Today’s hike was kind of “get out and enjoy the nice weather” hike. We’ve had REALLY nice weather for January, although it has been cold. It is supposed to continue for part of next week and then it sounds like we will be going back to our normal gray drizzle. I looked at the modeled snow depth maps and decided to try and hike the White Iris trail – it seemed accessible with the snow depth and it is always a nice trail to hike. It gets you into some really nice old growth and it is accessible much of the year.

We headed up and turned off onto the 4615 road where the trailhead is. The modeled snow depth map snowed various depths of snow but we encountered effectively now snow at all. A couple of sheltered spots had a bit of snow on the road but there was tracks down to the pavement. We had no issues at all getting to the trailhead. I had also considered hiking the Bissell trail and given what we saw, I’m pretty sure we could have hiked that as well.

We headed up the trail. I was a bit concerned because someone was on the spur road near the trail shooting, but it seemed like they were shooting in a responsible direction (not towards the trail). We headed up and had zero snow for quite a while. Not much in the way of new downed logs – a couple new ones but those were pretty easy stepovers. There was one new snall tree that had lots of branches that I trimmed up so it is now an easy stepover.

The lower portion of the trail gains elevation pretty aggressively – this was built thru an old cut area. At some point shortly before the aggressive climb stops, you get to what I’ve called the “Hillhilly trail markers” – beer cans and boots. I’d never noticed that there were boots on both sides of the trail as well as on a tree next to the trail – they were all nailed down so they aren’t going anywhere – I’d love to know the story on these boots:

After looking at the boots, we continued up the trail – there is a short aggressive climb before you take a hard left turn and shortly start entering the old growth:

There was little to no snow in this entire area which was really surprising. We headed north on the trail, enjoying the beautiful old growth until we got to the 4614 road crossing:

It was interesting – this road is supposed to be closed, but it is obvious someone was able to get around the tank traps at the beginning and make it down the road.

We crossed the road and headed east – the un-named creek was flowing down lower (but not up higher which was interesting):

We headed up, entering the Salmon Huck wilderness area and continued up. We’ve taken the old trail over to the 187 spur – when that was cut the trail was re-routed around the cut area. We headed over to see what the road looked like, and someone had been up there as well:

After looking around that old spur road a bit we headed back to the trail. It was getting a bit windy in the open areas and the wind was COLD, so I was happy to get back into the woods where it wasn’t as windy.

We made our way up the trail and right before the junction with the Old Baldy trail, there was a bunch of blowdown – I think I counted 5 or 6 logs all blown down next to each other:

We made it thru the blowdown and stopped to have lunch at the junction. It was cold but not too bad. Since it was still relatively early I thought we could head south on the Old Baldy trail – I’ve hiked north of there quite a few times but it has been a while since I’ve gone south from there.

The Old Baldy trail is a very old trail – much of it is thought to have been an indian trail that was repurposed. As such, it is different – it pretty much follows the ridge, so it has a lot of ups and downs on it. At one spot on the trail it became a bit more open and the sun shined thru – I thought it was kind of neat:

We continued south and as the trail approached the ridge, the east wind was kicking up and it was BITTERLY COLD. I was prepared for cold but not really for the wind. We kept moving and we’d kind of move in and out of windy areas. I was thinking a good turnaround place would be the spot where the Old Baldy trail parallels the 4614 road for a bit. I was interested to see what the road looked like.

We made it to that spot and the road looked pretty driveable:

We looked around a bit and turned around and headed back. Due to the cold wind I didn’t want to stop for very long.

On the way back I stopped at an open area just north of the road junction. We’d come thru it on the way in but we just kept going. On the way back, I stopped and looked a bit. The snow was probably 3′ deep here – as soon as you re-entered the woods the snow basically disappeared:

I looked around to see if there were any views – it was kind of difficult, but thru the trees, I got this view of what I think is Mt St Helens:

After enjoying the sunshine and the view for a bit we continued on. It was the next quarter of a mile or so that was really difficult. This was the area where you could really feel the cold wind that was so bitterly cold. We tried to keep our pace to get thru it, but it was tough. We finally crested the ridge and from there on, we seemed to be more protected and didn’t feel the wind nearly as much. From there back to the truck it was mostly downhill, which made the trip a lot faster than the way up.

We made really good time back down. Other than the quick stop at the open area on Old Baldy we didn’t really stop much. I think we stopped once for water but otherwise just made our way down the trail. I think Thor was tired enough as he needed some help getting into the truck.

It was a nice, relatively short day in the woods but it was GREAT!