Friday, September 28, 2018

Upper Skokomish, gates close in three days

Nice lunch spot.  A bridge washed out here and was never replaced



Time for one last hike before the wildlife gates shut.  Knowing  that I wanted to get in a hike behind the gates made it a bit easier for me to pick my hike.  I wanted to do Church Creek but did not want to be too tired while photographing Friday Night Football, so I opted for the Upper South Fork Skokomish again. 

I had wanted to do Dry Mountain but for some reason I just did not want to do it alone and I was not able to recruit anyone to do it with  me.  Something about that off trail route spooks me even though I have done it alone twice and with a friend once. 

I hit the trail at about 10:30 and I left the trail right away to explore and old road.  The road let me to the river.  I then hiked back up to the trail but not the same way I went down.  I had always wanted to look at the area below the trail on the old road section.  I really don’t like hiking the road to trail conversion part of the trail, I wish they had just kept the road open instead of making us hike half a mile up and old road at the start and end of this hike. 

The old growth on the trial is so lovely and it ruins the end of the hike to have to leave the old growth to hike on an old road.   I had my lunch just on the other side of  the bridgeless crossing of the Skokomish River.  I like the little campsite there that overlooks the river.  After lunch I went up the trail to check on a young hericium mushroom that I had seen there two weeks ago.  At that time the mushroom was too small to pick, so I left it.

I’m glad I waited and did not pick it.  The mushroom tripled in size and two more of them had grown from the same log.  I picked two pounds of hericium and left the rest to continue growing and producing spores.

I had a nice hike and I took some photos of myself for a change.   I won’t be posting those photos though, they are a bit too artistic for this blog.

I accidentally left some of my photography gear in the car, so I did not take as many photos as I was planning on taking of mushrooms and stuff.  There were very few mushrooms to photo though.  It is looking like a bad mushroom year unless we get some more good rain before the first frost.
7 miles with 700 feet elevation gain

More pictures later

ribbon off trail

ribbons off trail

fall colors


Gymnophilus

Gymnophilus

Bolete

A tree split in two and formed a bridge here, the original bridge was never replaced

The last remaning bridge


Western Toad

Hericium


Western Toad


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