Winter Dumpster Diving on Green Mountain and Kamilchee Ridge, Nearly Sprayed by Green Diamond Helicopter

  Took a couple of dumpster dive hikes this week.  A dumpster dive is a hike that is not very pretty but is close to home.  Dumpster dive hikes are normally on state or privately owned tree farms.

My first dumpster dive hike was up the gold creek and plummer trials to the top of green mountain.  I was in Belfair anyway and near my daughter's home so I invited her to join me.  This trail was okay before the logged the upper portion a year or two ago.  Such a shame that they decided to log what is probably the most popular trail in Kitsap County.

5 miles with 1,000 feet elevation gain

Smog hovering over Seattle

The Brothers

Olympic Pano

Dumpster dive trail

My next dumpster dive was up Kamilchee ridge, but I started from Taylor town this time.  I had a good hike until Greed Diamond arrived with a helicopter spraying chemicals.  Now I need to go on another hike just to recover.

When I saw what was happening I called the main office let them know I was there and my route out and that I was leaving as quickly as I could. I did not want to get doused in chemicals. They stayed away from me with their spray pattern, but that was probably just coincidental.

A Green Diamond pick up truck came down and road and I stopped the guy driving it and asked them not to spray directly on top of me. He went straight to the defense and was a total ass. It's not like I asked them to stop spraying, I just asked that they not spray me. Rather than reassure me, the man from Green Diamond told me a pack of lies and then drove away.

He could have reassured me, he could have even offered me a ride out of there. Instead he lied and claimed I needed a permit to be there, I did not. Then he claimed that I have to call Green Diamond before I hike, also not true. This was very scary. Signs should have been posted ahead of time warning that the area was to be sprayed. The man in the truck needs to work on his people skills.

As if I needed another reason to hate Greed Diamond.  Greed Diamond is Simpson repackaged.  The same people own both companies.  Simpson cut all the trees and then left town, but they still own industrial tree farms in the area under the new name of Greed Diamond.

I had planned on hiking up the Dosewallips that morning so I did not pack any water.  I did have a water filter with me but not the good one that filters out chemicals.  I tried to find a clean stream to get some water to filter.  One stream had strange looking sediment so I passed it up.  Good thing I passed it up as the source of the stream turned out to be a vile green pond in a gravel pit.  So gross.

This hike was 7.7 miles with 1,100 feet of elevation gain

Searching for Carol Fergusion near the Putvin Trail

Parking next to the Hamma Hamma River

83 year old Carol Ferguson has been missing since mid September.  She looks familiar to me, perhaps because she was a Monday Hiker and I have hiked with the Monday Hikers a few times.  I can't keep up with their pace, so I don't go with them very often.  

"We're so laid back, we laugh at our mistakes," says Carol Ferguson of Bremerton, one of the youngsters of the group at 59. "It's the most fun group I've ever been with."

Monday Hikers "laid back"?  Maybe they are laid back at lunch time.

Perhaps I've seen her on the streets of  Bremerton too:  Carol Ferguson knows what rots the teeth and brains of Bremertonians.


I had an intuition that told me Carol Ferguson wandered off of the Putvin trail and onto the old road that crosses the trail.  

  I’m not psychic, I’m not even sure if that is a thing, but I could not shake my intuition about this familiar looking woman.   I asked search and rescue of Mason County if they had searched that road and they refused to tell me.  They said they could not comment on an open case and that I should call the Bremerton police department.

 I never called the Bremerton police.

It seemed like the snow levels were low enough to search the old road, so I asked Phil to go search the road with me.  Who wants to go on a search like this alone?  Phil was up for it of course.  He loves going on adventures off the beaten path.

There was more snow on the drive in than I expected.  I had to park ¼ of a mile from the Putvin trail along with a bunch of other cars.  The days of finding sweet solitude on the Putvin trail are gone.  The Lena Lake crowd has arrived.  The fragile meadow is getting stomped to death; this makes me sad.

I was early, so I flew my camera a bit searching up and down the Hamma Hamma river next to the road.  If Carol had fallen into the river maybe there would be some sign.

Phil arrived and we headed for the trailhead.  We saw search and rescue flags (SAR from here on in this blog post).  SAR had done a grid search.  We could tell by the flags and by the week that I spent training to be in SAR years and years ago.  I never finished my training because they started charging for the training.  I think they have changed that policy since and the training is free again.

The snow on the road was nasty, we were post holing about every four to five steps.  Miserable.  We searched the woods opposite the trail head first, in case Carol had never made it to the trail and because the area is pretty.  I found an old memorial marker that I could not read.  The writing was too faded.

We then looked at the SAR ribbons on the road some more.  They all seemed to be dated 11/18, I did not realize that they had searched that recently.  My understanding from reading the news articles was that they only searched for four days.

 So up the trail we went and there was less snow than on the road, so the going was easy other than the steepness of the trail.  When we got to the old road the snow was nasty again with intermittent post holing.  It was not bad enough for snowshoes, but it was bad.

The old road walk

I was leading the way and before we rounded a certain corner I told Phil, the spot where my intuition tells me she was, is just around the corner.  I braced myself a tiny bit just in case my intuition was right.

A snow and debris avalanch across the old road

We rounded the corner and we found a gaping ravine where the road had washed away.  There was a rope going down into the ravine and another rope going up the other side.  There was a creek in the ravine.

It felt it was too dangerous to continue on those ropes.  Did Carol hike this old road and try to go up and down that rope?  Did Carol even hike on this road?  No way to know.  

Phil was fine with going up and down the ropes, but I was not.  I would want a harness and crampons for that job.  The rope was so skinny, I’m sure my hands and arms would get tired and maybe I would lose my grips and fall backwards into the 30 foot deep ravine.

A much smaller ravine on the trail

I pulled my flying camera from my pack and scoured the creek bed as best I could.  It is not easy to fly a camera in a ravine, if  my flying camera lost its GPS signal in the ravine it would crash, so I kept my camera mostly above the trees tops. 

I control my flying camera with just a little phone screen and it is hard to see any details until I get my footage home and look at it on my computer.

Just down from where the ravine took out the road, I did see something on the footage.  It is probably just a bit of wood and not a red backpack.  I wish I had a clearer picture.  Should I go back and risk my flying camera by trying again or should I call the Bremerton police and potentially waste their time?

Here is the photo:

It’s not clear if that is anything.

Since  we had hit a dead end we had lunch and then packed up and headed back.  On the way back we ran into a climber who had just summited Bretherton!  He was coming down a ravine that was right next to the ravine where we had to turn back.  He had avoided the awful roped up ravine by going straight up the ravine next to it instead.

The climber looked absolutely exhausted.  What an insane route he took to climb Bretherton and apparently he was solo?  Saner climbers normally go up Bretherton via Upper Lena Lake.

When we got back down to the main road we walked up the valley a bit to try to find the ravine where it met the road.  The ravine has no water it where it must meet the road and we could not really find it.   The water must go underground before it reaches the road.

I would like to check out the ravine where it crosses the old road on the switchback that is nearly parallel to the switchback in the trail.  We did not walk that section of the road because we were sick of post holing in the snow.

We did not find anything,  but we had a good hike and my  nagging intuition is gone.

only 5 miles with 1,000 feet elevation gain but I am really sore this morning.  Intermittent Post holing took it out of me.

On the way home I got stuck on 101 where a tree had fallen across the road.  When 101 is closed there is no real way around it and it can be closed for hours.  

 I don't like sitting in long traffic jams and breathing in exhaust fumes, so whenever I get stuck on 101 now, I leave the line and go relax somewhere until the road is open.

I went back to Hoodsport and hung out at the library parking lot until the road opened.  I used the library wifi, brewed a coffee and ate some yummy survival rations while I waited.  The parking lot has a great view of 101 so I knew right way when the road was open again.

Hamma Hamma

The ravine where we had to stop.  We are in this photo.

Same ravine but up stream from the road

Ravine where it crosses the old upper closed road

SAR ribbons on the FS 25 road

We did not enter the wilderness at all,
we were below the wilderness at all times.

One of the first people to perish on this trail

Sage was a real PITA at lunch time howling for more and more food 

A wild cherry tree

Someone lost their glove on the FS 25 road.

Lower Lena Lake

You’ll only find me at Lena Lake on a weekday in the winter, that is when the crowds are the lightest.  Lena Lake has some gorgeous moss covered rocks at the outlet and I wanted to photograph them.   I’ve never got a photo of those rocks that I am happy with, but I had a new idea I wanted to test out.

The outlet stream was flowing too fast, so I could not cross it.  Instead I had lunch below lunch rock and took some photos there.

After lunch I went up to the rock and took some photos with my flying camera after making sure that the one other person on the rock would not be bothered by it.

I hiked really slow due to my photography and was able to make a full day of this short hike.  I got a few good photos, but all of my photos of rocks were ruined by a shallow depth of field.  Oh well, I have an excuse to go back and try again now.

A woman is still missing on the Putvin trail and I can’t stand it any longer.  I am going to go see if I can find any trace of her.

Mount Walker, up the road and down the trail

The forecast was dreadful and I was desperate for a hike.  When I can’t get out and hike at least once a week, I can’t sleep at night and I  get really anxious.  I actually need to hike, doctors orders.  The weather looked to be better up North near the rain shadow, so I  decided to try Mount Walker. 

I drove my car for a change, I did not want to deal with bus schedules and dog  politics.   My main goal was to put some Pokémon in the gym at the top where I know they will stay for a long  time.  There were three cars at the trailhead when I arrived, oh well, can’t always have the trails all to myself. 

As I was getting ready to hike disaster struck!  Two happy, chatty, bubbly hikers arrived at the trail head and they liked my dog.  Sigh, basically the opposite of me this morning.   I got back in my car and thought about going to a nearby trail that is less popular.

Logging is coming to
Mount Walker

The problem with steep trails like Rose and Walker is that you can never really  get away from noisy people.  The noisy people might be a quarter mile ahead of you on the trail, but they are just one or two switchbacks above or below you in elevation.  On a straight flat trail other people will be out of earshot in short order, but on trail like this you may never get away from their blabber. 

So I was going to hike elsewhere and miss my Pokémon goal.  I was not happy about that.  Then I realized I could hike up Walker, make my goal and avoid all the noise by hiking up the road instead of the trail.  Sometimes I do hike up the trail and then down the road to save my knees on the descent.   The trail loses 2,000 feet in just two miles and that is hard on the knees.

My camera today was my Ricoh GR II, I also used an external flash.
Ricoh GR II Digital Camera with 3-Inch LCD (Black)

 I’ve never actually hiked up the road and down the trail though.  So that excited me in two ways, one, I was getting away from the noise, two I was taking a new route.

I could still hear the other hikers on the trail way above me for the first quarter of a mile of my hike but soon their noise faded away and I had the road all to myself all the way up. Near the end I left the road and  took a short cut through the forest to get to the look out.

 No view at the lookout today, just fog, also it was too cold at the lookout , so I wandered over to the middle to complete my Pokémon goal.  When I was done with that, I was so cold that I thought about just hiking right back down without having coffee or lunch.

I walked to the view point near the trail, no view there either, just fog.   I nearly walked right back down the trail, but I was really hungry and could not think of any very nice lunch spots on the trail.  So I stopped and made hot coffee and lunch.  I warmed up and felt better while eating lunch in all my layers, so I was glad that I did take a break.

Sage makes sure that I practice
"leave not trace" hiking.

At about 2:30 I got out my trekking poles to protect my knees on the descent and hiked back down to my faithful car that always waits patiently for me at the trail heads. 

The weather was dry for my entire hike, while it had rained all day further South.  I do love the Mount Walker area rain shadow.  It is not as dry as the rain shadow up by Port Townsend, but it is so much dryer than Mason County and much closer to home.

About 8 miles with 2,000 feet elevation gain.   The trail is two miles and the road is 4 miles.  Miles are added to the hike this time of year because you have to walk to the trail head as well.

One the way home I decided to go up to Quilcene just to have a look around.  As I was passing the Forest Service Rangers station I remembered that they had bought a bunch of pictures from me several years ago.  They bought the pictures to put into a new map.  It has been so long now that I was wondering if they were ever going to use my pictures so  I decided to go in and ask.  To my pleasant surprise I found that my pictures finally got used just a few months ago in November. 

Five of my photographs are on the new map for the Hood Canal Ranger District!   They paid me and credited the photos to me.

The map is really nice, so go buy a copy,  but if you have older maps hold on to them too.   The newer maps do not have all the old roads on them.  I made a point of getting a copy of all the old maps while they were still available to the public.