Backpacking trip in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest along the abandoned Suiattle River Road, with day hikes along Downy Creek and Sulfur Mountain trails, into the Glacier Peak wilderness.
Andy and I took 3 days to hike along the Suiattle River Road this past weekend. The weather was mostly cloudy and spitting rain for most of the trip, but we lucked out on our second day and ended up with at least a little sunshine and a dry sky to enjoy our campfire under.
Day 1: While the company was great, the hiking was not the best. Day one we hiked 14 miles total, but 8 of those miles were along the very boring Suiattle River road. We knew it would be this way – such is the price you pay for seclusion – but I can say that it wasn’t worth the monotony. We found a pretty sweet campsite at Downy Creek, set up our tent on the sandy banks, and headed out for the Downy Creek hike. The 3mi one way trip was pretty & lush & uneventful. We ended the day after 14mi of walking by passing out before sunset – I blame the Makers Mark and the Beef Stroganoff.
Day 2: We headed out for our hike up Sulfur Mountain looking forward to some actual vertical elevation (4000ft) and decent mileage (10mi round trip). The f0rest was absolutely lush, and we certainly got our fill of the greenery as we wound our way up, up, up into the clouds and eventually snow. The snow level kept us from continuing on at the top of Sulfur Mountain, where we had our lunch and turned back the way we came.
We ended the day by taking a quick day hike up Sulfur Creek hoping to find the hot springs that our Green Trails maps eluded to. While Sulfur Creek lives up to it’s name, we did not find the source of the stink in the form of warm pools of bubbling water. We found a cairn at one fork in the trail that lead to a great view of the creek, but no hot springs were to be found. After scrounging up some firewood, we headed back to camp and enjoyed a nice long evening by the fire. All told, we put in about 16mi on Sunday.
Day 3: Our last day was nothing much to speak about – a long hike along the 8mi Suiattle River road back out – but ended fantastically at the Darrington Burger Barn.
Pictures uploaded Here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kmwoley/20100529SuiattleRiverRoad#
Instead of writing a long blog post about how much fun and awesome camping with the Portland crew was, I’ll just point you to their blogs. :)
Allen, Ian, & Julien all take these incredibly unrealistically real pictures… I had fun watching them play around with their cameras all weekend. My pictures are here, but they’re almost embarrassing next to theirs. I encourage you to check theirs out first!
9/25 Update: I’ve added Allen & Ian’s photo’s to my Picasa album.
The Wallowa Mountains are apparently one of the Pacific North West’s best kept secrets. The trails are listed in the standard Oregon backpacking guide books, but everyone I’ve talked to has never heard of them despite being some hiker’s all-time favorite treks. It’s a tough comparison, but I think this hike might just replace the hike I did last summer in the Olympic National Park as my all time favorite trip. It definitely was the hardest and most rewarding hike I’ve been on yet.
Continue reading ‘Wallowa Mountains, Oregon’
For whatever reason, I never sleep well the night before I leave on a trip. I’ve been up since 5am, tossing and turning. I’ve had nothing really to do before I leave this afternoon. My pack is set: tent, food, flask, clothes, etc. etc. I’ve got a brand new list of “backpacking” must haves that I put together for this trip, mostly based upon what I naturally throw in my pack, with additions from Ian’s list (located here: http://iansteiner.com/static.php?page=backpacking_list). I’ll be putting together my own, much more comprehensive list and posting it up later.
I feel like I’ve over-packed for this trip, like normal. I take the BSOA motto of “always be prepared” to new heights. But this time around I’m making a small stand: I’m taking one -less of the basics than I normally think I need to take. For this 4-day trip, I’d normally take two pairs of hiking pants and 4 shirts and 4 pairs of socks. I’m going to try to get by on one pair of pants, 3 shirts, and 3 pairs of socks.
This is a big deal to me. The extra pairs are still sitting out, staring at me. My only concern (as always) is over-sweating, which renders a shirt useless for a day while it hangs off my pack to dry. As long as we don’t have horribly rainy weather, it’ll be just fine.
It’s only four days… that should be enough… right?
…and a little bit of that. A post full of randomness…
Continue reading ‘a little bit of this’
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