We had constant brief showers through the night and so woke up to moisture spotted tents. Well, it kinda appeared that Misty & Jo's tent had showers inside the tent as well! It didn't appear that the sun would reach our little enclave to dry things out until well after it was time to go so we packed up the wet gear and set off once again.
The sky was thankfully bright blue as we set off along a very pretty slope to the edge of a valley, then 2300' and 5 miles of switchbacks down to Quail Meadow.
We were fairly concerned about the immediate climb right back out of the valley as this was the dreaded Bear Ridge! 2000' in 5 miles with NO water sources. We contemplated staying at the Meadow, dry camping somewhere along the trail, or just sucking it up and doing it all. M&J feel slightly differently, but I thought it was a lovely, pretty easy hike. And it was so not as advertised! The start was through lush ferns with several streams, then abundant wildflowers and quaking aspens, and finally, steady well-graded switchbacks with a thick fir tree canopy. I went ahead and had a great time, snapping photos and leaving trail notes.
I knew there'd be cell reception at the top so I was able to post some blogs while M&J ambled up. We thought we'd had made it to the top but the darn Bear Ridge kept on going. The way was open and easy but it never seemed to end.
We didn't want to descend to Bear Creek as we'd heard reports of it being buggy so as soon as we started going down we kept an eye out for a convenient water source, which happened to be a grassy trickle, then a spot to camp. I think we found our favorite place yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment