I have often posted images of the trail up the North Fork Skokomish … or showed images of the area. I was going through photos and found this nice pair of photos about 5 miles up the trail, where it crosses a small creek. A National Park crew was installing a new bridge. With hand rails on BOTH sides! Quite nice.
Back in the ’60’s, one of my first long hikes was an attempted crossing of the Cascades using some ‘high routes’. A friend and I were going with just the two of us and (looking back on it) overly optimistic plans. The weather didn’t cooperate: we ended up getting snowed on for a day or so after the third day or so. Perhaps we were lucky that we decided to bail. The weather remained stormy for several days (it was mid-August and a cold front blew in). We hiked to the nearest road, hitched a ride into the nearest bus line. It was still an adventure … and probably safer than if we had continued. It would have been a rugged go, and I’m not sure we would have been able to keep up our schedule … even if we found the right track … since we were following ‘high routes’ for a lot of the time, we weren’t using trails. So route finding would have slowed us down … probably more than we expected.
That’s my pack and ice ax just after we departed Lucerne (Washington) a SMALL town along Lake Chelan that is boat only access. This is my only photo of the trip. Taken with a Kodak Instamatic, I believe. One of my earliest remaining images.
Just getting tired of photos of cool, damp weather. I need to get out into the mountains to soothe my soul. This is one of my favorite hikes … the North Fork Skokomish trail. It was the route that the first (white) explorers followed crossing the southern Olympics in the late 19th century. I enjoy it for the lush greenery … and the fact that you can hike for miles without having to climb a ridge.
The photo above is taken from the Staircase Loop Bridge across the North Fork Skokomish in Olympic National Park. Below is taken from the Loop Trail about half way between the bridge and the trailhead at Staircase.
The old picnic table sits near the beginning of the East Fork Quinault Trail that runs up to the Enchanted Valley and Anderson Pass in Olympic National Park. The road used to continue to this point, but it is now trail. The table sits so close to the trailhead that once folks are ‘loaded up’ there isn’t much interest in taking a break at this point. So it’s abandoned to the moss and lichen and time is working its magic.