Colonol Bob

I hiked up to the Mulkey shelter on the Col. Bob trail yesterday. It was my first time on this trail so I was excited to be doing something new. There was a brand new geocache waiting for it's first finder at the shelter too.

This was quite a work out. I had trouble finding the trail in places. A huge blow down near the one mile marker had me searching for the trail for almost an hour. At one point I gave up and started to go back to my car. But I really wanted to complete this hike so back up the trail I went. I found a switchback just 5 feet above me. The blow down really confused me because it covered a switch back.

Over and under trees, the tune "Limbo Rock" got stuck in my head. Hmm to go over or under this one? Some I had to go around, to go above or below? A few times I made the wrong choice. I don't know how many times I had to take off my pack and crawl on my hands and knees.

Easter lilies are in bloom and the old growth here is outstanding. I really enjoyed the forest and I stopped to sit and absorb the atmosphere several times.

Once I reached the shelter it was time to look for the geocache, the first cache I found was not a geocache. I found someone's cache of fuel canisters!

When I found the geocache it was totally exposed. I covered it up with a bit of bark that I think had been used to cover it up before.

The cache and two new geocoins and a travel bug in it. I took one Geocoin and left the other and the travel bug for someone else.

Regarding the Shelter:

According the "Olympic Mountain Trail Guide" by Robert L. Wood:

"The Shelter was constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps. in the 1930's to replace a cabin built about 1910 by Mart H and Purl Mulkey. The brothers had a trap line that extended form the Colonel Bob area to Bunch Lake, where they had another cabin.

I don't blame the last person who attemped to find this cache for turning back since they had to deal with bad coordinates and hip deep snow. The only snow I found on the trail was right at the shelter. What a difference a few weeks makes. I was tempted to turn back when my GPS said I was 14 feet away from the shelter but I could not see the shelter. I could see a giant moss covered rock and for a moment I wondered if the shelter had been crushed by the rock. I had to use my geosense to find the shelter, I figured it must be up on the hill-top where there was a flat spot but it was getting very close to the time I needed to turn back if I wanted to reach my car before dark!

I walked 5.27 miles to reach the cache thanks to losing the trail, I walked 4.07 miles to reach my car. Round trip mileage was 9.3 miles with 2,614 feet of elevation gain.

Took me 4 hours to hike up and only 2 hours to hike down. I spent 45 minutes at the shelter cooking lunch and brewing tea but I did not eat my lunch until I was about 1 mile back down the trail. I started just after 11am and finished just after 6pm.

Unfortunately I packed my camera all the way up there and back without a memory card in it. Boo hoo I have no pictures.

This hike only ranks a 21 on the hike difficulty calculator

But with climbing over and under so much dead fall it was a pretty tough hike.