In an unexpected turn of events (TBG was supposed to be out of town this weekend) we found ourselves available and the weather clear and sunny. In a completely predictable move, we chose a hike from our list of winter walkabouts — an actual written list we collaborated on a month or so ago, which isn’t very spontaneous, but virtually eliminates a last-minute scramble when there is no time to waste one minute of daylight. We narrowly avoided taking the “wrong” car, the Discover Pass only being good for the RV and the Honda. If anyone from the park service is reading this, two vehicles is a dumb rule.
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TBGuide looks very serious about this choice. |
This choice was the
Wildcat Trail at Green Mountain on the Kitsap Peninsula. As you can see in the above photo, it was a wee bit frosty. The trails here, as the sign shows, are open to all uses, and we did encounter several mountain bikers as well as a handful of dirt bikers and a decent number of trail runners.
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| Douglas Squirrel |
Doug Squirrels have a very distinctive chirp, and this little fuzz ball proved that they can totally talk with their mouths full. It didn’t seem frightened by us at all and kept peeking around the tree to see what we were doing rather than running away with its snack.
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| Waiting to warm up. |
Winter hiking here always presents the conundrum of finding a hike that takes advantage of the terrain but also puts you in the sun. Most hikes here, as you can imagine, involve being among trees, and that can be a little frustrating when you’re in need of light. This hike was a decent compromise with the canopy never being super thick. Winter hiking, at least for me, also presents the frustration of never really having your clothing choices right. Layers go on and come off constantly as you try to anticipate whether or not you’re going to be too hot or too cold and trying to avoid being sweaty underneath it all.
TBG said I would’ve been just as annoyed if it had been a hot day, and that annoyed me even more, so I told him to pipe down since he wasn’t even supposed to be here this weekend. He’s lucky I’m so adaptable, don’t you agree?
If we had stuck to the Wildcat Trail alone, we would’ve done 9.5 miles, but we decided to add in the Beaver Loop Trail, then later the Vista spur, so we ended up doing at least 11 miles if not a bit more. We’ll know later today if that was a good idea or not. There were beaver ponds, but if there were beavers, we sure didn’t see any.
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| Look out! There’s a mountain behind you! |
One of the reasons we decided to add in the Beaver Pond Loop was because we knew it would take us through this logging area on top with the sunshine view. The immediate landscape in this section is, as you can see, blech. Shortly after this, we reached the Vista Trail connection, and shortly after that we reached the (empty) Vista Trail parking lot which had a few picnic tables and a bathroom and from which it was about 1/4 mile to the summit.
There were several other hikers there, most having come up via the shorter Gold Creek Trail, all enjoying the view and lending us a hand in getting our photo. There were also pups that I felt obligated to scritch. One of them was named Steve, or I thought it was named Steve and kept calling it Steve until I realized that was one of the guy’s names, although they surely heard me calling the dog Steve repeatedly and didn’t stop me.
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| Look out! There’s a city behind you! |
Do you see Seattle waaaay behind us?
Having traveled further than we’d anticipated and wanting to return in good time, we didn’t do any real photo-taking on the way back down. So I will just share some lovely photos TBG took on the way up and call it a post.
Until next time, Faithful Readers!
