Friday, September 9, 2011

Weekly Hike #11: Chilly on the Pacific Crest Trail

 

On the last day of August, Mr. D, my sister-in-law and I decided to hike a section of the Pacific Crest Trail. The weather in August had been gorgeous almost every day—sunny and in the 70s—except on the day we chose. When we left home, it was cloudy, cool and a bit misty.  When we arrived at the trailhead, it was even cooler and very foggy, but we are intrepid hikers, so that didn't stop us.

Mr. D had been telling me for a week how beautiful the views of surrounding mountains were on this stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail. That may be true, but this is what I saw on August 31:

That's Denny Peak behind the fog.

The snow has melted off recently, so although we couldn't enjoy the mountain views, we did enjoy the wildflowers along the trail.


We saw Scarlet Paintbrushes, Western Columbines, and Brown-eyed Susans.




Everything was going along fine until we came to this:

 
I had seen a notice at the trailhead about a a number of trees that were blocking the trail at around the four-mile mark. There was a big wind and rainstorm last November that had caused the blowdown.  The trees at least gave us a place to sit. so we decided to stop and eat our lunch and figure out how to get around the trees after we had eaten. The problem was, once we stopped moving, we began to get cold, and so after quickly eating our sandwiches, we turned around and headed back to the trailhead. 
 
This hike gave us taste of fall hiking on the last day of August, but, as you will see in my next weekly hike, summer is not over yet!

No comments:

Post a Comment