Brush Crashing on the Lower Skokomish

Sunrise

Back to the Lower South Fork Skokomish.  This is the closest forest trail to my home.  True, there is a road on either side of it and homesteads have been built, so this is not a really wild trail.  It's hard to reach the real wilderness this time of year.  It all seems to be  too high in elevation or locked behind wildlife gates or off limits to dogs or too far away to drive to.

So, back to the Skokomish.  I noticed the cell phone reception is getting closer and closer to the trail, but it is not there yet. I hope it never reaches there.  I need an internet free place to go to so I can read.  I have too much trouble reading at home with the distractions of the internet and the land line phone and people.

I got off to an early start, I woke up at about 7:05 to see if my child was actually going to get the school bus on time.  It was a struggle but I got them on the bus.

I hit the trail at 8:30. The plan was a short hike with lots of photography and a very long lunch.  How do you make goddess laugh?  Tell her your plans.

I ended up going off trail to explore a line of ribbons.  The ribbons were marking a property line and led to two signs that marked the forest service land boundary.  I found this worrisome.   Surveys usually mean logging and destruction.  Will they log right down to this trail now too?  The marked off area is almost all Maple.  Maybe some music maple in there?

Next I decided to try to find the actual site of the old Lebar Guard station.  I don't know if I ever found it.  I suspect that the 140 access road was the original road to the guard station.  The area has been logged, so hard to tell what was there.

Next I wandered up the 140 road a bit hoping that it would take me to a jumping off point to reach an interesting flat area I had waypointed.  It did not take me there, there was a ravine in the way.

By this time I was quite hungry so I decided to skip looking at the flat area and go down to the river on an off trail route that would take me to a wide spot on the gravel bed.  Most of the wide spots are on the other side of the river this year.

My route to the wide spot was more interesting that I had hoped it would be and I was getting really tired and I got water just a little bit over my boots.

Once on the river bank, I settled down for a nice long lunch.   During lunch I brewed three cups of  pu erh tea,  cooked a bowl of noodles and read 37 pages of the book "Boundaries, where you end and I begin".  I found that book on my mother's bookshelf after she died.   My mother had a lot of books and it hurt to get rid of most of them, this was one of the 50 or so that I kept.

I'm also reading a book that my husband wanted me to read called "The Money Personality".  That book is 10 ounces heavier though, so it stays at home or in the car.

On the hike out I saw a group setting up three tents on the gravel bar near the trail head.  This trail is now getting campers on a weekday in the winter.  Days of solitude are fading fast.   Summer will bring crowds for sure.

In the summer I will have  have to go off trail to get any solitude, sadly,  crashing through the brush is a great way to get covered in ticks.

8.5 miles with 300 feet elevation gain

I've begun to dread going home to see what damage or mess my child has made while home alone.  My child is 14 and still makes messes and accidentally destroys a lot of stuff.  

When I first got home everything seemed fine.  My child had played with the corn skewers and left them in the sink. But my child had swept up a mess they made and took a shower without flooding the bathroom.

My child hesitated when I asked what he had done with the corn skewers though.  The said he stabbed leaves with them.  Well that was true but in the morning I discovered that he had stabbed leaves that were on the dining room floor.  He destroyed the floor under the leaves, leaving three new holes in the vinyl.  Great.  Can I never leave that child home alone?  At least the vinyl is old and worn out.  I was hoping to remodel the kitchen and dining room after my spouse died.  His hospice bed was in the dining room and I found him dead on the dining room floor.

Clearly it is still too soon to upgrade anything, if my child is still this destructive.  My child will turn 15 next month.  Perhaps I need to wait until he is 18 and moves out before I can fix up my house?

Bob's Conk.  I did this for my Grandma and my Mother when they died too

Part of a row of ribbons

Ribbons led to these signs

Rime Ice

Lunch on the river bank

Yellow is my track, green is the 140 access road.  The waypoint for
Lebar guard station is from my GPS map and might be wrong.

Lower South Fork Skok

Skokomish Valley, I realized I had not packed my boots while I was
taking this photo

 This was the first trail I hiked after my maternal grandmother died, could that be part of the reason that I'm not very fond of this beautiful trail? This is the closest trail to my house by about four miles I think.  I've been pretty miserable with grief over the loss of my spouse, but much less miserable than I was a few weeks ago.   Hiking is helping, but I don't like being miserable while I hike.  I'm going to be miserable for awhile no matter what I do though.

I left my house at about 9:30 and planned for a long hike. I made it to the viewpoint overlooking the Skokomish Valley when I realized that I did not recall putting my boots in the car.  The shoes on my feet were crocks and they are not at all suitable for hiking.  I searched my car and yes, I had forgot to pack my boots.    I drove back home got my boots, put a spare pair of shoes in the car in case this ever happens again,  got some gas and restarted my trip.   

 The days are getting longer, so I did not stress myself out too much about  losing time.   This is the first time that I have ever left my boots at home, but there was one time that I packed two left boots or two right boots and had to go home, I was wearing crocks for that drive too. 

 They call this forgetfulness I am having right now "Widow Brain".    Widow brain is a small part of what made me afraid to hike again for a while.  I did not trust myself out in the woods alone.

I packed a big camera, two lenses an external flash, a mini tripod and a flash controller for this hike.  I was torn between doing big miles and taking lots of photos.  With so much gear weight it might be hard to do big miles.  This hike turned out to be sort of an in-between.    Pretty good mileage and a fair amount of photos taken.

My new back pack makes it easier for me to carry weight.  I designed this one with much wider shoulder pads than my first three packs.

Lunch spot

I took my lunch break on the gravel bar about 3 miles in and I was surprised to see a couple of hikers come down the bank to have lunch very close to me.  I have never before shared my lunch spots on the gravel bar with other hikers on a weekday.  The other hikers seemed surprised to see me.  I took a fairly long lunch hoping they would leave before me, but they did not.   I got away from them by picking my way down the gravel bar and then brush crashing back up to the trail.

At the start of the hike I felt anxious and sad.  I miss my husband.  I remember a college class I took that went to this trail over and over.  It was a terrible class and the people in my study group let me down bad.  At the time I told my husband that I feared that group had ruined the trail for me forever.  He told me not to worry,  I started hiking this trail way before they arrived and they were all gone back to their home states and I was still there, they were just visitors to my woods. 

Well now my spouse is gone too and used to hike this trail before I met him and I'm still here hiking this trail.   I pondered for a while how to relate that to what he said about the others coming and going from this trail.  I never did come to a  real conclusion other than I should start talking to the trees again

After lunch I did feel better though, the food helped, the rest helped and the exercise helped.   I barely cried at all on the way back.  I found a reshi conk (Ganoderma oregonese) that was fresh enough to harvest so I did.  Reshi is supposed to help suppress cancer and my immune system is sure to be stressed right now.   I've read different figures on the increased death rates for recent widows and colon cancer was mentioned in most of the stuff I have read.

Dog with the sun for hair light and an external flash for fill light

During my hike out, I took a second coffee break near the site of the old homestead.   That is where all the stumps are, I think it was the Lebar homestead.   During my coffee break I chopped up the reshi into pieces small enough to add to a cup of tea.   I have no idea what the right dose is though.  It is possible the chemicals need to be extracted with alcohol instead of boiling too, I just don't know.  I'll stick with boiling it and hope I get some of the good stuff out of it that way.

Towards the very end of my hike I begin to feel really peaceful.  I think the dimming light helped.  The forest was getting sleepy. During my coffee break,  I checked my watch and saw that sunset was near, so I picked up my stuff and headed out.   I would have liked to have sat there longer.   I made it off the trail at sunset, with just a bit of light left.

7.5 miles with 300 feet elevation gain

At seven miles with barely any elevation gain this does not count as a "real" hike, but my body thought it was a real hike.  My back is sore now.  Grief takes a lot of energy they say.  

During this hike I resolved to try to solve the problem of my washing machine will not spin clothes by watching YouTube videos once I got home.  I've watched a few videos now and done a test and I think the problem is the door lock.  I do my best planning while I am out hiking.

I think I'm pretty much done with ever calling in the pros to fix my home appliances, they can never seem to fix them for less than the cost of a new machine.

Sigma 10-20mm

Someone lost their glasses Sigma 10-20mm

Coffee with a bit of Ganoderma in it

Grape Lake - Lakebagging

Grape Lake

There are a lot of woods on highway three between Smelton and Belfair.   I've looked them over on google earth a few times, hoping for an interesting destination.  Finally after all these years I noticed a lake near the Grapeview Loop road.

I decided to take a look at that lake today.  I found a tiny spot to pull out and then did a 5 point turn to get my tiny car pointed back towards the highway.

It did not take me long at all to find the lake and find a faint trail that led to the shoreline.  I followed some other faint trails along the shore and before I knew it, I had run out of trail.  I decided to brush crash back out the the road without backtracking.  This turned out to be a mistake.

My wet and dirty
clothes at the end of
this hike.

The road was a lot further away than I expected it to be.  The brush kept getting thicker and thicker.  I was scrambling in blue huckleberry bushes that were taller than I and they were all wet.  I caught myself wondering if my husband was looking down at me floundering around in the brush and worrying about me.  He hated that I hiked alone and sometimes left the trail. 

Well, if he was watching over me maybe he was protecting me too I decided.  Since there was cell phone service here, I used my phone and google maps to see where I was.  I was a long way from the road.  I wondered if I should just turn back.  I was getting wetter and wetter and if I got hurt there would be no way that anyone would ever find my body out here.

I realized this would be a great place to hide a body. Was I going to trip over skeletal remains?  I kept thinking of the episode of  Darkwoods Justice where a local mushroom picker found human remains while she was crawling on her hands and knees in the brush. She took the sheriff back to the spot but the remains were never found again.

Would I stumble onto a homeless camp this close to the highway?  Should I have brought a weapon to defend myself? Should I have my dog with me?  Oh yes, I was not having fun.  The brush was getting taller, thicker wetter.  My clothes were soaked.  What if I my phone fell out of my pocket, what a disaster that would be!   The brush kept grabbing my pack, my new pack that has never been brush crashing.  Would my new pack hold up to this abuse?

Then the unthinkable happened. I reached for my phone and it was not in my pocket! Crap, the brush was so high and so thick and my phone case is black.  Most of my gear has at least one bit of orange duct tape on it for visibility in just this situation.  My phone is not one of my normal pieces of gear and does not have orange on it, just black.

So I started to try to backtrack through the horrible bushy mess that I did not want to be in.  I found my phone in less than one minute.  Whew..  I hate losing stuff off trail in the brush where it can be very difficult to trace my steps.

Eventually I made it back out to a road.  Once I regained my bearings and was satisfied that I knew where I was, I decided to try to walk around the Lake on logging roads.  I guessed it would be about two miles, to walk around this good sized lake, but it was a little less than that.

I wanted to have hot coffee on the lake shore, but I was worried about my car being parked next to the highway and I was very wet and cold, so I drove home instead.  I think I will go back and explore this area at least one more time.  I will also carry pepper spray when I do.   I did not feel safe in the woods so close to civilization.  There could could be all kinds of people out there and I'm a solo female.

It was not a good day for photography, it was gray and a little bit misty, so I decided to convert all my photos to black and white.

I intend to do a lot of hiking in the next few weeks as a way to deal with the overwhelming anxiety and emotions I am having due to my spouses death and all of the difficulties I am having with teenager.

I'm going to call this place Grape Lake since it is near Grapeview Loop Road,  but I did notice that Hiawatha Creek flows out of it, so it could be Hiawatha Lake.

Wynoochee falls and Maidenhair falls

Maidenhair Falls

Back to the nooch.  First we went up the road to Wynoochee falls then back to the Jeep and over to Maidenhair falls on the trail.  It was a nice sunny day,  even if we were in the shade for most of it. 

There is just something about that area, it is a bit different then my closer to home stomping grounds since it is on the wet side of the Mountains.

The crowds are much reduced and the people who are there are a little bit different than your Seattle Subaru crowd.

6.5 miles 200 feet elevation gain

Wynoochee Falls

Moss on a stick

Two gorillas fighting according to my hiking partner.

Glowing moss on a stick

Western Red Cedar in the sky

Mud puddle reflection in the dispersed camping area

Track and Elevation

Big doug-fir

Wynoochee Falls

Moss on a rock . This might be Racomitrium varium according to my moss mentor
David Wagner

I was headed for a sort of obscure location in the Wynoochee watershed, but the road was blocked so I went to Wynoochee Falls instead.

I had trouble sleeping the night before and I got a later start then I wanted.  My child missed the school bus and then could not find his house key then I had to wait for him to get ready.  I dropped him off at school at and I was off in a big hurry.  The days are short and I was more anxious than usual about possibly hiking out in the dark.

I thought that SIRI was routing me up Cougar-Smith but no, Apple maps are not that good. SIRI tried to route me up Kelly road.  I don't even know if Kelly road is open, but Cougar-Smith is much faster.  I had a long hard hiked planned today so I drove maybe a little faster than I should of on the Wynoochee Valley road.  I wonder if that road is ever patrolled?

As soon as I passed the dam I encountered downed woody debris on the road and then  a downed tree over the road.  My planned hike was off, so time for plan B, Wynoochee Falls.

When I parked at the gate I saw a group older hikers just getting started, and they saw me.  I could tell that they thought I might be with their group because the paused and waited for me for a bit before continuing on down the road.  It was clear to me that I was going to have company at Wynoochee falls and I was not real happy about that, or was I?

I decided it might be fun to meet them.  Hiking solo is not as much fun when there is no one at home to return to at the end of the hike and no one at home to try to get away from at the start of the hike.  Yes my teen would be home, but he is at a very difficult age.  I caught up to them at the falls and one of them gave me a razor clam fritter!  I chatted with a few of them, they are from the Olympians hiking club established in 1920.   When they packed up and left I felt a bit sad.

Wow have I changed!   I normally don't like to see any other hikers and I always feel glad when they leave.  Losing my spouse has changed me.  It this change permanent or will it fade as I get back onto my feet?

I needed more exercise than just the 5 miles round trip to the falls so I turned left and headed further up the road with no set destination.  Eventually I looked at my GPS map and decided to make the second bridge my destination.

I did not pause for long at the bridge since I had lunch at the falls and I've had to cut way back on my coffee consumption since my husband passed away.  I've been too anxious to be able to drink coffee all day long.

9 miles with  750 feet elevation gain

Razor Clam Fritter

under the second bridge

New pack is perfect

Medicine, but too rotten to harvest