The day was cool and overcast, with some sun peeks, - great for a hike such as this. Don’t let the numerous, and I mean swarms, of mosquitoes at the trailhead parking area discourage you from the hike. It doesn’t take long into it before they seem to disappear. (Hint: Bounty dryer sheets work wonders to deter the little buggers!) The trail winds through the woods with gradual elevation gains and over several snow spots, nothing you can’t easily maneuver. A few of the gains will make you stop at the top in order to catch up with your heartbeat. There’s a really pretty meadow you cross just before the junction to the Pacific Crest Trail. We continued on up the PCT, but couldn’t really cross the water with the dogs so we decided to stay to the left of it, hiking over the rocks towards a larger snow pack, only to come upon lots of wild flowers, allowing some really great shots of Lupine, paintbrush, buttercups, etc. It was fantastic! As we decided to make our way back down, a through hiker came upon us by the name of Kentucky Greybeard - quite an interesting fellow hiking the PCT from Mexico to Canada. It was a treat meeting him along the trail. We took his picture in hopes to post on his website, www.kygreybeard.blogspot.com. You should take a look at his site. The trip down was just as enjoyable as going up, with the addition of spotting an elk dining on the meadow grasses. All in all, it was probably a bit over 8 miles round trip with elevation gain of less than 2,000 feet. This is a good one folks, and one I highly recommend.

We hiked the Divide Trail route to the PCT. Trail was covered by 3 to 4 feet of snow for the entire length. Access road 2329 is blocked by several small snow berms about a mile west of the trailhead. They should be melted out by the July 26th weekend.

Nature doesn’t care about numbers and yet a simple thing like 2103ft can make one mountain a national symbol and another a little known side note. Last week, despite the ubiquitous clouds, the meadows at Paradise were jam packed with people but it was jam packed with flowers too! The bloom this summer has been amazing and with sunny skies in the forecast this weekend we went looking for an encore. It just seemed logical that we could find what we were looking for on Mt. Adams. We had a hard time finding info about possible destinations; it appears that beyond the South Spur, Mt Adams is virtually ignored. The first thing that piqued our interest was the Adams Glacier – a ‘sexy’ looking icefall on the north side of the mountain. There was some debate over which approach to take – Divide Camp or Killen Creek – in the end we compromised and did both with the PCT and road biking completing the loop. It turned out to be a good choice as those seven miles packed in more purple than you would find in Prince’s mansion. Flowers were varied but the lupines dominated the entire route like the famed Viking’s defense of the 70s. Time constraints kept us from exploring the side trail up to High Camp but what we saw in this little day hike we will definitely return for a multi-day adventure in the future. From the free forest service campground at Killen Creek we drove to Bird Creek Meadows on the Southeast side of Mt Adams. The road is rough but passable by regular cars (although it seems endless when your baby – unable to suck her thumb - protests the entire way). You need special permits to hike here but you need not have ‘reservations’ about this trail as the Yakima Nation does a great job managing the area. We were greeted near the parking area by a uniformed Yakima ranger where we filled out our permit and paid the $5 fee. He was very friendly and went out of his way to show us the map of the area. With this nifty map in hand we mulled over several options before deciding on a small loop that followed Bird Creek and a ridge with sweeping views of Mt. Adams. The flowers here were excellent, earning high marks for consistency, variety and range of colour. Oddly enough there were several picnic tables available, we didn’t pack a lunch but we were happy to sit in the shade and soak up the views of Mt. Hood where we would continue our volcano tour the next day. For our first ever hike on Mt. Hood we started at the Timberline Lodge and hiked the PCT to Paradise Park. The experience was very different from our previous hikes as the meadows here are much drier and shade is hard to find on a hot summer day. We had brought along an umbrella to keep Kasey out of the sun but this meant hiking without the benefit of trekking poles. This made the hike a lot tougher as the trail dips in & out of a series of gullies until climaxing with 800ft deep Zigzag Canyon. Once past this chasm however the effort starts to pay off as the next series of gullies are filled with bright beautiful flowers. Though not as consistent as the meadows on our previous hikes these little streams packed the biggest photogenic punch. At last ups & downs finally gave way to the vast expanse of Paradise Park and we were rewarded to sprawling views of Mt Hood, Mt St Helens & Mt Jefferson. We still had a long drive back to Canada but since we were returning home on a Tuesday we decided to make a little detour to Mt. Rainier National Park as well. Despite many visits to the park we still hadn’t seen ‘the mountain’ from Paradise and for once that was going to be a guarantee. What we didn’t expect to see was such a change to the meadow since it had been just eight days since our last visit. No longer were lupines the dominant flowers, however the blooming of several other species masked their decline. We topped off the day by doing the Burroughs Mountain loop again – our personal favourite in the park. Along the way we ran into a couple lugging their 10-month-old baby girl. We love volcanoes and we love our little girl – combining the two just seems logical. For those of you who like numbers: 5 meadows over 4 days at 3 different volcanoes by 2 thoroughly exhausted parents and 1 well traveled baby.

Mount Adams Wilderness Backpack, July 15-17, 2005 Wildflowers were at their prime as six members and two guests of the Trails Club of Oregon spent three days backpacking in the Mount Adams Wilderness on July 15-17, 2005. Despite the lack of snow last winter, the rainy spring and early summer have ensured a lush wildflower bloom this year. We set up a car shuttle so we could do a ""hike through"" from Divide Camp Trail #112 to Riley Camp Trail #64. We spent two nights camped off trail at timberline on the headwaters of the Lewis River, using the middle day for cross country exploration of Adams Glacier, its moraines, Glacier Basin and High Camp, returning to our campsite via High Camp Trail #10 and the Pacific Crest Trail #2000. On our final day, we hiked cross country to the PCT, then south on the PCT across the Mutton Lava Flow to the Riley Camp Trail junction, stashed our packs off trail, and took a side trip to Crystal Lake, an off trail subalpine lake in a bowl about 200 feet above the PCT. We returned to our packs and descended to Riley Meadows, an old sheepherder campsite, for lunch and final views of Mount Adams before descending through forest back to the road. We did have mosquitoes; they come hand-in-hand with the wildflower bloom. We also had some challenging stream crossings in the afternoons, as snow and glacier melt turned Adams Creek, the Lewis River and Riley Creek into torrents. On our first night, Mount Adams was brushed by the southern edge of a cold front that dumped rain on hikers further north, but only brought us clouds. The second day, we experienced continuous clearing, leading up to clear skies and a fabulous sunset on the second night. The third day was sunny and warm as we hiked out, ensuring a stop at Trout Lake for huckleberry smoothies and rootbeer floats on the way home.

Pacific Crest Trail hike June 21 - 28 Columbia River - Mt. Adams Trail conditions: First, I hadn't realized ""Bridge of Gods"" has no sidewalk or shoulder - I think I'll wait until I hike the entire PCT before braving that walk. The trail is in great shape from the Columbia to Indian Heaven Wilderness. No blow downs until after Big Huckleberry Mountain, and the tread is in good shape and has been maintained fairly recently in all the lower areas. The only slight problem is vegetation growth - there are areas all along where ferns are coming up through the trail, blueberries encroaching etc. The descent to Rock Creek has a fair amount of this. Just north of Big Huckleberry the vine maples are certainly encroaching. None of this is a serious problem, but it's enough that if you were nice and dry and hiked through after rain or dew, you'd be quite soggy afterwards. Through Indian Heaven Wilderness the trail is mostly an eroded ditch, but not as bad as some I've seen. Patchy snow starts shortly after road 60, ends again around the ""racetrack"" trail, and it is hot and dry climbing up Berry Mtn. There's a 200 foot long, 1 foot deep pond that the trail goes right through the middle of around the wilderness boundary that needs to be waded or circumnavigated. Snow starts again descending Berry Mtn. Blue Lake has some snow around, but some campsites are melted out. Bear Lake is a lovely 60 degrees, and most campsites had melted out there. I'm not sure how the lake got so warm - the air was 50 that morning. But I wasn't going to not swim... Patches of drifted snow continue until the end of Bird Mountain, with nearly solid snow on the NW slope of Bird and NW slope of East Crater. Some of this snow is rather steep, and it gets tiring hiking up and down 6' snowdrifts all the time. Some combination of stiff boots, hiking poles, walking stick, or ice axe can be handy, particularly in cool weather or morning when the snow gets hard. There is a lot of water on the trail, so please slog through it rather than trampling new trails through the meadows and glades. I unclogged a couple of pipes under the trail, and drained a lot of puddles, so it should be a little better now. 2 creeks draining across the trail between East Crater and Bear Lake are roaring down the mountain quite nicely, although by careful choices I managed to hop across both without wading. Others might need to ford them. The more placid outlet creek of Junction Lake is missing a bridge, but again it's possible to rock hop across. Route finding is generally not too difficult, there are enough bare areas that you can always spot the trail again relatively quickly. The only place I missed it entirely was a ridgetop switchback on the north end of Bird Mtn that was buried in a patch of snow, AND the old Cascade Crest Trail continued straight down the ridge. That's about it for substantial snow until you get up to 5400' or so on Mt. Adams. The trail in between is very little used (as was nearly all of the trail I hiked, really). Climbing up Adams there are a number of inconvenient trees down, and patchy snow starting about 4900'. The snow isn't a problem until about 5700', where there is a southward climbing traverse along a lot of steep snow. Walking along sharp snow arretes between tree wells can be tricky at times, too. Finding the trail up to where it meets the Round the Mountain trail at about 5900' isn't too difficult, though, and mostly there were tracks left by weekend hikers to that point. I only went from that junction as far around as trail 112, Divide Camp Trail, as that's where I'd left my car. It's slow going at times, and requires some route finding if you want to more or less follow the trail. Open areas and and meadows and bowls are mostly completely covered with snow, and it's pretty easy to lose the trail, but if you just keep meandering along in the proper direction, you can find it again. There are certainly bare patches, and occasionally you can walk a couple hundred feet mostly on the trail. I managed to miss Sheep Lake entirely somehow, but it's hard to tell what's flat waterlogged meadow, and what's lake at the moment. Most ridges have at least partly melted out, but finding campsites takes some effort - however watching the sun go down on Adams, Rainier, St. Helens and Hood from a nice warm glacially polished lava outcrop was well worth the effort. The snow is fairly hard in the morning (which could be good or bad), and turns into mush later in the day, which makes for slow going. It's interesting (I'm not sure if it's by design) that the trail is very well (perhaps excessively) blazed until I got to around Indian Heaven and north, after which it is essentialy unblazed. And that is, of course, where snow is often present and blazes would be most useful. There are none at all along the Round the Mountain trail. Divide Camp Trail is snow free at the trailhead, and fairly easy going until perhaps 5400'. Higher it is often a snow or water filled rut (or 2 or 3), and is completely covered at the juncture with Round the Mountain (but the signs are above the snow). Right at the Divide Camp side trail the meadows are bare, but only VERY recently melted out, and quite soggy and not yet green. Again, PLEASE try to avoid trampling the meadows or creating new parallel trails when they are wet or snowy. Your feet will recover from being wet, the meadow won't recover from having a trail rut cut through it, at least not in my lifetime. This trail had the worst erosion and trampling of my whole hike, by far. Also, if everyone helped do even a few minutes of trail maintenance a day, kicking rocks off the trail, flicking branches off with a hiking stick, plucking off some intruding vegetation, etc, the trails would soon be much nicer for everyone. It's pretty amazing how many branches fall down on the trail over the course of a winter, and it takes very little time to make a noticeable difference. I'm always amazed at how hundreds of people will take 5 seconds each to walk around a downed log or rock fall that one person can pitch down the slope in 15 seconds. Trails don't maintain themselves - keeping a clear easy tread to walk on takes work, but not much if everyone contributes a little. And many thanks to those who have come out with tools and trimmed some of the woody vegetation and helped level out the tread. Bugs: Bugs weren't as bad as I was expecting. Some flies here and there, and patchy mosquito populations. No problems at all until right along the edge of Big Lava Bed, where the mosquitoes were pretty bad. Heading up into Indian Heaven they weren't bad at all until Berry Mountain, along which they were quite nasty - I couldn't stop until I was on the shady, windy north edge, even with some repellent on. Then through the rest of the wilderness they were surprisingly limited. Camping at Bear Lake there were some, but not enough to need repellent while basking in the sun. Then they were very bad again descending from Sawtooth Mountain, and patchily from there until road 88. The rest of the trip they weren't bad at all until coming down Divide Camp trail; at the trailhead they were awful. Mosquitos were unpredictable (to me), and places I thought would be bad often weren't, such as meadows and wet areas up high. Perhaps it's still to early for them there. I didn't think that was possible. I used repellent just at the locations mentioned above. Flowers: There were some summery flowers still blooming along the Columbia River, which was a nice surprise. ""Inside-out-flowers"", which I haven't seen much in Washington, were mostly gone by there, but were blooming at all elevations from there until Big Huckleberry. The hill immediately north of Table Mtn (past the powerlines) had spectacular flower meadows in full bloom, both wet and dry - the best flowers of the whole hike by far - Calochortus subalpinus, Gilia capitata, Brodeia coronaria, phlox, paintbrushes, Anemones, other lilies etc. That was very nice. Nothing else was particularly spectacular, but there lots of flowers of various sorts scattered here and there - assorted lilies, Silene, indian pipes (down low), at least 3 species of penstemon, avalanche lilies (in Indian Heaven and descending trail 112 from Adams), onions, a couple species of Mimulus, blue-eyed mary, white and blue flowered anemones, starflowers, Lewisia & Clarkia (Clarkia only in one place, I can't remember where - south of Wind River somewhere), Hydrophyllum, a couple of Polemonia starting to bloom up high on Adams, some white flowered eriogonums up high, assorted saxifrages, including tolmiei, Sedum, bog orchids, twayblades, several Corallorhiza species were quite widespread, a few Trillia still blooming near snowbanks, rhododendrons blooming just south of Big Lava Bed, vanilla leaf, geraniums, a few Valerian, bunchberry, Asarum caudataum, vetches, larkspurs, Aquilegia, Caltha spp. and of course many asters. And I am of course forgetting or ignoring many. That's all I remember offhand. Nothing much was blooming up high (yet?) in Indian Heaven or Mt. Adams, just some buttercuppy things (Caltha etc), some avalanche (white ones, anyway) lilies, and 1 or 2 pink heather just starting to bloom on rock outcrops on Adams. But there was a nice smattering of flowers throughout most of the hike, many I'm not used to seeing from more northern parts of Washington. Dry rock and moss outcrops (e.g. on Sedum Ridge and on the way up Big Huckleberry) were probably at their peak of flowering and were a nice change from the dark forest. Oh, and beargrass is in full bloom everywhere - it makes the clear cuts much more pleasant. Animals: One bear just out of Gilette Lake near the Columbia and some elk between Indian Heaven and Adams were the only substantial mammals. Birds were pretty typical, although some Golden Eagles were soaring around ridgetops a couple of times. Herps were the highlight - a number of garter snakes, perhaps 5 rough skinned newts (nearly all south of Wind river), frogs (particularly tree frogs) throughout, but especially in Indian Heaven, toads throughout - I probably saw 40 baby toads the day I hiked out of Indian Heaven. Oh, and spiderwebs - I've rarely hiked so far seeing so few other people, and all day every day I was collecting spiderwebs in my hair, on my glasses, everywhere. I started hoping to see other people just to clear the trail for me. Which reminds me, there were 4 days I did not see anyone else hiking, and I only met 10 other hikers total (4 day hikers, 1 section hiker, and 5 hiking out of Mt. Adams on Sunday afternoon). All in all, quite a nice hike, with more floral and herpetological diversity than I was expecting, and fewer people. Clear cuts can get annoying, but anyone who uses wood or paper really has no right to complain. Now I want to go back to the higher areas after the snow is gone and more flowers are blooming...