Treks and Adventures
The forecast was for showers so I stayed close to home this time for a little hike. I had some short connector trail in the middle of Forest Park to do so today was a good day to fit those in. To get to the four connector trails I also had to use five main trail to get to them. So I was going up and down and all around on this hike. In spit of all of that not a real long hike at 3 1/2 hours doing 8 miles and 1100 elevation gain.
I hiked up to Hardy Ridge in the Beacon Rock State Park to see how the flowers were doing. This time I went all the way to Phlox Point on the ridge trail. There were a lot of flowers blooming. The hike was 9.8 miles long with 2300 elevation gain and took me 6 3/4 hours on trail. There was a lot of stopping to photograph the flowers.
The Bonanza Trail in the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness was a popular trail to do 20 years but has fallen out of favor, maybe because of how hard it is or because it so hard to figure the trailhead parking. It was one I had not done before so this was an exploratory for me. This was an out and back hike and I would reach the point where I ended my Boulder Ridge hike. One of features this trail is known for is going past an old gold mine. Much of the trail shows no tools have been use on this trail in a long time. By the numbers – 14 miles, 3350 ft. elevation gain with 8 3/4 hours on trail.
Notes to myself
This was a hard hike for me and left me exhausted at the end. This trail concentrates all of the elevations gain in the last couple of miles. There were place steep enough I could use the mountaineer step. Brush along the trail at spot had taken over the trail trad left me sliding down the slop. The quarter mile going by the cascade area had a number of past slides and left rough user trails to get around spots. It was a real thigh burner on the down hill. There were a number of logs down along the trail that slowed one down but were not hike stoppers. During the rainy season with all of the creek that cross this trail could be a problem.
There is no formal parking area so it is comfusing where it is legal to park. There are four spot to park if you do not block the gate, if you block the gate there are to more. There are no spot along the road getting to the trail head.
Sometime you don’t get the hike you planned for but you enjoy the hike you get. The forecast was for sun with some clouds and no rain. What I got was starting in rain and a cloudy day. I also found snow at the higher levels. So ended up cutting my hike short and did not go on the ZigZag Mt. I also had plan on cold dry and was prepared for that but ended up up having to use my emergency poncho for the rain. First time to use and poncho on trail and it worked pretty good. The hike was around 12 mile with 3000 ft. elevation gain and on the trail for 7 hours.
I got out for a short hike with Lori, Jeanette and Sylvia on the Still Creek Trail. This Trail is a nice walk in the woods. We had sunny, warm weather. After our hike we went to Smoky Hearth for lunch.
