Cushman hill loop brown creek road destroyed

Glad to be somewhere less crowded than Ellinor on Memorial Day Weekend

Started hiking at about 11am, decided to do the loop clock-wise this time and started out on a bike.  Expected to be able to bike most of the way but got a very rude surprise.  FS 400 that runs next to Brown Creek has been obliterated, they call it decommissioning and it must make a ton of money for whoever does it but it ruins the road for even hiking.  I wish they would turn these old roads into trails instead of “decommissioning them.   This was the same thing they did to the road up Prospect peak and I had just done 13 miles of this type of “trail” tread on Wednesday.  It did not bother me too much but it ruined the beauty of the road hike.  I remember the wonderful serene feeling I got the last time I was on this road.

Another road ruined for hiking

The road before it was destoroyed for hiking, picture from 2010

I had to ditch my bike right at the start of FS-400 because you just can’t bike a decommissioned road.   Near the end of FS400 I cut up to a new road that they seemed to have built just for the sake of decommissioning the old road... How much sense does that make?  None, it’s all about money.  

From that road I was able to access the Green Diamond aka Simpson clear cut.  Green Diamond aka Simpson is a multi-national logging corporation as has destroyed almost the entire south flank the Olympics.  But now they are restricted to cutting on their own land, they have been kicked out of our national forest after basically being giving all those trees for free.  They built the roads too but they subtracted road building costs from what they paid for the timber and they were the only bidders so they were able to practically steal all the lumber.

There are some nice views in the Simpson clear cut but it’s also hot and dry in a clear cut and they used fertilizers and herbicides in the clear cuts so I carried water with me from Brown Creek rather than just fill up as I got like I normally do.  My friend made the section worse by stopping and scrolling on his phone in the middle of the road.

The view from the clear cut was not as nice as I remember.  It was a long day.  In all I hiked 10 miles and biked 2 miles.  I made several wrong turns and they added a mile to this trip. 

I doubt I will ever do this loop again now that the brown creek road has been destroyed.

12 miles with 1,500 feet elevation gain