Dose Forks

Another epic Olympic journey is on the books. 

Expanding upon past trips, we kept going past the lovely Dosewallips and on to the equally lovely Dose Forks. We had passed through this camp ground on our super epic and mostly insane cross-peninsular trip of a few years ago so we knew where it was and we knew we'd be happy with our choice.

Photo by AB

Proving that it pays to talk to people, when chatting with some folks about their trip and route, we were shown the best site in the campground by some folks who had seen it while hiking from the other direction. The site and the view were fantastic.

Photo by AB

This picture includes signage for much of our trip:

Day 1: hike to Dose Forks (1860 ft), set up camp

Day 2: leave gear at camp, hike (or try to hike) to Constance Pass (5805 ft)

Day 3: hike back to car (566 ft)

Photo by AB

The hike up to Constance Pass was more successful for Alison than for me, but we both enjoyed the views and were delighted to find plentiful water options on the way up.

I reached my limit a mile and change from the pass and took a break on the trail while Alison pushed on to our planned destination.

The views kept me company.

Just kidding. Due to a lack of cell service and lack of specific knowledge of trail conditions, I actually made it slightly further in a slow, but increasingly panicked trip up the mountain. When Alison had continued on, we did some calculating/rough estimating on how long it would take her since we had no way of communicating if one of us was in distress. We assumed she would easily be back by 1pm. So, at 1:10pm I hauled my out-of-shape self onward with periodic breaks to recover and yell Alison's name. Simultaneously, Alison was negotiating a shale covered trail up at the pass that was quite tricky. Opting for safety over speed, she began yelling my name as she knew I would be concerned as we passed the time mark. Unfortunately for us both, the trail wound around the mountain a bit so we were both yelling out in different directions for a time. Not surprisingly, we did not hear each other until we were in fairly close proximity. Which is how I found myself at Sunnybrook Meadows. 

Photo by AB

In an slightly, but not completely, disabling turn (ha!) of events, my knee injury flared up and the trip down was excruciatingly painful and slow. Fortunately, Alison is a wonderful backpacking companion and was both incredibly patient and a source of ibuprofen. A consistent dosing of ibuprofen and a night's rest allowed me to pack up and make it down to the car the following morning at a reasonable speed with a knee that whined rather than screamed. But all of that happened after our morning cup of hot chocolate and coffee, respectively.

Photo by AB

I love these trips and feel lucky to have a friend and a state that make these trips successful.

Upper Palisades Lake Backpacking Adventure

When Alison says to keep a couple of days open during the summer for a backpacking trip, it's best to say yes and then block out those dates. Our adventure this time took us into Rainier National Park and on a trail towards Upper Palisades Lake. 

The trail begins (and therefore, unfortunately ends) with a significant decline (incline on the way back) which includes some impressive stonework.

Along the 3.5 mile trail there are several lakes to enjoy before the campsite.

But Upper Palisades Lake is definitely worth continuing the rest of the hike. Especially when that is where you have camping permits. And Ben came prepared this time for some quality lake time. Some frigidly cold lake time.

Pic by AB

Adding to the scenery were the towering rocks that gave this area its name.

The timing was excellent for wildflowers and Alison got some lovely pics.

Pic by AB

After setting up camp and playing a couple of cutthroat games of Skip-Bo, Alison and I added another 3 miles to the day's hike by taking the extra side trail to Hidden Lake. This particular hike was pretty much uphill the entire way, but paid off with some spectacular views.

Oh, and a lovely "hidden" lake.

Alison took this lovely pic of our home sweet campsite. There are only two campsites up at the lake and no one else showed up.

Pic by AB

The campsite was a good size and fit all of our small tents comfortably. The whole set up was so lovely...with possibly the exception of the pit toilet which was a significantly steep short hike away. My first trip convinced me that I would  not be making that trip to go pee in the middle of the night.

As per usual, we were all up bright and early so we were able to break camp shortly after 8am.

Pic by AB

It turns out the hike was, on the whole, more uphill coming back. I was definitely the tortoise with 3 hares, but in this version 2 of the hares busted through the last section and beat their moms back to the car by 30 minutes.

The trailhead had spectacular, but hazy, views of the star of the park. It was a lovely trip 

Rattlesnake Ledge

 After a week of sunny and partly sunny days, Alison and I went on a 4 mile hike with 1,160 feet elevation gain in the rain. We're not ones to be deterred by mere precipitation, however. We layered our clothing, wore rain jackets, and headed out and up.

After 2 miles that were almost entirely uphill, we were still rewarded with lovely views and only a sprinkling of snow. 

We could have gone farther (see the next ledge on the trail below), but I am still working on building up my stamina and the trail was pretty wet so we turned around and enjoyed the hike down.

This state is beautiful all times of the year.

Death By Chocolate

There is ::ahem:: a lot of testosterone in this house. Sometimes I feel like I am drowning in it. The poop and fart and penis and deez nuts jokes can be unrelenting.

So I decided to have a ladies' night murder mystery party. The kit comes with the characters, storyline, and detective Hercule McClue - all I had to do was invite the people and make the food. The kit also had a recommended menu, but that included 48 quail eggs (HAHA!) so I decided to go with a chocolate themed menu: Crunchy salad with cocoa vinaigrette, chicken mole, three chocolate ice creams (dark, milk and white), and hot cocoa. 

I don't know if it was the game, the company, or the chocolate, but everyone seemed to have a good time.

Some notable characters: Little Fitz and Ziggy (aka Isaac's Pikachu Rachel grabbed from his bedroom)

Dr. Doris Johnson, eccentric archaeologist

And Mike Bison, the murderer of the evening

I think I will do this again!

Tubal Cain

Because she is awesome, Alison invited Ben to go on a backpacking trip with her and Myles. Well, she is awesome, but she also claimed that Ben was going to be their cougar-bait. There was a cougar attack in the general area a few weeks ago. Of course, Ben runs faster than Alison so that plan may not have worked out for her if there was a cougar. But, spoiler, they saw no cougars.

It's been almost a year, but with some digging around in the house we managed to pull together his gear. The pack was pretty heavy, but Michael offered to give Ben and his pack a ride.

I was super sad not to be going, but glad he could go.

Photo cred to Alison for the rest of the pics. Their campsite was near an abandoned mine and the site of a plane crash (not recent).

Pretty dang cool. And Ben said there was the added benefit that the mosquitoes seemed to prefer  Alison and Myles over him.

Getaway Backpacking

It's still sunny and and warm in October. What else could do but go backpacking? It was a last minute, one-night gig so we picked a trip we knew would be great - Dosewallips!  

Not going to lie, I was hoping for more fall foliage, but this is still a lovely hike along the river so I am not complaining.

Our campsite from last time was available so we enjoyed our little beach with river access.

Our little campsite. 

We started Sunday morning with a little loop hike we hadn't done before.

And then packed up and headed back to real life.

Grand Valley Loop

The theme for summer 2022 is "#thankscovid"

 ::sigh::

Alison and I rescheduled our big backpacking trip because I still had active covid and then we had to revamp the trip because I was working my way to qualifying for long covid. That's right - I even joined the albuterol inhaler club! The three-day two-night trip for the two of us morphed into a two-day one-night trip with Ben and Myles. 

Since this trail was a loop we spared mom the fun of dropping us off this year. Well, to be more precise, we spared her the fun of driving to the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center parking lot, taking one look at the treacherous drop off that was the beginning of the road to the trailhead, and telling us that there was a snowball's chance in Houston of her going any further. As it was, Alison bravely drove her manual Honda Fit on a road that would give her actual nightmares that night and made Ben question whether he was going to make it to 8th grade. Once we made it to the trailhead and had our feet on solid ground and packs on our backs we took our "before" picture and headed out to Grand Lake. 

With plenty of sunshine, we hiked along the mountain ridges with spectacular views and even some patches of snow.

After a while (I struggle to gauge distances while hiking), we started to descend and caught periodic glimpses of the lake we were headed towards.

Our campsite for the evening was on Grand Lake. We chose a site right on the water - the small clearing in the trees on the right side of this picture.

After setting up the tents, Alison, Myles and I decided to hike a little bit more to nearby Moose Lake. We didn't didn't see any moose or bears (Alison's dream), but we did see a marmot. After seeing multiple deer and a snake, the marmot was the only "exotic" animal we saw.

Ben had opted to stay behind at the campsite. While we were gone he heard an animal he thought was probably a bear moving around in the trees. Turns out another kid in the camp did see a bear in the campground so it likely was a bear. I'm thinking next time he may choose extra hiking.

The sun goes down a little bit earlier in the mountain valleys, so we went to bed when it was too dark to see the cards of the game we were playing. Other than some planes flying overhead, it was a quiet night.

The sun woke us early. And by "us" I mean me and Alison. I did eventually manage to lure Ben out of his tent with the promise of hot chocolate. 

Food in our bellies and water in our water bottles, we packed up and headed out on the last leg of the trip.

We knew this part would have more elevation gain than the first day. What we didn't know was that we would go down down DOWN for almost 2 miles before we even began the elevation gain. Going down is much less exciting when you know that every foot of elevation loss would translate directly into elevation gain the same day.

But up we did eventually go. Up had the benefit of fewer mosquitoes at least. Also, this leg of the trail was very lovely. We descended by water and then climbed up through mountain fields scattered with forests and a small creek. 

Ben was a HUGE fan of taking breaks, but he found his mom and Alison willing to humor only a few times. 

The views were pretty amazing on day 2 as well.

I mentioned that we saw a marmot. One marmot. Which was shocking considering the number of MARMOT HOLES we found every where. Seriously, I was surprised that this mountain wasn't crawling with the furry little critters. At one point, there were even holes on the trail. Usually we were pretty good at seeing them and passing the information on down the line.

But there was this one time....

Ben turned his head back to hear me or Alison say something and down he went! This is what we found when we got to him. My heart dropped because I was scared he'd broken or sprained something. However, once we ascertained that he was unharmed, we laughed hysterically and Alison pulled out her phone to take a picture. It turns out he was still on the ground because his pack was so heavy that he couldn't get back up. I tried to help him up, but he had to take the pack off to actually get off the ground.

With our attention even more focused on the trail, we came to the final push to the top of our 2500 ft elevation gain. And it was a push. Or rather a dig deep and keep going.

We did it! There was just a harrowing drive to the main road, a pit stop for ice cream, and three hour drive between us and home.

This summer has definitely not gone as planned, but this was a great trip!