Green Mountain Cache Machine

Seattle from the summit of Green Mountain 12X zoom

My goodness what a stressful few weeks we are having. My husband has been diagnosed with severe emphysema and started oxygen this week. My husband is also just one write up away from losing both his job and his health insurance. My puppy broke her leg and my uncle has been diagnosed with metastasized prostate cancer in his brain. Then there was the stress of Christmas.. sigh....

It felt good to get out hiking this week and spend some time with a really nice person. They had a cache machine event on the Tahuya peninsula and I was invited to join. The Tahuya peninsula holds many memories for me, some wonderful, some unspeakable. I generally avoid the place, but today I went there anyway to hopefully make some new good memories out there.

logs a cache

I was picked up at 10 am and off we went. We only did two of the cache machine caches and then we headed for Green Mountain. First we went for the summit cache. I had searched for that cache before and not found it but today we found it.

My geodaching partner has excellent navigation skills and he led us around in a 8 mile circle around Green Mountain where we picked up several geocaches. This was his first time on Green Mountain and I thought I would be doing the guiding! It was nice to be able to just follow him around and not have to think too much. The last cache we grabbed was "bats in the belfry", I'm glad to have finally found the bats in the belfry cache and I'm so glad it was not in the cave, as the cave had about a foot of water in it. We got sundowned on the way out but we both had good headlamps and we were able to navigate the last 1.5 miles on unknown trails to get back down to the truck.  Oh my what an adventure we had up there.

Deep water in the scary tin mine at bats in the belfry cache

My ankle flopped over twice but did not hurt either time, my burned foot gave me no trouble at all. After the hike we went to the post cache machine dinner event but we got there late and only a few geocachers were left. The folks who did the cache machine got up to 60 caches! Frisbee and I only got 6 caches but we got away from the crowds.

After dinner,  we went to my  home and my husband brewed my geocaching partner "the best cup of tea" he has ever had in his life. Amazingly the house was clean and nothing had been destroyed while I was gone.

8 miles with about 1,400 feet total elevation gain.

A nice loop loaded with geocaches

our up and down route

Steel Creek Aborted, Brown Creek Nature Trail

Finally everything came together and after weeks of being homebound, I was able to go hiking today.  Well, almost everything came together; I've come down with a cold, but I was able to get out. Since I'm ill,  I decided to take it easy and just ride my bike instead of hiking.   My goal was the site of the old steel creek shelter near the Skokomish River.  It was to be a 17 mile round trip bike ride down a closed logging road, with only 1,000 feet of elevation gain.  But it was not to be.   There was too much snow on the road, I was glad to have studded snow tires and 4 wheel drive well before I reached my parking area.  Still I attempted to ride my bike a bit, the snow was not slick, but it was too deep and biking was too much work.

So I had to come up with a new plan.  I did not want to hike in my biking shoes, in the snow, without poles and on my weak ankle.   I wished that I had packed my snowshoes and trekking poles so I could go for a hike.  Then I remembered that the nearby Skokomish river trail was open to both hiking and biking, so I decided to bike it for the first time ever.  I've hiked this trail dozens of times but never biked it.    I knew there would be less snow on the trail than there was on the road. As it turned out there was hardly any snow on the trail, but  I only made it about 1 mile down the trail before I decided I was just too ill to go very far today.  I stopped right before going down a long hill that I knew I would have to push my bike up on the way back.  I was not up for pushing my big up that hill, so I took a long break and then rode back to my Jeep and put my bike away.  When I was putting my bike away I discovered that a piece of cloth was wrapped around the crankshaft, that must have made peddling harder than usual.

It was time for a new plan.  It was a beautiful clear day and the air at home was filthy but the air in the mountains was clear and clean, so I decided to stay in the mountians, even if I could not hike.  I drove to the nearby Brown Creek Campground and parked in my favorite campsite and sat by the river to relax.  But I could not relax, I needed my sketch pad (or a beer) if I was going to sit still.  I did not have my sketch pad, but I had my camera.  Sooooo I decided to wander around the campground a bit and take pictures.   Then I remembered that there is a nice little trail in the campground.  It's called the Brown Creek Nature trail, it is level and only one mile long.  The trail is so easy that maybe even my husband could have walked it today.  I took him on this trail about two years ago and I have a geocache hidden on this trail.

It was cold and the days are getting short so I only went around the loop trail one time before I decided to go head back and see if I could get some good pictures of the mountain in the alpenglow.  There is a spot on the 23 line,  that I always want to stop and take pictures from, when I am returning from hiking, but I never do, because I'm either too tired or, it's to late.  I decided to head for that spot and take some pictures of stumps and mountains.  There were many handy stumps to use as tripods while taking pictures of the mountain.  I'm pretty happy with the results, the sky was VERY clear and I had my new polarizing filter;  I really like the polarizer.    Strange, how the sky was so clear while the air was so foul  down below at home. Today was that clear winter day that all landscape photographers long for.  So anyway I did not get to do much hiking, but the day was not a total loss, because I took some pictures that made me happy.
I hope I feel better by Sunday because I have a mega geocaching adventure planned.

I guess I went about 3 miles today, certainly not enough to bother adding to my excel charts.  I'm calling it a year. 

My totals for the year:  I  got out 28 times, hiked 269 miles and gained 55,953 feet in elevation.  My average hike was 9.5 miles with 2,000 feet elevation gain.

My turn around point on the Skok trail

View at turn around point

Patchy snow on the Skokomish River trail

Brown Creek Nature Trail

Frozen Miners Lettuce Brown Creek Nature Trail

Moss covered tree exploding with light

Frozen sword ferns

Moss, Patches and snow on the Brown Creek Nature Trail

The Mountain looms over the Skokomish River Valley

2010 So far graphs

 So far this year I have gotten out 28 times, hiked 269 miles and gained 55,953 feet in elevation
 My average hike was 9.5  miles with 2,000 feet elevation gain.

 The was no correlation between the steepness of the hike and the length of the hike.   My foot is almost healed now and my ankle is relatively stable, so I hope to get out one more time this year.

Last year I got out 28 times hiked 272 miles and gained 70,000 feet in elevation.  I'm surprised that the numbers are so similar between this year and last year. I was injured all summer and all of last month so I feel like I hiked less this year.  One contributing factor is my bike riding.  This years totals have maybe 10-10 miles of bike riding included in them.

Foot burn

I got a bad burn on my foot. I hope to be hiking again in about 5 days. Picture of the burn is here if you really want to see it. I burned it 12 days ago.

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Dec. 20 Update:

It's now been nearly 21 days since my injury.  The burnt skin has finally fallen off and been replaced with new skin.  I'm ready to hike again but now my puppy has a broken leg and the kids are home on winter break and my husband is quite ill so I'm still homebound.  I hope to be back out on the trail next week.

New skin just in time for the solar new year

New hiking buddy

I guess two dogs are better than one, especially in the dark.  Or I can leave one dog at home to play with the kids and take one dog hiking. Like patches, this springer came to me from a neighbor who did not have time for a puppy.