Urban Outcast Music #45 - Mountain Air Medley by Dirk Powell, Tim O'Brien, John Herrmann.
June 9th: WTA Work Crew - 2 miles, negligible gain
The day was off to a great start with a young black bear running across the road on the drive in. This is just my second Washington Trails Association work crew but I've already been pegged as the guy barely qualified to carry buckets of rocks. Our specific target was building horse steps and that consisted of a lot of recycling: recycling timber from abandoned bridges on the lower trail, mining gravel/rocks from same trail, and mining mineral earth from an existing pit.
Another attempt to fish a sliver of thawed water but this time on a trail that the USFS has abandoned. The WTA trail description's second sentence claims: "...popular with fisherman, since its home to lots of trout but be warned route finding skills are a must...". You start in the same parking lot but head downriver until you hit Rainy Creek. From there its unmaintained trail but for the first few miles it is surprisingly easy to follow given the warning above.
Our fishing perch looked promising with a good view into some deeper water and surrounded by blueberry bushes but no sign that the lake was inhabited. Well, I thought it was inhabited at first as I was seeing periodic riffles at the ice edge but it turned out to be air bubbling out from under the ice. It will make a good spot to return to next year and try out a little later in the season when more than the outlet is exposed.
The way back down was a little more perilous with a light rain turning the exposed roots into mini slip n slides and the backside was getting a little bruised. I had resigned myself to losing at least one trekking pole as dollars well spent but even though they snagged up repeatedly, we made it through in one piece. I rely heavily on my elastic ankles on most descents but excluding the many times I was actively falling over, I took it pretty slow this time and appreciated the forest at my feet:
Overall, one of the better hikes of the season for both the deep snow scenery at the lake and the sense of adventure that comes with knowing you are likely to be the only one on the trail that day (or maybe even that week).
Back over the Snoqualmie bridge but this time I pulled off a major coup and convinced the wife to take a day off work to test out the slacker life. We were going to follow the Pratt River Connector along the Middle Fork, past the Rainy Creek turnoff until just before the Pratt River. If the water was low enough, we would ford the Middle Fork and do a little road walking to reach the Upper CCC Road trail and complete our loop.
Programming note - Just a couple more hikes/outings to catch up on and then its salmon season! As a bonus, I'm actually catching fish this year and trying to figure out how to process the surplus. Although at this rate I wont be sharing the details until February...