccosus)
Lovely to look at but not so good to eat.
Many are made ill by it. I love finding these because they are so
pretty, but the presence of these usually seems to mean there will be no
edible Chaterelle (Chanterellus cibarius) other then the yellow foots (Cantharellus tubaeformis)










I often find scaley chanterelles in the same areas as Pigs Ears (Gomphus clavatus)
Pigs ears are also lovely to look at but usually full of maggots. I've tried
them once and did not like them.  I left the ones I found today


Total Ascent and Descent were off today. I wish My GPS had an option use my loaded topo map to get elevation info. Barometric altimeters like the one in my GPS change their readings with the weather.




This tall living tree's bark was riddled with woodpecker holes.




One tiny Tricholoma, I should have left it to grow.


A puple cort (we think)




Honey mushrooms growing out of the side of a living tree.
These were too wormy to bother picking.




Upper Satsop Lake



Bear Tracks




A clump of brown mushrooms








This Mature forest was once slated for logging but is now in a roadless area. If Bush had gotten
his way on the roadless issues I have no doubt that these trees would now be in a saw mill and this the trail would be gone.






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