Mushroom Season is Here

 

Mosquito Lakes

The vlog includes aerial footage.

 

Pigeon Lake

 I decided I wanted to go back to the little pond just off the Church Creek trail.    This is partly off trail and partly on trail all of it in the old growth.  I love going off trail in the old growth but also know the risk of injury is higher when scrambling over logs and side hilling on brush slopes.  So I asked Phil to join and he did.

We started at about 10:30, the days are long, so why not sleep in?    The trip was fun and mostly uneventful.

At one point Sage got her leg stuck between a branch and a log that she was climbing over and she yelped in pain.  I went back and helped her.  Sage is not stoic like Patches was.  I think Sage would let me know right away if she got hurt, unlike Patches who never showed any signs of pain.

This hike was just shy of 4 miles but with 2,100 feet total elevation gain and all the brush crashing, I'm feeling it today.  This was also my steepest hike this year.

Phil and I would like to try to find the 1962 airplane crash in the Olypmics.

4 miles 2,100 feet elevation gain

Off Trail in the Mountains

Off trail in the high country but not the fragile alpine country.  One of my secret spots, so I have no details to give.

1,000 people move to Seattle every week and twice as many people are hiking in the PNW as were just ten years ago.   This information came from NPR.  

 This is starting to be a problem for  our fragile high country and this fragile local hiker.  I think the Olympic trials are getting more and more crowded as folks from Seattle come to the Olympics to try to get away from the crowds over there.  In Seattle you have to get to some trailheads at 7am just to find a parking spot!

I don’t enjoy hiking in crowds.  I like to be alone in nature without input from anyone else.  People interrupt my flow of thought and people can cause problems that leave me more stressed out at the end of a hike than I was before I started.  Mean dogs, loud people with music, litter bugs, bad drivers, they all ruin the trip for me.

I found a great place to get away from people in the winter.  The Hood Canal State forest with its wildlife gate. I was loving that place for the last two years.  My own private low country winter hiking ground with lakes and hills and views.  What fun it was!  I never posted exactly where I was when I blogged my hikes there, I did not want half of Seattle hiking there with me. 

Last winter the wildlife sign was removed and the gate was left open.  With the gate open all year that hiking oasis is now gone.  Cars go up and down the roads and that does  not feel safe to me.  I also don’t like breathing in exhaust fumes when I hike.  It feels silly to hike 11 miles on a road that I could have just driven on too.  So that wonderful spot is no more.

 This winter I had to expand my range to look for other places to hike.  I had some good ideas but those ideas were stopped by logging.  The logging should be done now though, so perhaps I can check out my new ideas next winter.

Mount Rose has been absolutely destroyed by the publicity and I think that Douglas Scott constantly adversting it has not helped at all.

I took one of my favorite and most secret off trail hikes today.  I guard this secret since it is so close to some really crowded hikes that I fear overflow from those areas could come at any time.  I respect this place so much that I fell out with several people  when they decided to brag about it or place freaking geocaches at it.  What fucking assholes!

At the same time one of the people who built it is also mad at me for talking about back when I thought it was a public area.  So I just can’t win.  All the politics have kind of ruined this spot but I was happy to see that probably no one has been back there since I was, so perhaps the spot will be safe.

It is not a pretty spot, so maybe it will never be popular with the crowds.  The only thing it has to offer is solitude.

Historic O'Neil trail to the five stream crossing

Five stream where the historic O'Neil trail crosses it

On our last hike we set out to find Jumbo’s Leap.  We found the river called Jumbo’s Leap (five stream)  but did not find a lot of evidence of cut trees.  We wanted to head up to the 5 stream crossing on that trip but we ran out of time.

We devised a new plan that involved hiking up the main trail and then crossing the river.  This plan would have to wait until the river level went down.  Well, we were not patient enough to wait , so we went back again on the same route.

We made better time and got out before dark.  We found the spot where the O’Neil party crossed 5 stream with their mules.  It is a very pretty spot.  

It is surprising that 5 steam just suddenly leaves an impassible canyon here and levels out making crossing easy. We found O’Neil trail markers on either side of the ford and clear evidence of the trail on the far side.  We did not have time to explore on the far bank, that will have to wait for another day.

I probably should have waited a bit after returning from Yellowstone.  I was very sleepy at the end of the hike.  Phil got stung by a wasp near the end and we both got scraped up a bit brush crashing in the old growth.

8.3 miles with 500 feet elevation gain 3.6 miles off trail.

Navigating the section we call the "itty bitty shitty"

Waterfall on 5 steam.  When we saw this waterfall we knew we were near the crossing
since it showed that the river was no longer in a canyon at this point

Just below the waterfall beautiful spot.

Phil heads down for water, I found a saner spot to get water

Trail marker near the ford

Off trail section of our route, orange circles are where we found trail markers

Downstream from crossing