Pyramid Peak

No bears this week, just a normal day of hiking. I went off to Pyramid Peak, the crest of a small range of hills north of Lake Crescent.

So this is a Douglas Fir... I'm almost positive the tree I named as such in an earlier post was a hemlock. See the really deep crevices in the bark?

This one is a beautiful trail that maintains a slight but steady elevation gain, always keeping you within sight of the lake.

A couple miles up there was a big slide, taking out the security of the maintained trail... there is a path though, however precarious it may be.

An old cabin built in 1942 to spot enemy aircraft intent on reaching the Puget Sound... luckily it never proved necessary... who wants to invade Washington?

A wonderful sight at the end of a good day's hike...

Enchanted Valley

It's safe to say that this weekend I took the most incredible camping trip of my life to the Enchanted Valley -- a spot tucked away among towering mountains far-off in the Olympic wilderness. 13 miles I hiked from Graves Creek campground to this wonderland, enjoying the sites and sounds afforded only by the solitude and tranquility of deep, undisturbed woodlands.

What started this whole thing was when Jen and I took a trip to REI way back last summer to get her a backpack... turned out the guy who helped her out used to work at Olypmic, and claimed the Enchanted Valley was his favorite spot in the whole park. Ever since then I'd been itchin' to go... I asked some others if they wanted to join, but they all had plans... so I thought, why not just go? And I did!

I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to experience, if for a moment, what Jack Kerouac had in his book The Dharma Bums. (Note on the right column the new feature on my blog) This dude was seminal to the Beat Generation, basically precursors to hippies, who hitchhiked, lived off the land, dabbled in eastern religions, and did other such heathenish activities. Now, don't worry Mom, I'm not gunna turn in to some beatnik, but I thought to myself why not take a rucksack, bottle of Port, and philosophy book to one of the purportedly most beautiful places on earth for the weekend, just to see what it was like?

Mom, I'm serious, I'm not becoming a beatnik.

Right off the bat you get to see some spectacular views. Most of the time the trail hugs neatly to the river, but sometimes dips in to the forest towards the foothills of the northern mountains, though you're never out of earshot of the roaring water.

All manner of bridges take you safely across tributaries and muddy snags.

Looks good for some fishin', eh?

OK, so picture this: I'm about 7 miles in, its around 11:00, and I'm leisurely strolling to the Valley... I turn a blind corner where a log is sticking out, lift my head, and let out an "oh, %*$#"... 10 yards away from me, literally, t-e-n yards away, is a black bear. Now, I've never seen a bear outside of a zoo, so you can imagine my racing heartbeat, gripping shock, and wet pants as this beast stares right at me. Instinctively, I roar at it. Looking back, its almost comical how much this bear didn't care. It stood up on its hind legs, and reached about my height. Very slowly, I bent down, picked up the nearest stick, and started to walk backwards, never for a second snapping out of my gape. Once safely back up the trail, maybe 50 yards, I waited... the bear didn't seem to mind me after our little unexpected meeting. Five minutes later he sauntered off, looking for his next meal among the grass.

That was the first of 4 bears I encountered that day.

Finally arriving...

Turns out that spring is the best time to come here, because the alpine snow melts and falls down the mountains in to the valley, creating all sorts of gorgeous cascades. When I got all settled in and finally got a chance to kick my feet up I tried to follow the water as it fell from the top reaches of the ridge all the way to the valley floor a couple thousand feet down. Gazing up, it almost looks like sand because so many of the water droplets are carried off by the wind. Its something like nature's hourglass, counting down to summer when the snow is gone and the waterfalls cease to flow. Must be the Port talking...

There's also a chalet in the middle of the campsites, reserved for park employees (a back country ranger told me I could have stayed there if I had asked -- pretty cool of him to say, but what would Jack think of that?) and rangers during the summer. It was built in the 30s and was available to the public for a couple bucks for a room... that offer extended until the 80s, when I guess there was just too much wear and tear -- maintenance is tough 13 miles in the woods.

One of the other bears. Crazy enough, you eventually get used to them.

So how do you avoid a bear eating your food and hassling you at night digging through your smelly stuff? You hang it up! Bear hangs are provided at some Olympic campsites, and luckily this is one of them.

A beautiful cedar...

These bears are everywhere!!

And I even got to see one rootin' around the river bank... they're always lookin' for somethin' to eat.

If you ever get to come to the peninsula, make this the place you go... by far the coolest experience I've had out here so far.

Hoh River Trailwork

OK so the reason that I haven't posted anything in the past three weeks is because it has rained for going on... three weeks. Ah! But now the tides are turning, and so is the weather... the sun is making its long sought appearance and the ever present cloud cover is starting to look a little patchy. With any luck this unfortunate string of rainy days was the last spat of winter, and it will continue to be 60 and lovely rather than 40 and dreary.

Despite the inclement weather, however, work in Olympic went on, and my crew and I have been fleshing out a reroute of the Hoh River trail. One of the most popular jaunts in the park, the trail features a meandering route along the riverside and offers spectacular views of glaciated Mt. Carrie. If you'll recall from an earlier post of mine (when I visited this spot on my own) the trail is a bit dicey at the moment, and two different washouts completely took out two parts of the trail.

Soooo, what one park ranger called "legendary", and another 15 year trail crew vet labeled as "something they're going to put in brochures in Europe", is the subject of this post. The proposed reroute took a whole lot of work (the majority of which was done before we got there), blazing through bedrock, mushy mud, and giant piles of duff (organic material on the forest floor that is too unstable to build on, and so must be moved).

Below is a video of the old trail... the one that washed out...



I originally had a video of the new trail here, but it was all dark and grainy... (they really degrade the quality of your uploads on Blogger...)

But so anyway, this post is basically to give you a day in the life of trail work.

First, we get up around 6:15ish, make breakfast, get dressed, strap on the boots, and grab our gear for the day (on the first and last days anyway... we leave it at our work site during the middle of the week, lest we schlep it around every day). Our site for the past three weeks, the reroute, is a little less than three miles up the trail head. So, we stumble from our bunkhouse in to the woods and are met by the glacier fed river...

It's super pretty in the morning when the sun is out.

And we get to meet all sorts of critters.

The elk are known to charge people, so when one stands in the middle of our way, we kind just have to wait it out...

This dude hung out for a couple minutes... didn't pay us any mind.

This was along the old trail... the route used to be over and around this tree stump that is now completely on its side.

This pile of duff was literally 5 feet high, and we had to shovel it... and shovel it... and shovel it...

We do get break though, and often find ourselves wandering to the prettier spots.

This was the portion of the bedrock that some guys had to jack hammer (yes, they hauled a gas powered jack hammer three miles in to the woods) through... then they grip hoisted a giant log (you can see it on the left) to act as a support for the outer edge of the trail that climbed up the face of the rocky hill... from the far end of that picture to the very forefront its probly a 20 foot incline.

Scratching out the new trail to connect with the old one... this was the easy part, until you hit a root.

For the mushy parts we construct wooden boxes, or, "turnpikes". You dig out the mush, frame the boxes, fill them in with rocks (that you cannot take from the river because of rules enforced by the Natural Resources Department), and then cover that with fresh dirt.

The wood we get from the forest -- going on cedar runs is a whole lot of fun... you get a break from swinging an axe, you get to bushwhack through the lushest of rain forests, and then rip through a fallen cedar tree (the smell of fresh cedar is really amazing) -- and the rocks and dirt
from the side of the hill.

Then once the new trail is shored up and almost ready to go, we have to cover up the old one... so we plant some ferns and toss some brush.

This was my duty for one of the days... dig out this giant stump from the middle of the trail. Now it doesn't look impressive in stature from this picture... but it was a doubler, and it wouldn't budge. You can't just chainsaw it because you'll screw your chain up by hittin' the dirt, and worst of all rocks. So... I spend a good chunk of time just digging all around this Medusa's head until I revealed enough of the roots to then cut the heck out of it.

Probably a little more than you needed to hear about a stump... right?

And when we're done for the day, we pack or belongings, hike back to the bunkhouse, and serve up some supper.

And then sit on the porch.

And then chop some wood...

...for the nice warm fire...