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| Carpool spot |
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| carpool spot |
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| working our way up to the lake |
Video of lake just coming into view
We could hear an elk and thought it might be at the lake but it was not.
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| There it is! |
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| Sphagnum squarrosum at the lake |
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| Patches jumps right in for no known reason |
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| Tea time and my new filter |
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| Then it starts to rain hard, |
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| so Critter tests out his new cuben fiber tarp |
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| Biggest Hericium I have ever seen. |
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| Critter in his brand new mega bucks rain jacket |
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| Earth star puff ball (Geastrum saccatum) nestled into a bed of glittering wood moss (Hylocomnium splendens) |
Off to bag yet another sekrit lake yesterday. This hike was short and steep. My body rebelled, "Enough hiking for this week!"
my bones and joints screamed at me.
But
I knew I would get my second wind.
Mornings are hard for me; hiking up hill is hard for me. I have anemia, I’m waiting for menopause to
fix that, I guess I’ve got about 5 years to go.
My mother and both my Grandma’s had hysterectomies, so I don’t know what
to expect based on my family genetics.
All I know for sure is that I intend to take my uterus to the grave with me. Bloody doctors and their female mutilation!
In the mean time I
try to remember to take iron, but I forget and it takes six months of
remembering to take iron to build your levels back up. At my last check my serum ferritin level was 5.
I think my low serum ferritin levels are to blame for my
slooooooow uphill speeds. I get winded
pretty fast. So, I was struggling at the
start of this steep hike. But when we
hit the off trail section I felt better.
The off trail section was steep, so steep that we had to hold on the blueberry
bushes and small cedar tree branches to pull ourselves up the hill.
Off trail felt great, yeah I was tired, but it was exciting and got the adrenaline
going.
Would I impale myself on devil's club? Would we get cliffed out?
Would we find the lake? Would we
get hypothermia and die out there? Fun stuff.
Well, we made it to the lake just fine, we found a route that
ran between the cliffs and delivered us right to the lake. The lake was beautiful and untarnished
(unless you count the high mercury levels in the sediments), no fishing lines
or toilet paper, no rusty old cans in fire pits and BIG fish! I did not
fish, but Critter cast his rod a few times.
Then it started to rain and I had to get back to deal with my helpless
family, so we left.
We took a different route down and it was a better route, but
still, it got the adrenaline pumping... would we end up on top of a cliff and
have to backtrack up the slippery hill? Would we get
sucked down into the outlet stream and not be able to climb back up? Nope, we had an easy time of it and got back
on the trail exactly where we left it, in a huge thicket of devil's club.
Now I’m going to rest up until Friday. On Friday I’m going back to Church Creek, but
with an old friend. Maybe we will slay
some dragons up there.
3 miles with 2,100 feet elevation gain
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| Track and elevation with no map |
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| Cortinarius violaceus (I think) |
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| Mossy goodness |
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