Middle Fork -- again!!

What a great hike. Ok, there’s no drop dead view and it’s too long. There’s mud, the trail is washed out in places and the road to get there is rough. Still, it’s a great hike. Why? The bridge, the river, the views of Mt Garfield and the trees. Old growth trees. Moss carpeting the forest floor. And now cairns. Forest art. And weird mushrooms.




It’s a good hike

Granite Mountain Grind

Moving takes time. We moved from Preston to Bellevue. Less than 15 miles apart, but what a difference! Preston is a small, laid back and largely forgotten town. Just the way folks from Preston like it. Bellevue isn’t Preston.




We lucked out. We found a small ‘cottage’ close to the water and a great trail system tying Bellevue together with Mercer Island and Factoria. Given a couple of hours, everything is within walking distance. At just under 3 miles, work is within running distance and last week marked the first week where I ran to work each day.



Since the Mount Adams trip, we’ve been hiking once up to Thorp Mountain, but then hit a 5 week dry spell without hiking. Granite Mountain was the first outing after the move.



The trail to Granite starts out on a trail we used several times before – the Pratt lake trail. We used this trail as the ending point for our ‘round Bandara’ trip as well as the overnight trip into Pratt lake. But after hiking only about 20 minutes we took the Granite Mountain cutoff and headed up.

The trail becomes a bit merciless as you climb and climb and climb. The nice part is you are in and out of the forest and the views keep on getting better and better.

On this fall day the colors were great above the 4000 foot level. What we didn’t know, but certainly found out on the way back, is that the color was provided by Huckleberry bushes full of Huckleberries. Wonderful eating!!!!

There was a magical meadow awash in colors with a small stream going through it. I looked a bit for campsites by following some trails, but couldn’t find one. I didn’t spend that much time looking and this is largely a day hike. Coming up here and star watching would be a lot of fun.

By the time we hit the ‘magic meadow’, we were getting tired. The hike is beautiful, but it’s a grind. At 4 miles, it’s the same length as Mount Si, but with 600 feet more elevation gain within that 4 miles. Up, up, up.

The lookout at the top is visible as you approach, but it’s almost a deterrent. You’re getting tired and this thing is still ‘way up there’. Finally we made it to the look out and had a great lunch with a great view.

The trip down was long and the cold beer in the cooler in the truck tasted pretty good. Zeke’s pizza finished off the day.