Today’s hike was one of my first post retirement hikes. Originally I was thinking about hiking old BOTW, but since it was mid week and I figured no one else would be there, I decided to hike Dickey Creek. I hadn’t realized it had been so long since I had hiked this trail. The last time was back in 2018. I can’t believe it has been 7 years since I hiked this trail. It really is a beautiful trail once you get past the initial old roads and cuts.

We headed out leisurely since I knew this would be a relatively easy, short day – no need to rush. We got to the trailhead a little after 10, suited up and headed down the old road. As we were walking I kept thinking to myself “I can’t believe I used to drive down this road to the trailhead”. We soon got to the old trailhead and continued on down the old road. We got to the old bridge where there is only one log left – it still seems in pretty good shape – it is a HUGE log. I usually walk across the log rather than detour over to the swampy area (which is the actual trail, but the crossing of the swamp always gets me wet).

After crossing the log (Thor didn’t want to cross, so he went down, thru the creek and back up the other side – I was kind of surprised because it is a pretty steep cut), we continued on the old road and soon got to the beginning of the trail. It wasn’t long on the trail before we dropped down the hill. This used to be more difficult but they’ve added steps on the steep hillside to help. There is a LOT of ground movement and some of the steps have started to roll a bit, but they still work.

Somewhere down the hill, there was a glimpse to the south where you could just get a small view of a peak with snow on it. I think this is either Schreiner or Knob Peak – I’m thinking it is probably Knob Peak – Schreiner would be a bit to the left I think:

A little farther down the hill there was this interesting Rock formation in between the trees:

A bit further down the trail you finally get to the best parts of this trail – you start getting into the bigger timber along the creek – it was a beautiful day in the woods:

Going a bit farther you start getting into even bigger timber – the floor of the forest was just covered in green:

As you progress south on the trail, you enter a swampy area – the swamp proper looks an awful lot like Alder Swamp:

The trail goes thru a very wet area and then wraps around the north side of the swamp. Again, very much like the Alder Swamp trail – but it isn’t in as good of shape as this one.

We got a bit farther down the trail and did our second creek crossing:

And a bit further, you get your first decent view of Dickey Creek – you hear the creek for a while, but you can’t really see it. This is more like a river, not a creek – the water was pretty high and running fast:

We continued down the trail and got to enjoy even more of the beautiful tread and forest on this magnificent day:

A bit farther you encounter this heavily marked tree – I’m pretty sure this is the section line marker:

A bit further up the trail you get another really good view of Dickey Creek:

And shortly, we came to yet another un-named creek crossing:

From the last creek crossing you head uphill a bit and then make a short drop down to the crossing point where the trail crosses Dickey Creek and continues on the other side:

This was the view looking upstream from the crossing point:

And the campsite at the crossing point – this is where we had lunch and then turned around:

After eating lunch and enjoying the sound of the creek for a while we packed up and headed back up the trail. Before we left, I looked across the creek to see if I could see any fire damage – the Bull Complex fire burned in this area in 2021 but I really didn’t notice much that was obvious from this side of the creek. I didn’t really want to cross the creek since it was running pretty well – I didn’t want to get my feet wet.

We started back up and on the way back, I wanted to see if I could get a better view of a really cool, multi tier waterfall on Dickey Creek. You can hear it and get glimpses of it from the trail but there are so many trees along the creek it is very hard to get a good view of it. On the way back, I climbed down the hill from the trail to try and get a better view of it. I did get a little better view but there is still a lot of brush in the way:

Here is a video of the waterfall:

As we were walking back, I also wanted to take a picture of a small pond which I don’t remember from previous trips. It is right next to the trail but is kind of hidden – but it shows on the map and I thought it was kind of neat:

We made our way back up the steep hillside and soon got back onto the old road. At the old log bridge crossing I decided to head over to the swamp (the real trail route). This is what it looks like:

And just past that crossing was this much appreciated recent trail work – there were several rather large logs that came down here:

After that, we had a short uphill to the old trailhead and after that the trip was pretty much all downhill on old roadbed. When we got back to the truck, Thor was ready to call it a day and take a nap:

It was a FANTASTIC day on the trail – the weather couldn’t have been better. I need to re-visit this trail before another 7 years goes by. I’d also like to go farther up the trail – I’d really like to see Big Slide lake again. It has been a long time since I’ve seen it. I’m curious what it looks like after the recent fires. This has to go on my retirement “to do” list for hiking!