Mt. Muller

I took an incredible trip about an hour west two weekends ago to Mt. Muller, a peak that offers a view of Canada, Mt. Baker (10,000+ ft. mountain in the northern Cascades), Storm King, Lake Crescent, Mt. Olympus, and the Pacific coast, all in one spot!

The trail loop was a total of around 13 miles, and took me about 6 hours and change to finish. It was super slow going once I hit about 3,000 ft though because the trail is covered in like a foot of snow... so that wasn't so cool, but either way it was definitely worth the trip.

So this is a water bar, a trail feature I've discussed at least one other time on this blog and is an object of construction for my crew during the summer. I just wanted to show you this one because it looks so darned good, works so darned well, and simply shows that there is more to a trail than the tread.

Usually water bars run perpendicular to and across the trail, but this one runs along side it. Maybe that makes it something else, I'm not sure, but either way it accomplishes the same thing in preventing water erosion of the trail.

A video that shows you how it works...

Here ya go dad, something for you...

Elk tracks...

Probably coyote tracks, maybe badger...

Lynx? Bobcat?

Not so sure about this one...

Mt. Olympus.

Storm King and Lake Crescent.

Canada and Baker are in the background, you just can't see it.

Unfortunately, most of Mt. Muller is surrounded by State Land Trust forests, meaning that it gets logged. The revenue from contracts does fund schools and such though, so that's good.