Saturday, May 05, 2007
Ingalls Creek Trail
Back on the left coast to visit my sister, Bella's (only) dog-friend Lulu, Susan, and I did some early-season hiking on the east side of the Cascades. The Ingalls Creek Trail rocks. It's a fairly gentle grade alongside the creek, and starts at a low enough elevation that it was snow-free (for the most part). We enjoyed watching Lulu jump on some high boulders, snacks on the beach, a gorgeous wildflower display, and peekaboo views of the Stuart range. After about 3 miles we ran in to some larger blowdowns that were somewhat difficult to navigate around, and we called it quits after reaching a large pile of avalanche-runout snow. Lulu entertained us by spazzing on the snow. She also apparently prefers heading home rather than heading in to the wilderness, as she hiked between Susan and I on the way up, but gladly hiked in front of us on the way back. We probably hiked 8-10 miles, gaining 1000 feet or so. Fortunately my friend Alex didn't tell the tale of being stalked by a cougar on the trail until after we had hiked it. Apparently he hiked it in the snow and found cougar prints overlying his shoeprints in the snow. Freaky!
