Lime Kiln Trail

This morning I took my two older daughters (age 4 and 1) on a hike. My 4 year old is finally enjoying doing the hiking herself, she used to be carried in the pack by me and thought that was what hiking was, riding in a pack. But now that she is older and I have a younger one to pack around she has had to do the hiking herself. This was the first hike that she actually loved walking herself the whole time. So that was good to see.

We headed toward down town Granite Falls and just outside of town is the trail head for Lime Kiln Trail. It is a great easy hike for kids, lots of old growth and if you make it to the Lime Kiln lots of old history. It's really cool. We didn't make it to the kiln today, our goal was really just to get outside and let the kids enjoy the wilderness. It was a success.


I packed the little one the whole time and let her out and explore when we stopped for a snack. She absolutely loved it. My 4 year old also loved hiking the whole way and was obsessed with how much mud there was (there wasn't even that much mud in my opinion). But to her it was way too much mud and made a comment about it every time we came across any mud.

The trail was in good shape, there was one downed large branch that easily stepped over. Even my 4 year old could get over it with no help. We only hiked in a little over a mile and then back out. But it was a good mix of dirt and gravel with open views of the sky and being dwarfed by large trees. Certainly a good hike to start the season with and get the kids outside and excited about nature and wilderness even though you are just outside of town.

Region: North Cascades, Mountain Loop Highway
Distance:  7 miles
Elevation Gain:  625 ft
Peak Elevation:  750 ft
Difficulty: Easy
Pass Requirement: None

As always check out all the photos of the hike and every hike by clicking on the "Photos" tab.

Yellowstone

We were able to spend a week with another couple and their son staying in West Yellowstone and visited the park on 4 days. I will say Yellowstone is a very unique place. Lots to see and wonder at. We got to see most of the park, and hit a lot of the big attractions. And we went on a short hike with the kids. Some of the things we saw were: Old Faithful, Midway Geyser Basin, Grand Prismatic Spring, Fountain Paint Pots, Morning Glory Pool, West Thumb Geyser, Yellowstone Lake, Upper Falls, Lower Falls, Artist Point, Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, Mud Volcano, Hayden Valley, Lamar Valley, Mammoth Hot Springs, Firehole River loop, and TONS of wildlife.

We had lots of fun and the weather was perfect, sunny everyday but not too hot. The crowds weren't too bad either since it was near the end of summer. I think it was the perfect time to go. Great time was had by all.

Climbing Wall

For the past week or so, when I had a spare hour or more I have been working on building a portable adjustable climbing wall. I wanted to build one for my daughter so I can start teaching her the basics of sport climbing. I also wanted it adjustable to change the difficulty so I can get some practice as well.

I started working on the fabrication of the parts with my brother. We worked on it for a couple hours the first day and got a lot of the wood cut to correct size and a lot of the holes drilled. Then it was getting late so we called it a night.

After the first night I worked on finishing all the parts and getting it ready for assembly. I ordered the hand holds online and had to wait for those to arrive before I could assemble the parts.

Once the hand holds arrived I installed those in the wall sections and assembled the parts to create the  adjustable wall and got to climbing!

Goat Lake

On Friday I worked a half day at work and then went to meet up with a bunch of Boy Scouts from our church. We were going to hike and camp at Goat Lake. We all got in three vehicles and began our drive through Granite Falls and up to the trail head. We arrived and started off in two separate groups: the older boys and the younger scouts.

The trail starts off wide and well groomed with a gentle slope to it shaded by tall trees. Shortly after the trail begins there is a fork in the trail. You can either take the Upper Elliot trail or the Lower Elliot trail. Both take you to the same destination (presumably Goat Lake) but the lower trail is a little more rugged, up and down, and shorter. The upper trail (if I remember correctly, I've hiked this trail about 3 years ago) is a little longer, more groomed and consistent. Today we chose the lower trail, eventually after a couple miles the upper and lower trail join back together and flattens out while you hike under some tall skinny trees that allow streaks of sunshine in onto the trail. It is actually quite beautiful. After hiking in the valley most of the way, you begin your climb to the lake. You gain most of the elevation in the last half a mile or so. The trail becomes rocky and steep and after a few switchbacks eventually you can hear the falls near the lake and you've arrived. We hiked at a pretty quick pace and got there in about 2 hours.

Once there we picked out our campsites and set up camp. We waited for the younger scouts to show up, because naturally they were substantially slower. Once they arrived they began setting up their campsites and the older boys and another leader and myself went to check out the lake. A few of the boys jumped in off this cool dead tree that jutted out into the lake about 40 feet acting like a diving board. I was assured the lake was cold, and I believed them. After swimming in the lake for a bit we attempted to hike around the lake. That proved to be difficult as there is a trail that goes for a ways, but then disappears and turns into heavy brush. We eventually turned back and headed back to camp. We individually made our own dinners and ate whatever we brought up. The younger boys did some repelling of a rock cliff that they found, which looked like some good fun. At that point it was getting dark and late so we all headed to bed.

The next morning we woke up and took down camp and ate breakfast. Most of the boys had to be back by noon that day so we didn't do much at all except eat breakfast and pack up camp before we headed back down the trail. Again we took the Lower Elliot trail due to our time crunch. The group in front took about one hour and 20 minutes to get down to the cars. We waited about 30 minutes for the rest of the boys to show up. Once we all got back safely we headed home. It was a good, fun, short little over night hike.

Region: North Cascades, Mountain Loop Highway
Distance:  10.4 miles
Elevation Gain:  1400 ft
Peak Elevation:  3161 ft
Difficulty: Medium 
Pass Requirement: Northwest forest pass

As always check out all the photos of the hike and every hike by clicking on the "Photos" tab.

Union Peak

Saturday morning I headed east toward Steven's Pass. Once over the pass I took Smith Brook Road up a few miles and parked at the Smith Brook trail head. There were a few cars there when I arrived at roughly 8:30 am. It was an overcast and cool morning and the day before had been a lengthy and vigorous lightning and rain storm. I thought perhaps that deterred a few would-be hikers for today.

I started up the Smith Brook trail and climbed the well groomed and nice trail until about the 4500 ft level where there is a large rock field. There is where I started to climb the ridge going in a north east direction. This was mostly large rock at first so it took some meandering around to find a good route. But eventually I got on top of the big rocks and was climbing the ridge heading in that same direction as the route turned more into forest. I made my way through the trees and underbrush until about the 5300 ft level and turned north west and followed that ridge up to the peak. I did a lot of bush whacking, and got completely soaked. It didn't rain at all, but as I mentioned it rained a lot yesterday and all those plants held onto that water until I got there. It was like hiking through a sprinkler all day.

As I approached the peak, it was hard to tell where the exact highest location was. The peak is a very gentle sloping dome shape. Honestly pretty anticlimactic. Plus it was cloudy and foggy all day so there was virtually no views at the top. Pretty mundane. But I'm sure the views are very pretty when there is something to see. My plan was to continue on to Jove Peak today as well, but considering the poor visibility and the fact that I was completely soaked and cold, I didn't see the point in continuing today.

At the top I laid on the ground for a good 30 minutes and took a quick cat nap while trying to dry off/warm up. It was quite chilly up there for an August summer day. But once my synthetic pants dried it got a little easier to tolerate the cool temperatures, and even though it wasn't raining I put on my rain gear and headed back down intent on staying dry while bush whacking. As I came to the rock field portion I think I found an easier, safer option down to the trail than the way I came up. And as I got back onto the main trail I encountered several people on their way to Valhalla Lake I presume. I made my way back down to the parking lot to find it completely full of cars (it is a relatively small parking lot) with cars lining the road in both directions. So it turns out the previous day's lightning storm didn't deter as many people as I thought.

Region: Central Cascades, Stevens Pass, East
Distance:  3.4 miles
Elevation Gain:  1680 ft
Peak Elevation: 5696 ft
Difficulty: S2, T2
Pass Requirement: No

As always check out all the photos of the hike and every hike by clicking on the "Photos" tab.

Devil's Gulch

So this was quite a unique adventure for me. I don't usually do mountain bike trips, in fact I don't think I've been a proper mountain bike for at least 10 years. But I was asked to help take some of the youth from our church out on a mountain bike trip. So I obliged. We left town around noon on Friday and headed east toward Wenatchee. After a few hours of driving we arrived at the trail head of Devil's Gulch where the boys and a couple leaders were going to ride up the mountain to our campsite. Another leader and I were going to drive up to our campsite and take all the gear and set up camp and have dinner ready for the boys once they finished climbing the mountain on their bikes.

The boys starting their trek up the mountain at around 3:00 pm and expected to be at camp around 7:30. So we had some time to kill. So the other guy I was with new of a state park where we could hop on our bikes for a couples hours to kill some time and have some fun. So we started riding, heading up the hill looking for a lake that he knew about but couldn't ever find previously. We climbed for a bit and after a while we got up above the trees and could look down at the valley and see the towns of Wenatchee and Cashmere. It was pretty cool. We climbed a bit more searching for this lake, but never did find it. Eventually we decided it was time to head back down and get camp set up. We were bombing down the mountain and since it was Eastern Washington the trail was dry. My buddy in front of me was kicking up tons of dust and my sunglasses were covered in specks of dust. As we came out of the trees the sun was shinning right in my eyes through my dust covered glasses, needless to say I couldn't see anything. Not good when flying down the mountain on a bike. I couldn't see the large rock or root or dip in the trail or whatever it was that I hit that caused me to fly over the handle bars and take a nasty spill. After a few seconds of gathering myself to make sure I wasn't seriously injured (which I wasn't, just some scraped knees, legs, elbow and hands) I got back on the bike and continued down the mountain, a bit more cautiously.

We made it to the truck then drove to our campsite to set up camp and got dinner cooking. We expected the rest of the crew to show up around 7:30 pm so we had dinner ready by then, but they never showed. So we waited...and waited...and waited some more. At around 9:00 we got worried and tried calling them to see where they were, but they had no cell reception. So I drove to the trail head where they were supposed to come out onto the highway. Not there, so I waited there for them to show up...and waited...and waited. Still didn't show up. At around 10:00 pm they finally got cell service and called for me to come pick me up at a lower elevation closer to where our campsite was. So I drove over there and found them riding down a forest service road. They were absolutely exhausted and out of water. So I gave them all some water, loaded up the bikes in my truck and drove them all to the campsite. Once at the campsite, we quickly ate (mostly) cold dinner and went to bed.

The next morning we ate some breakfast, took down camp and bandaged up any wounds we had. Then we drove all our bikes and crew up to the trail head where they were supposed to come out of last night. We started biking around 10:30 am. We climbed about 600 feet or so on our bikes before we began our long and fast descent. It was a grueling ride up, especially for those who rode all the way in yesterday. After climbing we reached the peak and got some amazing views of Wenatchee below. It was pretty cool to look down on the valley as you ride a narrow sketchy trail with a cliff inches away. But eventually we got to go downhill. That was way fun. I felt like I was riding the brakes the whole way down and still was cruising down the mountain faster than I wanted to be going. All of the boys fell at least 3 times on the downhill portion, but luckily none were very serious. Just attention getting. It took us a few hours to ride the 15 or so miles of the downhill portion of Devil's Gulch trail. Then we rode about 10 miles on the road into the town of Cashmere. And finally after being scorching hot in the near 100 degree weather and completely exhausted with wounds and sore butts we got to enjoy some awesome BBQ at Country Boy's BBQ in Cashmere. That was some good eatin'. After lunch we drove over the pass and back home.

Region: Central Cascades, Stevens Pass, East
Distance: 14 miles
Elevation Gain: 3200 ft
Peak Elevation: 4963 ft
Difficulty: Difficult
Pass Requirement: Yes, Northwest Forest Pass

As always check out all the photos of the hike and every hike by clicking on the "Photos" tab.

Barclay Lake

Today we hiked with some friends to Barclay Lake. There were 5 of us with 4 kids. This is an easy hike and pretty flat that is covered in shade by trees almost the entire way. My 3 year old daughter walked almost all the way to the lake before she wanted to ride in the pack. One of the other 3 years old boys walked the whole way, in and out. I was pretty impressed.

Once you get to the lake and the trees clear you see Mount Baring soaring high above you. It is quite spectacular. I have hiked here only once before, like 5 years ago, and the lake is much smaller now. Lots of water has disappeared, I imagine it has something to do with the alarmingly low amounts of snow this past winter.

After taking a break at the lake and eating a quick lunch and having the brave 3 year old boy swim in the lake for a bit we headed back down. It was a beautiful day and great to get out and enjoy the sunshine with the family and some friends. This is a great hike for families and kids of all ages. Definitely should be on the list for getting kids started and interested in hiking.

Region: Central Cascades, Stevens Pass, West
Distance: 4.5 miles
Elevation Gain: 500 ft
Peak Elevation: 2423 ft
Difficulty: Easy
Pass Requirement: Yes, Northwest Forest Pass

As always check out all the photos of the hike and every hike by clicking on the "Photos" tab.