Cowiche Canyon Trail

A somewhat urban hike in a different biome.  I wanted to do the Yakima Skyline trail while I was in the area, but I read that the road was rough.  I don't have a good trail car since I sold my Jeep.  So, I looked for something else with a better road.  Google helped me find this trail.  I still drove around in a circles a bit while looking for the trail head since SIRI had never heard of it.

I knew there was a side trail to a winery and I wanted to start there for car trail head security.  I was on the road,  so I actually I had some valuable stuff in my car.  I left half in my car and half in the hotel.  I found the East Canyon trail head before I found the winery trail so that is where I started.



*********************************************************************************



I had the trail mostly to myself at first.  As I got near the far trail head the crowds picked up but were still not too bad. 

After hitting the Wast trail head and turning back I headed up the winery trail.  I had a glass of wine and cooked ramen at the top. The wine cost $7.00 for one glass.   I cooked my ramen kind of on the sly as I knew it would leave a temporary mark in the grass. 

 This was not my typical hike at all.  I had a great time seeing and doing something new.  The skies were so blue here too.

The trail got really crowded as I reached the end of my hike and the parking lot was so full that I was almost blocked in.

7 miles with 300 feet elevation gain

Wynoochee Lake Shore Trail

Found a football, set  it down to take my boots off and forgot to pick it up
again before I crossed the river.  Was not about to cross the river again to go get it

Dosewallips road has been on my hiking radar for a while.  I think the hike is actually 13 miles now with the washout before the washout.  Perhaps the washout before the washout will never be repaired.  I did not want to do a 13 mile hike, so I thought about the Wynoochee Lake Shore trail.  But Wynoochee is such a long drive for me, or is it?  I opened up my map program to compare and found that Wynoochee is actually 5 miles closer to home than Dosewallips. 

I opted to do a loop hike around the fake lake.  The lake was created by a flood control dam that caused the entire valley to be flooded and destroyed.  The dam produces power now.  The original Wynochee river trail was destroyed by the dam and the Wynoochee Lake Shore trail was built around the new lake.  The Wynochee watershed was treated savagely by logging companies, not much of the original forest is left.

Video of this hike

The Wynoochee Lake Shore  trail was 12 miles long before the foot bridge that crosses the lake washed out.  I never got to see that bridge, so I’m not sure when it washed out.  Now the only way to do this hike via a bridge is to take the car bridge plus a road detour around a side stream that also has a washed out bridge.  The hike is 16 miles if you do it that way.  No thanks!

So I make my own way, crossing the river about a mile before the old foot bridge.  When bridges washout it is best to find another place to ford.  Bridges are built on deep and narrow parts of rivers.  When you ford a big river like the Wynoochee on foot, you need to find a shallow and wide spot to ford. 

I’ve done this hike twice before in the counter-clock-wise direction, today I decided to change it up by going clock-wise.  I crossed well before the bridge and had lunch on the lake shore.  The crossing was so cold and so long!  This was the first time for Sage to cross a big river and she did great.  Sage did not even shiver, since Sage was not shivering I was able to have lunch right where I crossed instead of haveing to hike a bit to warm up first.

I felt good on this hike until I saw a sign listing the mileage.  The hike back was going to be longer than the hike in!  The hike was just shy of ten miles according to my GPS. I must be a little out of shape because it really wore me out. Perhaps my painful tooth wore me down a bit too.

My tooth still hurts a lot but my sciatica was a bit better.  I think I will be able to cure it with stretching.  I think I have something like piriformis syndrome.  I know that my mother had it.  Today my tooth is actually finally starting to hurt less too.

We had to navigate around a few blow downs and the trail is getting faint in places.  I had the trail all to myself and I did not hear any traffic on the roads that go around the lake, so it was quite pleasant.  I might start going to the Wynoochee more often.

Scapania liverwort on a rock

Oregon beak moss

Peltigera lichen on a tree

How did Sage manage to squeeze through this?

Aulocomnium in wetter conditions than it is used to according to David Wagner

Found this Western toad on the trail, it seemed to be near death
maybe an elk stepped on it.  We heard some in the bushes.

Looking down from the road bridge

Huckleberry Hillclimb Alderbrook

Alderbrook boasts 5 miles of hiking trails for resort patrons.  I walked down from the golf course to the lodge and then back up to the golf course where I had an appointment.  The trail was nice enough and the creek made it feel a little bit wild.  There was highway noise on each end including a highway crossing. 

The next time I have businses at Alderbrook I might explore more of their trail system.


2 miles round trip

Lower Skokomish with a Toothache and Sciatica in the Rain

My  first hike in a month.  I’ve been down with a sinus infection and a toothache.   One or the other, or maybe both, I don’t know.  Antibiotics were taking a long time to kick in and getting the tooth ground down for a crown did not ease the pain by very much.  I also have sciatica  down my left leg, it only hurts when I am gaining elevation, stepping down does not hurt.

I was not sure how far I was going to hike as I really had to force myself to get out on this dreary rainy day.  It was the only day I had free.  I’ve got to go back to having planned hiking days where I make no other appointments.

I parked at the Lebar trail head so I could avoid any hassles with my pass.  I’ve learned that having a pass on display does not always prevent you from getting a ticket.  Rangers look for the NW forest pass and are a bit blind to the Golden Access Pass.

I trudged up the trail, the only thing that kept me going was the thought of lunch and how many calories I had to burn before I could get away with eating a big lunch.

Two miles in I got out my sit pad and stopped for coffee, but I had no water so I just ate a banana instead.   It’s not at all like me to want to sit after just two miles.

I needed to go about three miles in order to justify lunch, but when I got to that point there was no perfect place to have lunch.  So I ended up going almost to camp comfort.  I had lunch near the place where the trail washed out years ago.  Getting over the log jam was a pain and as soon as I got down to the gravel bar it really started to rain.

I searched for a perfect lunch spot by the river but just in the woods.  I needed  a spot with a log to sit on and tree to hang my tarp from.  I did not find such  spot with trees perfectly aligned over a perfectly sized log log.  Instead, I found a sort of bank to sit on.  I ended up with a really nice tarp pitch.  The rain drained just right and the tarp was high enough over my head.

When I went to sit, I discovered I had left my sit pad behind when I had a banana.  So I put on my rain pants to give me some insulation from the ground.  Lunch was noodles with dehydrated hamburger, powdered tomato and peanut butter, dried corn and hot sauce.  Lunch was nice.  I also had 1.5 cups of coffee.  The second cup was upsetting my stomach so Sage got half of it.

For lunch Sage had Mayday emergency ration bars since I forgot to pack dog food, but I always have Mayday bars in my car.  I’m really liking the Mayday bars, they save me from having to shop for lunch before a hike.  I also am liking my huge cans of tomato power, dried bell peppers and peanut powder from Walmart.  I have what was five pounds of fresh hamburger that I dehydrated down and keep in the freezer.  I expect it to take a year for me to use up this hamburger on day hikes as I ration it out carefully.

After lunch I put my wet tarp away and hiked back in a better mood.  I took Ibuprofen for my tooth/head pain and my sciatica hurt less on the hike down. 

My left knee hurts in two different ways, one way is from sciatica and the other way is a mystery.  I’ve seen a doctor for the knee one time and when they could not find arthritis they sent me away with no DX.   That was about 5 years ago.  I really should go back and find out the cause of my sciatica and the cause of my non-sciatic knee pain.  I’m hoping to find a good general practitioner in Olympia since none of the doctors in my county fully accept my insurance, they are all out of network.

I ended up hiking nine miles and the next day I was not very sore at all.  I saw a brush picker hiking back to a green van on the way out and that is the only person I saw all day.

9 miles with 1,000 feet elevation gain.

Huge tree near the little waterfall

Lunch view

Lunch under a tarp

My sit pad were I left it, I got it back on the way out

A little water fall that I could hear just off the trail

Lunch, the entire reason to hike.

Apometzgeria pubescens liverwort in the center. Click to see it better.