DAY 3. Snowgrass Creek to Walupt Lake
Wake up at 6:00am, and around 6:30, we decide to get up, breakfast, and break camp. By 9:00, we’re on the trail, and when we first start, I’m a little sore, but shortly out of camp, we settle into the routine of hiking, and the soreness fades.
…We do no stopping here, for fear of being drained dry of our lifeblood…
There’s quite a bit of Downhill for awhile, and as we reach the ravine where we are approaching Goat Creek, the bottom here is marshy, and naturally, it’s a haven for mosquitoes!!! We do no stopping here, for fear of being drained dry of our lifeblood. Couldn’t wait to get through here…Even as I write this, I get the urge to start scratching at imagined bites.
The bridge crossing for Goat Creek is a very nice, sturdy log bridge, with a cascading stream running under it. On this day, one of the last nice views we will see.
Trail continues through forest, and we reach the Snowgrass Trailhead. Lots and lots of cars parked here. Now, the trail continues along the road for a short ways, before we reach the entrance to trail 7A. Trail 7A is not maintained by the Forest Service, and it shows.
I believe that a private group maintains this trail, maybe a group with horses, and it’s called the Klickitat loop trail. It uses sections of old abandoned logging roads, and occasionally, winds through clearcut. It is not clearly marked, and, I do not strongly suggest using this route. It’s mostly through forest, with no views, and the highpoint of this trail, other than the Cispus River crossing, was reaching the end of it. There is a point, at the beginning, when you come out into a clearcut, that you get a great view of Mount Adams, and the valley stretching to Walupt Lake, but that’s the only good viewing area.
Crossing the Cispus, at least at this time of the year, was actually therapeutic! As there is no bridge here, simply a rock cairn on the NW side of the river marking the shallow crossing point, we were forced to put on our sandals to make the wade! And, boy, did our feet appreciate the cool water!!! I just wanted to stand in it for awhile, and let my burning feet cool off. Once on the other side, we picked up the trail again, (which was not clearly marked, either), and made our way up the river bank. This ended up being pretty steep, about 400ft up in about a half mile. After walking on the road for 15 minutes, we reach the car at around 2:50pm.
We made it!!! We made the final 10 miles, in about 5 ½ hours. Much better than our first day, but most of this day was downhill…
I feel as if we visited another world this weekend, with everything that we got to see and experience crammed into these 3 days. It took a lot of effort to get there, but it was worth it. We also learned a lot from this excursion, and I hope they are all lessons that I will be able to apply on our sojourn around Mount Rainier.
I still need to concentrate on lightening the load. The powdered drink, which weighed around a pound, will get left behind, as will the larger fuel canister. Thankfully, I have much smaller one, that will work for 3 day jaunts. I only used about 1/16 of the large canister, so I was uselessly lugging around way too much fuel. Russ has a Jetboil, which works awesome for a trip like this, when most everything you do, just needs boiled water. It was easy, quick, efficient, and light, much better than my fuel stove for this kind of thing…
…the height of fashion we were not…
Also, I think I took too many clothes. I ended up wearing the same pair of shorts for all three days! I know that sounds gross, but hey…When you’re out in the woods doing what we were doing, the height of fashion we were not. Would I do this again? Sure, you bet! In fact, while I’m writing this, thoughts are constantly swirling in my mind, what was the best?, the worst, what did I learn, how much pain was involved, did we take enough pictures, did we take too many?
All kinds of images flashing back and forth, of everything we saw, as if my brain has still not figured out how to catalog them all, making this blur of color, thoughts, and ideas into my very own mental kaleidoscope of the Goat Rocks Wilderness. The hand of the Master Landscaper was very busy, and intimately involved in creating this wonderful part of the Pacific Northwest.