This past weekend, I and my dog Sophia along with my brother Don, his daughter Cindy, son, Mike and grandson AJ (4) spent the weekend at Conrad Meadows. The plan was to backpack up trail #1120 about 4.5 miles and set up camp.
Friday, June 2nd was a very rainy day, hoping that when we went East of the mountains that we would have nicer weather. It poured down rain as Sophia and I drove to Morton where we were meeting the rest of the family. Meeting at 5:30 p.m., we unloaded my car and put all the camping things into Don’s truck and all headed off for Conrad Meadows and sun! The rain would not quit and when we arrived at White Pass it was still raining and no blue sky in site. I asked Don if we should just bail for the weekend, and it was decided that we would see what the weather was doing when we got to Conrad Meadows.
Arriving at Conrad Meadows, the sun was breaking out and fairly nice. There was one family with 2 horses camped there and one other family in an RV, otherwise no one else when we arrived. There was one truck parked at the trailhead, no one else. The people with the horses had a generator going, we thought oh how wonderful, not, but they turned off before 10:00 p.m. We set up what we thought was a night camp, stayed up with a campfire till about 10:00 p.m. enjoying the dry and nice weather. The stars were fantastic, so bright and the sky clear.
Saturday morning Don and I woke up to clear sunny weather and had decided that we would keep our night camp and turn it into a base camp. None of us knew how AJ would do backpacking for a first time and we would just do our hiking from camp. After breakfast, we set off to hike towards Surprise Lake on trail #1120, following the South Fork of the Tieton River. We had two creek crossings on logs, not fun for me, ok, I am a wimp but all managed to get across, with Sophia wading through the water on one of them. When we got up to Conrad Meadow, we saw a herd of elk and found a baby fawn in the bushes, hid by its mom we guessed. We were a little concerned that the mother was not near or at least we could not see. In the meadows, the trail had a lot of water running down, but with the open spaces we managed to get through without any problems. AJ managed 1.7 miles at which time we took a break and then he and Mike headed back to camp to do some fishing another first for AJ.
Don, Cindy and I decided to continue on to where we have a camping place up about 4.5 miles from the trailhead. We did some minor trail work as we went along, brushing branches and rocks off the trail. The area is so pretty while following the river, everything so green. The trail itself, after getting out of the meadows was quite good dry with some downed trees and a couple of muddy places, but otherwise good. We ran into a couple of rangers who were headed back to their vehicle, stopped and visited with them for awhile. We had counted 15 downed trees by the time we saw them, and gave them that information. (By the time we got to the 4.5 mile mark there were a total of 18 down trees). The rangers informed us that at the junction of the loop trail, there was continual snow so they turned around. We knew that where we wanted to go was about ½ mile further from the junction so continued on, yes, getting to the snow, about 1-2 feet on the ground with some open patches. We checked out our campsite, snowed in except for where I put my tent. We were able to have lunch on the bridge there, snow on one end of it but clear the rest. The temperature was hovering around 72-75 degrees, very nice. By the time we got back to camp it was 80 degrees.
Returning to camp, we found that the horse people had brought over a stack of wood and kindling and placed it by our fire pit, so surprised and we appreciated it a lot, nice people. There were two portable toilets near us that had just been put in, very clean and so nice not to have to walk so far to the NFS toilet by the trailhead.
Rain came back Saturday night, all night long and into Sunday morning. We hurried and ate breakfast and packed up and headed home in the rain. All in all a great weekend,
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