Be the cryptid you wish to see in the woods

  • 20200907 Leech Lake to Shoe Lake via PCT, GPNF GRW

    20200907 Leech Lake to Shoe Lake via PCT, GPNF GRW

    Memorial Day Weekend is a holiday in which I generally stay home. My favorite haunts are usually overwhelmed with Packwood Flea Market tourists and hordes of recreationalists. This year, however, the game has changed. The rules were tossed out the window. Packwood was practically deserted. I start my day by heading out the door at first light, hitting the…

  • 20200723 Klickitat Trail, Cispus Peak & Pompey Peak, GPNF

    20200723 Klickitat Trail, Cispus Peak & Pompey Peak, GPNF

    Having left Summit Creek and passed thru Packwood, I hung a left at USFS 20 Rd, the Smith Creek Road. This road winds its way up into the mountains south of Hwy 12 a few miles before town. The road is long, and entirely passable. I was too busy drinking dirty chai to make good…

  • 20200719 Carlton-Summit Loop via Historical Crossing, GPNF, WOD

    Historical trails have been something of an interest for me for some time now.  I’ve been researching and traveling the Cowlitz and Klickitat Trails in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, among some of the oldest in the region, dating to some thousands of years old.  I’ve traced much of the Cowlitz Trail from Randle up to…

  • 20200702 Packwood Lake, Chimney Rock, Lost Lake, GPNF

    20200702 Packwood Lake, Chimney Rock, Lost Lake, GPNF

    Desire to get very high and far away finds me setting off from the Packwood Lake TH around 11:00 AM – I had gotten there nearly 45 minutes earlier, but need to finish charging my phone and packing my food. While there, the parking lot fills. A steady stream of people are going up and…

  • 20200628 Packwood-Art Lake-Snyder Mtn Loop, GPNF

    20200628 Packwood-Art Lake-Snyder Mtn Loop, GPNF

    Thinking I’d have a low-energy day in Packwood, having had a headache for days. In no hurry to leave in the morning, I arrived and parked at the Community Hall just before 10:00 am. A group of people were meeting outside the hall, using the picnic tables at the park – I don’t know if…

  • 20200530 Cispus Valley Trail #270, Takhlakh Lake, GPNF

    20200530 Cispus Valley Trail #270, Takhlakh Lake, GPNF

    With a crash and a boom, I crossed the Tom Music Bridge over the Cispus River. No, it wasn’t my truck, it was the sky. Often, when I make plans ahead of time to take a long weekend, the weather gets the last laugh. Today, for example, with a very active day of thunderstorms forecast.…

  • 20200526 Klickitat Trail #7, GPNF

    20200526 Klickitat Trail #7, GPNF

    The Klickitat Trail is an old one, known to be in use 2000 years ago. This trail follows the ridge of the mountains which separate the Cowlitz River Valley from the North Fork Cispus River Valley, which rises 5,000’ above the valley floors. The ridge runs E-W, the south face relatively uninterrupted above the NF…

  • 20200518 Eruptiversary – USFS 26 Rd to Cascade Peaks, MSHNVM

    20200518 Eruptiversary – USFS 26 Rd to Cascade Peaks, MSHNVM

    How has so much time passed? Was it really 40 years ago that I was a young child, watching in fear as the sky disappeared behind boilings clouds of ash as darkness fell one Sunday mid-morning in May? We visited Mt. St. Helens for the first time, post-eruption, in what I believe was 1984. The devastated landscape…

  • 20200203 Nisqually-BFJ NWR

    20200203 Nisqually-BFJ NWR

    Mike and I spent an afternoon walking about the Billy Frank Jr., Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge

  • 20200125 Muddy Fork Cowlitz, GPNF

    20200125 Muddy Fork Cowlitz, GPNF

     I really needed a day on the river, my river, the Muddy Fork Cowlitz. And what a bluebird day to be there, too. All the little creeks were full to the brim with melt-water, the sky was intensely blue and the air warm and still, and I had a new camera to play with. I purchased…