Dry Creek after the fall back

Dry Creek

I got my little one off to school and got on the road as quickly as possible. We lost an hour of daylight the night before due to the time change. I was happy to reach the trail head nearly an hour earlier that on my previous hike. Rain was forecast but only a 20% chance. So I packed my big camera but not my big lens. I stopped at Twin Totems to top of my gas tank and get some extra snacks to go with my lunch. I expected to hike 14 miles today and I did not want to bonk at 12 miles and I’ve learned I can keep that from happening by eating lots of protein, so I packed a high protein lunch and stopped and bought two jerky sticks and 3 snickers bars at Twin Totem. I almost did not buy the third bar, but it turned out to be a very good thing that I did,  more on that later.

I parked my car at the gate to the bridge over the lake and stretched my calf muscles, before I started to hoof it. By 9:20 I was off, I moved at a pretty good clip and I kept my camera in my back pack for the first mile. I knew I was probably going to be hiking out after dark, so I tried to get off to a good start so I would not have to spend too much time hiking in the dark.

This trail tends to disorient me and I’m not sure why. It seems  that I am always drawn to this trail near the fall time shift and when I am feeling stressed and confused in my personal life.  My uncle had brain surgery this weekend. This is the only trail where I have accidentally been sundowned. I’ve also purposely let myself be sunndowned twice on this trial, including today.

With the shorter day and my previous experience on this trial in  mind, I hiked faster than usual and did not take as many pictures. I reached Dry Creek in good time. Most people only hike the 4 miles to dry creek and then turn around, making it an 8 mile round trip hike. That’s not a bad hike but I like to hike well past the creek,  so I can see the old growth. Dry creek was higher than usual I could not avoid getting my pants a bit wet during the crossing, but not to worry, this is why I only wear quick drying hydrophobic clothing when I hike. Patches is a water loving dog who loves to jump into every body of water she sees, but she hesitated and waited for me to cross before she crossed. That is really not like Patches. I worried that she might have trouble crossing the creek on the way back. She is starting to show her age a bit.

Patches dips her toes into Dry Creek

The highest I have seen Dry Creek get

Once I had crossed the creek I felt a wonderful sense of exhilaration, for I had left the rest of the world behind and the trail was all mine. Almost no one crosses the creek. The silly guide books claim that it is dangerous.

I reached my lunch spot at about 1:20. When I got to my lunch spot I was a bit cold and snow was falling but not sticking. So the first thing I did was get out my pot and start brewing tea and then I sat down to have lunch. It was then 7 mile into my hike,  that I realized I had forgot to pack my lunch. Damn! That’s three times this year that I have done that and this time there was no turning back. I had two snickers bars left and some candy including a Hirschi bar, and that was going to have to do for lunch for both me and my dog.

Moss, mushrooms, chocolate and Brena Hirshci, all things that I like

Tea and a Hirschi bar for lunch

I started my trip back at 2pm and it felt strange to be returning so early, but I know the time change was a factor in the strange feeling. On the way down I took a few more pictures,  including a picture of the death site and cross of Kriten Delaney. Someday I'm going to see if I can get this woman’s death certificate so I can know what happened.

I got back down to the creek two hours before sundown and crossed again with no trouble, but after I had crossed I looked back and saw that Patches was paralyzed with fear and standing on a rock just a few feet from shore. She was unbalanced and could have fallen in the rapids below the rock. So I went back into the creek and pulled her out by the collar. I won’t take Patches up there again,  if I know the water is going to be so high.


I hiked quite slowly for the last two miles of my hike; I was tired and I did not want to get hurt. Still. We made it back down to the lakeside before dark. Once we were back down to the lake I relaxed a bit and started having fun taking pictures and I let the sun set on me. But I was very tired from hiking and lack of food and at one point I left my trekking poles behind and had to walk back about aboutr1/20th of a mile in the dark to find them.

I finished my hike at about 5:30. Today my hands are a bit stiff and sore from using my trekking poles for so many miles.

Along with the usual LBMs and LWM’s and lacteria, I saw the following mushrooms on this hike: White, orange and winter chanterelles,  fall oysters, a baby cauliflower and lots of the bright red russulas that mark the end of the Matsutake season. I did not pick any of them.

It rained for almost about half of the time I was out there but it never rained very hard.

14 miles with 2,500 feet elevation gain

Artists Conk

Small Cauliflower Mushroom

Chanterelle

Logging road turned to trail

Fall Oyster mushrooms edible but not tasty

Pigs ears mushroom edible but too pretty to pick (and usually wormy)

Purple cort?

Purple cort?

Tiny mushrooms on a stick

Two mushrooms at my my "lunch": spot

Witches Butter

Bridge over Lake Cushman at the end of my hike

A note about this trail
In either direction the dry creek trail starts the same with views of stumps and environmental destruction. I started from the north end this time. This hike now starts at the bridge over the un-naturally formed Lake Cushman. The lake is pretty, but this time of year the lake is low the lake bed is filled with gigantic cedar stumps. These represent trees that the City of Tacoma cut down prior to the installation of the damn. The Cushman Lodge was also torn down before the damn was installed. The lodge was at what was at the time the base of Mount Rose. I always curse the generations before me who allowed this destruction but this time it entered my mind to thank the generations before me that fought to save at least a little tiny bit of the National Forest. To get to the part of the forest that was saved (saved because it was Hemlock) one must be prepared for a long hike. The trail follows a logging road for the first 5-6 miles then the trail becomes an actual trail. This logging road is older than that logging road that marks the start of the other end of the trail, so it’s a bit more pleasant to walk on.

Both ends of the dry creek trail have been destroyed by logging, but in the middle of the trail there is a beautiful old growth mountain hemlock forest, before all the destruction this trail went from the North Fork Skokomish to the South Fork Skokomish. It must have been grand.