South Mountain Plane Crash Site

 

Bike freshly tuned up and working better than ever!

I did it!  I went back to South Mountain, found the site of an old plane wreck and did not crash my bike!

Sadly I do not have a lot of photos to share.  Between preparing to move and cracking my bike helmet the last time I was on South Mountain, I've been very scatterbrained.

Also the two year anniversary of my husband's death is this week.  I found him on the floor a few minutes after midnight.  Last year I got away for this anniversary, but this year I will be home.

I got to meet blog follower LJ Thorson this week too.  How exciting!  So nice to meet you LJ!

I had some trouble finding the plaque so I called up Cye Laramie and he helped me find it. I was up too high on the ridge looking for it.  I did way more work than I needed to, but it was fun.

I released a bit of Patches into the wind at a viewpoint where I ate lunch.  Patches went up South Mountain with me a few times. 

The gate was open but I parked here anyway

Thrashing around off road looking for the plaque

Nice View of the Skokomish Valley, lots of dirt on my Ricoh GRII image sensor

Amazing colors up there all day. I love this time of year.

South Mountian Turkey Crash and Burn on a bike 2020

 

I decided to once again burn the turkey on South Mountain, but this time I brought my bike.    I have brand new bike bags that I wanted to test out.

My plan was to push my bike up to the snow line and then hike the rest of the way to the top.  Before I arrived at parking I saw that there did not appear to be any snow on the mountain.  So I left my boots in the car and pushed my bike up to the top while wearing trail runners.  I decided I would do the entire ridge loop since I had my bike and there was no snow.

There has been a lot of logging since the last time I went up.  Parts of the route were kind of hard to recognize.  Pushing my bike up to the top was a lot of work.  When I got to the top with my bike, I was not rewarded with a view, the top was in the clouds.  It was very windy at the top too.

I continued along the ridge line and had my lunch in a spot with a slight view of the interior of the Olympics.   I visited the tower arrays along the way.

The best view of the day was just on the way back down where the Skokomish valley was spread out at my feet.  I could also see Seattle and Mount Rainer in the distance.  

It was a long, long coast back down the mountain and I went really slow since I've had more than my share of bike crashes.  My hands started to cramp up from braking even with my fancy disk brakes.

Just when I was almost to the bottom I decided to adjust my right hand glove and took my right hand off the handle bar.  Of course it was just then then I saw a rock and a pot hole I needed to dodge.  I put on my brake with juts my left hand and boom, the bike stopped and I went over the handle bars.  I hit my head and scraped my face.  Blood was dripping down my nose.  

I was 2 miles from the car and I was afraid of going into shock, so I pedaled about a mile before I got out my phone and took a look at my face with the selfie camera.  The damage to my face was not as bad as I imagined but it was hard to see with mud and blood on my reading glasses.

I drove home then got a good look in the mirror and decided to go to the walk in clinic at Mason General Hospital, no called "Mason Health".  At the walk in clinic they took me to a room and made me wait and wait and wait while they decided if they wanted to treat me or send me the the ER.  I don't thein they ever had any intention of treating me there.  They stalled and stalled until it was almost closing time for the walk in clinic.  Then they told me that I needed to go to the ER instead because I might have a concussion. 

I assumed they would put me in a wheel chair and push me to the ER if I was really suspected of being so badly injured.  But no, they expected me to walk back out to my car and then drive out onto the street and around the hospital to the ER and then walk into the ER.  WTF??  Obviously they did not think I was in too bad of shape!

The ER was thankfully empty and they got me right in but then I had to wait and wait for a doctor to see me.  They decided I did not need stitches so they put two Band-Aids on my face and sent me home.   I'm a bit pissed off that I was forced to go the the ER to get Band-Aids.  Those are going to be some expensive  Band-Aids. 

I'm a bit pissed off.  The trip to the ER is going to cost me a lot of money since my insurance is so crappy that the hospital will not accept its assigned rates.  The trip to the ER also cost me a lot of time and potentially exposed me and my minor child to COVID-19.   I was certainly exposed to more people that need be when they shuffled me over the the ER instead of treating me at the walk in clinic.

Also going to that ER is a bit triggering for me since I had to take my husband there so many times when he was dying.

4 miles and about 2,500 feet up a good turkey burn. 

                                      My clockwise route

Near the end of the route

Skokomish Valley

   A moss that only grows on dung

  

I think this was all trees the last time I was here

South Mountain White after Christmas Dinner Burn

I was too tired to get up and I was too tired to hike, but it was forecast to rain all day the next day, so off I went after stopping for gas.  There was snow at the start of the hike, so I knew there would be deep snow at the top. I started my hike at 11:30 with snowshoes strapped to my back.

I saw a group behind me at the start but then I did not see them again.  I put on my snow shoes at 1,600 feet.  Shortly after that, Patches went off the trail in search of deer or something and then struggled to get back on the road, but I knew she would make it back up.  She must have been more stuck then I thought.  I was nearly to the top, and still no Patches and I was moving really slow.  Where was Patches?

A man on snowshoes came up behind me.  He said that Patches had been stuck but was following his party up the Mountain.  The man was in a hurry and he passed me on the way up and on his way back down before I reached the summit.  He said he left one of his party behind about 15 minutes down.  I figured Patches was following him and I would see them both soon.

I got to the summit and still no Patches, so I headed right back down without a break.  When I finally found Patches she was about half way up and she was struggling.  The folks behind me had been post holing in the snow and my tracks had been destroyed.  I could not even walk in my own tracks.  I made new tracks for Patches to follow down.  In deep snow Patches always depends on my tracks.  But my tracks had been destroyed by people post holing in them.

If I had pulled her out when she first got stuck she would not have been trapped in the other's parties tracks, she could have used my tracks.  This was the first time I ever saw other hikers on South Mountain.

It took me 4 hours to go up and less than 2 hours to go down even with a short coffee break.   I started my hike at 11:30, left the top and 3:45 and made it back to my car at 5:35.

I had to wear my snow shoes for almost 5 miles of this 8 mile hike. The snow was really deep.

7.75 miles with 2,300 feet elevation gain